Live rock confusion

[reefwars]

If you add a damsel def remove it give it fir free to someone else there only like 5-10 bucks, but when they reach maturity they get super territorial. Personally with cured Rock you can add a clown their also on the hardier side . Like everyone said don't plan on fish for a couple months when you do want to add them you'll be ready then. Any questions just ask

O and by rottng food I mean food added and just left to decompose not actual rotted food lol that may not be good cheers

[nemodad]

Ok i'll wait till the 3 week mark and get a small clean up crew.
I'll wait till 2 months for the clowns.

Hey one more question!
Does it matter if i'm using a 17w T8 Coralife 50/50 bulb for the first 2 months?? I'm trying to gather up enough cash to purchase a decent light fixture so i can eventually keep an anemone,Zoo'z and lps.

Thanks for all your help, it's all clearer now!

[reefwars]

Any light for now is good and not even needed really with no live stock .your clean up crew would enjoy it but they'll do fine with out cheers and enjoy th building process it's the best part!! Cheers

[fishytime]

sorry to dis-agree with you Mang^^^^ but, do not cycle the tank with a fish.....cheap or not a fish going through a cycle will suffer irreversible damage.... if your rock was out of water for an hour then you will get die off and your tank will cycle properly without adding a fish....again, patience is key.......oh ya, welcome to CR

[reefwars]

no worries "to he their own"..... me a fish is a fish ive had them come had them go...and they always will

[paddyob]

Originally Posted by reefwars

Most use blue damsels because of their hardyness bt with your tank going for a month you could add clowns. s

I have to say I oppose the use of fish for cycling. I don't know, personally, anybody doing this much anymore as the rocks should cycle anyhow. Damsels... if you put them in... good luck ever getting them out without ripping your tank apart. I made this mistake with the first tank I set up. Took advice of adding blue damsels and man.... mean little buggers later on. Use a cycle starter like stabilty.

I would wait the month either way. With salt water.... patience is your best friend. Plan your livestock in the mean time. Live safely and the tank will be fine.

[paddyob]

Originally Posted by reefwars

no worries "to he their own"..... me a fish is a fish ive had them come had them go...and they always will

This approach seems... to defeat the purpose of reef keeping. The world reefs are in danger and we as reefers need to do our best to ensure that we stock wisely and conscientiously to ensure we do not purposely stress or kill fish and corals.

If we remove fish from the ocean with the attitude that "they come and go"... it hurts nature.

There are a lot of LFS out there that do not care about this and will continue stocking fish that are not suitable to make a quick buck. But as reefers we do not need to follow this same path.

Fish are animals too. And amazing animals OR NONE OF US WOULD HAVE A TANK!!!!

Try keep the worlds reef systems in mind. If you think its a bad idea for one reason or another... then it probably is.

Not dumping on you Reefwars.... but I have a sweet spot for the reef... and part of me is sad thinking about the fish I have lost in the past due to my own inexperience and poor advice received.

Some of you probably saw the post about BC somewhere trying to make salt fish banned. Do you wonder why? It is because of things like this.


Reef wisely and it will be a rich experience. Reef poorly and you will only be poor.

Sorry for the rant.

[Myka]

Your tank will cycle. Your test kits may not be precise enough to notice though. The cycle should be rather small since you used previously cured rock. As soon as it comes out of the water, it is no longer cured, even if it was only an hour. Although using previously cured rock, and minimizing the time it is out of water will surely minimize or nearly eliminate a noticeable cycle.

Originally Posted by nemodad

Ok i'll wait till the 3 week mark and get a small clean up crew.
I'll wait till 2 months for the clowns.

Sounds like you're on the right track here. Personally, I wait 3 weeks from putting the rock in when I don't see a cycle on the tests. At that point I add a SMALL clean up crew since there should be some diatoms growing by then. If the clean up crew does well, I start adding a few hardy corals on week 4. Imo, fish should come third after corals. Hardy corals tend to be much hardier than fish, and help to age the water and tank in preparation for fish. I don't add a fish until week 6-8.

FYI, someone mentioned a tank becoming "established", a tank isn't considered established until at least a year imo.

Originally Posted by paddyob

This approach seems... to defeat the purpose of reef keeping. The world reefs are in danger and we as reefers need to do our best to ensure that we stock wisely and conscientiously to ensure we do not purposely stress or kill fish and corals.

If we remove fish from the ocean with the attitude that "they come and go"... it hurts nature.

There are a lot of LFS out there that do not care about this and will continue stocking fish that are not suitable to make a quick buck. But as reefers we do not need to follow this same path.

