live rock etc.

[che2003]

can anyone reccomend a good online store to purchase live rock, and all the other good stuff ?
Thanks in advance!
Che

[frazin78]

www.gulf-view.com

He has great rock and his prices are pretty fair especially his $133 special for 30 lbs of rock including shipping....

Jc

[che2003]

Thanks for the link , they have some good looking rock there what do you thinkk of this place? they offer a complete package for my 90 gallon tank includes; live sand ,live rock, and all the critters needed for clean up and keep the tank going, can you please check this chart and let me know what you think?

THE PACKAGE (http://www.tampabaysaltwater.com/package_chart.html)

[mogurnda]

Hi CHe,
TBS is a great company, and I used their LR for my tank. Lots of cool stuff living on it.
After the stuff had been in the tank for a year, I wrote a mini-review and posted it on reef central. Their server is too busy right now, but I'll link when I get a chance. Basically, I love the stuff.

Finally got in. Here's the link.
tbs review (http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=195898)
What I'd suggest is getting a package sized smaller than your tank, use playsand for most of your sandbed, and use base rock or Pacific live rock to supplement the TBS stuff. It will save you a little money, but, more importantly, I htink the package has a few too many critters in it.

[che2003]

Thanks guys!
Mogurnda , I read your post at the other forum , and I have 2 questions (for now):
1. what size package should I order for my 90 gallon? even if I go down to a 60 gallon package it comes with 120 of the blue leg hermits plu all the other critters? isn't that too much ?

2. how can I get rid of the hairy crabs before I introduce the LR to the aquarium?
Thanks again,
Che

[mogurnda]

Oh dear, so much responsibility. These are only opinions, please don't kill me if they don't work.

1. 50-60 lbs seems good to me. I still have about 15-20 hermits in a 20, and they don't cause much trouble. They may be the reason I never got an algae bloom after it came in. It may actually be a decent strategy to start with too many crabs, to help deal with dying sponges and whatnot. Maybe trade off the excess crabs once the tank has settled in a few months. [For those who are horrified by curing rock with livestock in the tank, I should point out that daily water changes are a key aspect, and that the rock is straight out of the gulf and is still very live and capable of denitrifying.]

2. I thought about this a lot, during the months I was fishing them out. The best I could come up with was putting the rock on eggcrate suspended over the bottom of big rubbermaid containers (submerged in saltwater) for a day or so. Maybe put a little meaty food on the bottom. Then patrol at night for nasties that drop to the floor. I wish I had a better idea. I strongly recommend against a FW dip. May as well buy the crappy stuff off the bottom of a LFS bin if you kill the stuff on and in the TBS rock.

That's my best. Other ideas?

[che2003]

Mogurnda ,Thanks for the input,
before you ordered the live sand and the LR, how long did you have the water in your tank and did you put in the shrimp , to spike the ammonia?
Thanks again.

[Corax]

I usta be a very strong proponent for shrimp cycling, and it still works for some situations, but this is not one of them.

When you introduce that liverock, you can can consider your tank cycled, for the most part. Why is this? Because that liverock IS your bilogical filtration. With it, comes all of the bacteria needed for nitrification.

Getting that rock in your tank and stable, meaning getting rid of all the die off that occured during shipping is pretty much all you need to do to get the tank started.

Here is how it should work for you:

1.) Fill tank with play sand and water, mix salt, start up powerheads and all that stuff long before ordering your rock.

2.) Order the rock and your sand starters

3.) Place the rock in the tank and spread the sand starters around in there.

4.) Watch for ammonia to show up from the rock.

5.) Do daily water changes to keep that ammonia down. A protein skimmer helps a lot here as the die off will be skimmed right out of the water before it can begin to break down.

6.) Do this until the ammonia stops registering. This could take a week or it could take a month, don't rush this step. Once the ammonia is non-detect for about a week, then proceed to step 7.

7.) Welcome to cycled =)

Now then, shrimp... Shrimp are an awesome way to kickstart a tank that consists only of play sand and baserock. If you cannot afford some nice liverock, then this is a very quick route to developing your own. You can get nice looking aragonite (same stuff live rock is made of, cept this has been out of the ocean for a long time and has dried out..) baserock for $1/lb, so it is much more affordable.. However, if you put that nice Golf View rock into a tank, then throw in a shrimp, the ammonia levels are going to decimate any macro life you were lucky enough to get on it. The ammonia that comes from the rock, or more accurately from the organisms that have died during shipping, will provide all the ammonia your tank needs to get started.

I guess what I'm suggesting is that, in the process of re-curing your live rock, you are in fact cycling your tank. Oh and please don't be fooled... No matter what the rock vendor says, you WILL need to recure that liverock once it gets to you. You simply cannot ship a rock out of water and NOT have some die off. Any die off = ammonia, and that means no fish till it's gone.

I know this might go against what you've read on cycling, but I assure you, it works and it works well.

Man I've missed salty talk =)

[mogurnda]

Woohoo! Corax is back among us! I think you summed it up pretty well.

In my case, the tank had been running for a few years, but I pulled out almost everything when the TBS rock arrived. I got small NH3 and NO2 spikes, but not much, and did daily or every 2-day water changes and that kept both well under 0.5 ppm.

I don't know about Gulf-VIew, but TBS ships directly from airport to airport, so the transit time isn't much more than a drive cross town. There will be die off, especially sponges, so you will see a small cycle. Once the NO2 drops, it will probably be several months before your NO3 starts to go down.

Other than the sponges, almost everything survives the process very nicely. Even some of the sponges do well.

If you go with TBS, follow Richard's advice and you'll be fine.

[Corax]

The concept holds no matter where the rock is purchased from. Once the die off is taken care of, then you are ready to stock the tank. Care should be taken in stocking so you do not overwhlem the bio-capacity of the tank right away. Once the LR is in place, it will imediately begin processing the waste in the tank, whether that is from its own die off or fish. The trick is not to GREATLY exceed what it can handle...

Example...

You have a 100g tank with 100lbs of live rock in it. That live rock is capable of processing (hypothetically speaking here) 100ppm of ammonia per day. If you have livestock capable of producing 25ppm of ammonia per day, you are more than covered. If, however, you have livestock that can produce 250ppm, you are going to have problems until the bacteria in the liverock can multiply into sufficient numbers to process that 250ppm. Now, the ideal way of increasing that bio-capacity is to stock the tank so that it can produce 100ppm, then slowly step it up to the level you need. The hard part is that these numbers are ficticious, and knowing the bio-capacity of the tank and the waste potential of your fish can only come from years of experience with the tank.

I hope that makes as much sense outside of my skull as it does inside. Lemme know if I need to clarify that any.. :D

[che2003]

thanks corax you made it perfectly clear!
I can't wait to get started The aquarium is in place , just waiting for my MH lights, RO filter unit, salt, test kit to arrive ,thanks to you and mogur I 'm learning a lot!