uncured rock arriving friday! yippee!

[starmom]

excited for the experiment to begin.........
sue

[mogurnda]

Very exciting. It's always nice to take photos. Good for us, and gives you a chance to look back and say "this beautiful reef used to be a smelly rockpile."

[starmom]

got 69 lbs total............figi and tonga branch....

so many colors on the rock i can see small red plants and light green and pinks etc............

the figi has some large pieces with large holes going thru, its uncured...im letting it come back to life a bit and will do a good water change on sunday and then arrange the rock a bit....and then leave it to do its thing............the tonga branch is beautiful. im picturing the figi on the bottom and arranging the tonga branch on top of that, im thinking of doing two open sorta mounds with a channel inbetween, i like the idea of setting up a cove but it seems like circulation would be an issue........

this is all so very cool......

i have my water "brewing" in a plastic garbage can, with a heater and power head for circulation.......

i currently have my sg at l024, temp at 76, a skimmer (seaclone l50) and cannister filter (cascade 1500) and two power heads one at either end of the tank.......

i have awesome lights my hubby got me for my birthday (still in the box an orbit 24 hrs system with the moonlight,bright and blue lite 65 watts) which ive been told i could turn on in two weeks, i have a few reefkeeper books that im reading and some say that i could put on a light for two hours starting as soon as four days....what do you think of that?

well thats where im at.............

sue

[Ray Pollett]

Sounds great. You've done some homework and it will pay off.

I put the lights on from day one. That is personal choice. It can cause more algae, which I can live with. It also may help some of the good algaes survive as they need light.

Ray

[starmom]

the water is pretty clear, does not really smell, nice growth still on the figi rock and tonga branches....

the only time its cloudy is when im moving it around to figure out how it will be pretty and stable with lots of openings to see thru and places for the critters to live in someday when the parameters are right......

i expected it to get disgusting!!! and its not at least yet.....

im gonna do a large water change today anyway..

also im getting very little in the protien skimmer, also a big suprise.........

any imput would be appreciated ....
thanks
sue

[Dale W.]

I am not surprised at the skimmer results yet. Give it a couple of days and you will be seing more gunk show up.

I would also start running the lights on the tank as there are many things on the rock that depend on the light to survive if you want them to.

Keep an eye on your nitrites as you will be getting some spikes. Since you have already cycled the tank, I would suggest doing partial water changes fairly often to help keep the growth alive. If the rock came in pretty quickly and was in good shape, you may not see much die off or cloudy conditions in your tank.

[starmom]

wow everything looks sooooooooooooooo cool!

I like the way the colors look different depending upon if the bright and blue lights are on or just the blue........some stuff looks deep red in the blue light......

how long would you suggest I run the lights daily......i have lots of timers as i am a reptile keeper too..............

this is very exciting!

sue

b.t.w. how does one post photos to this site?

[Dale W.]

Reptiles???? Dont get me to excited :D
I had over 250 snakes in our collection including our 17' retics. In fact I just found a fairly rare Hawaiian snake about an hour ago. You might know them as worm snakes. So what kinds of herps are you keeping?

The lights you can leave on for 4-6 hours per day and slowly increase them until you get to about 10 hours over the next few weeks. Just watch for unwanted algae growths.

[starmom]

we have 1:1 bearded dragons
1:0 rankins (henry lawsoni) dragon
1:2 leopard geckos
1:1 crested gecko
1:0 gargoyle gecko
1:0 texas collared lizard

numerous fish in a 20 gallon freshwater tank including 2 little fry

and of course the usual..........one black bear hamster
one gerbil
one guinea pig (cavie)
2 human daughters 5 1/2 & 13 1/2
and a husband that is like having a third kid.............

ALWAYS wanted a corn snake, but the poor thing would starve as I just CANT do the pinkie thing.............can feed ANY insect, have a mealworm and superworm colony in my tub room as i type, i just feel sorry for the pinkie mice.......im also a nurse and i work with moms and babies and pinkies remind me of very premature babies.

sue

[theevoys]

So, do you like my gray banded kingsnake?
<---------- He's fun and fiesty!

Reefscape,
I used to find those little worm snakes all the time just outside of Hilo in Keaau. :) At least that's what everyone called them.

[Dale W.]

Yup, thats the Hawaiian snake :)
In some areas they are much more abundant than others. Over here, you dont see them to often unless you are really hunting for them. We had an avo tree blow down in that last wind storm and in the rotted trunk I found 2 snakes that were close to a foot long which is huge for those.

We use to have a number of Elaphe species as well as the Lampropeltis species. The grey bandeds were one of my favs in that one. Theevoys, Do you have the L. alterna or L. Mexicana? It looks like alterna in the pic. We had both but I liked the coloration of the Mexicana better. They are more timid though.

Starmom,

Dragons and Geckos huh? You like fast movers :D I know what you mean about the mice and stuff. I always had a hard time with that as well but, they had to eat. The big snakes are harder as we had to feed them larger stuff.

I have to say that out of all the snakes we had, my favs were really Drymachon corais couperi which is the Florida black indigo. We had to have permits for those as they are cites, appendix 1.