Fish are animals too. And amazing animals OR NONE OF US WOULD HAVE A TANK!!!!

Try keep the worlds reef systems in mind. If you think its a bad idea for one reason or another... then it probably is.

Not dumping on you Reefwars.... but I have a sweet spot for the reef... and part of me is sad thinking about the fish I have lost in the past due to my own inexperience and poor advice received.

Some of you probably saw the post about BC somewhere trying to make salt fish banned. Do you wonder why? It is because of things like this.


Reef wisely and it will be a rich experience. Reef poorly and you will only be poor.

Sorry for the rant.

Excellent post! I couldn't agree more!

Originally Posted by fishytime

sorry to dis-agree with you Mang^^^^ but, do not cycle the tank with a fish.....cheap or not a fish going through a cycle will suffer irreversible damage.... if your rock was out of water for an hour then you will get die off and your tank will cycle properly without adding a fish....again, patience is key.......oh ya, welcome to CR

Agreed.

[reefwars]

That's why I say to he their own ... If you'd like to lecture me about the oceans reef then I say save your breath, i've heard read and expeirienced and seen in person our oceans reef, I was raised less than 20ft from the ocean. I have oersonnally cut the net off a whale , so I do care but if you take things to heart we wouldn't have a hobby in the first place . It's a fact fish are gonna die in our tank sooner or later , it happens ...sure there things we can do , but if you don't experiment well never learn new things. That said obviously I wouldn't keep my tang in a 20g , but I pick and choose my battles... If i got hung up on all the worlds problems I'd never sleep .....war, bombings, forests,oceans ....I say less talk and put your words into action ....what have you done to save out oceans outside of a tank, I was part of our towns beach clean up for many years...volunteered every year, I have about 500g of water in my house fir fish all healthy and doing great, I have had tanks my whole ..whole life, but in the end I respect your reefing habits and usually don't diss other peoples . There ate many ways to do things your beliefs may not be the same as mine doesn't make them right or wrong. Everyone has their own morals, but if I dare you to go to a mother and tell her what she does isn't what you'd do, or to a dog owner and say I wouldn't feed that it's not what I do , or possibly the church about what religion to have....most would say ......to he their own. So instead of coming on a forum to lecture about your beliefs, just state what you know as facts and not your morals.

If you think cycling a tank with fish is wrong then that's your god given right and no one can take it from you it's the beauty of freedom ....but it works both ways.last night I had a guy come buy some things he has a yellow tang regal tang and some triggers in a 60g ,instead of saying I think he's wrong or destroying our reefs isimply explained things that may happen , it's his own choice whether to follow but I wouldn't dare say I think he's hurting our hobby or is going to destroy our oceans ........why????


Because people need to make their own decisions between right and wrong and what they interpret as good reefkeeping practises.

I'm not going to be replying to this thread anymore because the topic would be never ending and I've heard it all before. I respect you'd advice pat but you have to respect also that not everyone has the same thoughts you do and just because they don't doesn't make you any better of a reefer than me I jar Wang you to know even if this comes off as rude it isn't I really do respect your advice and morals.........

"To he their own"

[StirCrazy]

ok, I am going to take the different aproach here. you added 32 lbs of fully cured LR to a 38 gal tank. you won't see a cycle at all unless you realy over dose an amonia source. the reason is that basicly because your tank is already cycled. at 1 hour max wraped in wet newspaper, it will be very doutfull you will have any significant die off, and the rock is fully established with bacteria. when you compare the amount of bacterian in LR to what is in the water colume it is a huge difference.. manymany times the maount in the rock compared to water and the important ones are deep with in the rock and not in the water anyways. for all practical purposes with in a day of the multiplication of the bacteria it wouldn't matter.

so my recomendation is to still take it slow, but go ahed and add hermits if you want them and some snails. if you lose a couple snails no big deal, but I doubt you would lose any more than normal if you aclimate them properly.

when I did mine I added 180lbs of LR with about 20 corals which were atached, to a 94 gal tank. I tried using dead raw shrimp to start a cycle but after adding about 1/2 a lb of shrimp and watching the rot and disapear there was still no cycle as the rock brough all the critteres and bacteria that was needed. I added a cleanup crew of hermits and snails, then a week later I bought a fish. if you are looking at a couple clowns add you cleen up crew right away then in a few weeks start looking at your clowns.

this is actualy a common method for a quick start up of display tanks, the tank is new but the filtering agent (the live rock) is well established.

the problem you get into is when you buy LR with lots of algae, sponges, and such on it and it is out of the water long enough for a die off then it is no longer cured and has to be re-cured.

Steve