curious? many out there have experience with UNCURED rock?

[starmom]

yesterday my uncured figi and tonga branch have been in my tank for three weeks, I added around 26lbs of argonite substrate four days ago...

I have have no ammonia except for one time four days ago...........
had small amounts of nitrates and now zero for a week or so...

ph was low at 8.0, got some sea buffer and now its 8.2

from a beginners prespective the rock arrived in good condition...alot of pink and green life......very small but there...

my lfs guy advised me to keep it tank dark for the first 2 weeks, i got conflicting advice from here and books and started about an hour or two the second week per day acitinic and bright orbit lites..

now at week three im noticing some die off of what was a light green plant, and some other die off, at the same time im noticing some very pretty magenta tiny 3-d growth as well as some small plants, some whitish some branching brownish-greenish plants and not i notice a fine hair like growth in some areas.

my specific gravity was l024 because i thought that was what i read to keep it at my lfs guy told me to take it down to l021-l022

the tank never got cloudy except for when i rearranged the rock, my protien skimmer picks up a steady very slow accumulation of a dark brown muck.........the tank never got a bad oder.......

does this all sound normal?

oh is there a termostat that is reasonable for tank heater? i got an in line heater and we had a warm spell last week and the temp got up to 80! yikes..........thank goodness i dont have any critters besides what came with the rock yet.........now back down to 82............

thanks.
sue:confused:

[starmom]

it seems as though there is alot of experience out there....

would appreciate some input please......
sue

[OrionGirl]

Nothing sounds out of line, really. I'd suggest challenging the tank with a bit of ammonia before trusting it with fish--it sounds like your rock, though uncured, didn't experience a great deal of die off--could be there wasn't much to die off, or it could be that the bacteria colonies were already substantial enough to deal with the die that did occur. Either way, not too unusual, and not a problem. Add enough ammonia to read 1.0 ppm on your test, wait 24 hours, and re-test. If the ammonia is 0, you're in good shape.

For salinity--I like 1.025-1.026 for my reef tanks. Fish only can go a bit lower, 1.022-1.023 is fine--but I still keep them at the reef level, since this is closer to the ocean levels. Stability is the key--the levels don't fluctuate much in the ocean, so organisms react poorly to changes.

On temp--there are several digital thermometers out there that work well.

[starmom]

I appreciate your time........

any photos out there of peoples rock with beginning stages of growth, im impatient to figure out what one of the growths is, its a rich magenta color, and irregular in shape, very small at this point maybe 1/4 inch in diameter, there is somthing that is identical in color on a lower rock that is getting a branching look so im feeling pretty good that its not a red slime of some sort..

thanks again.....
sue:D

[OrionGirl]

Sound like foramineferans...Look like this? http://www.reefs.org/hhfaq/pages/picture_pages/faq_foramred.html

Fairly common, not a problem. Hit the 'Back' on that link to get more info.

[starmom]

very cool web site, whatever is growing is so small and this is all so new to me its a big mystery that will unfold in its own time, if all goes well.........

i just am wondering if the 2 hrs a day of light is sufficient for this rock as recommended by my lfs guy.......... i wonder if haveing the lights on for this short period at this point is the reason for the green plant life that came on the rock looking pretty good i thought has died off..... he told me that too many hours of light would create alge problems, there appears to differing opinons between what i have read on the net, in books i recently bought and what my lfs guy recommends.......

i added that site to my bookmarks so as things grow between all the sources i have i will be able to identify things........

thanks again, sorry i tend to get wordy......

sue

[OrionGirl]

If you have high nitrates, lots of light can cause an algae issue. Typically, it's not that bad--starts out with some diatom algae that's easy to remove and goes away pretty well on it's own. Green algae and hair algae can become a bigger problem, but typically nothing that can't be dealt with by a cleaning crew once it's safe to add them. A couple hours of light won't be enough tokeep true photosynthetic animals alive for terribly long--they can live on reserves for a while, then will die. However--before fussing about it--determine what, other than coralline algae, do you have that is photosynthetic. If there isn't much there, no point in lighting the tank up.

[starmom]

if from a reef environment, i can only imagine this is not a dark environment there is some light........

whatever is growing is rather small at this point so i cannot identify what is exactly growing for the most part.

new issue......i live in ny and we have had a few warm days, even with my heater all the way down the ambient temp in my house is warmer and my tank is like 80! ive opened up the glass halfway on top .......any advice on balancing the temp with warm/cooler days and ambient room temp?

i didnt think i would need a "cooler" living in the northeast but i might be wrong.......

im glad im figuring this out before i have other critters in this environment.

thanks again for your assistance........
sue

[OrionGirl]

Yes, but if your rock doesn't have those photosynthetic items on it, there's no need. Not everything on the reed needs high light levels to survive, and many of them will go dormant until conditions are suitable to support them. Identifying the items as photosynthetic will be mostly a matter of color right now--if they are red, yellow, orange, or brown, not likely to be reliant on photosynthesis for food. Greens, some purples, likely are.

For temp--80 is not that bad. Many people keep their tanks there all the time. If you're concerned, you can get some fans to blow across the surface of the water--make sure you monitor and topoff with FW more often, since this will boost evaporation way up there.

[starmom]

but i think because of the two weeks of darkness they died off, now i have some fine green growth...alge of some sort im sure...

thanks for letting me know about the temp, the light fixture i have is an orbit and it has fans in it that blow excess heat, so blowing another fan will help that is good advice......to keep in mind...

i have read alot but sometimes the more i read the more confused i become....

i dont want to advance to quickly and add critters of any kind until i know all is well in my tank, im trying to be patient and avoid mistakes that would be fatal to my future critters because as a fishkeeper im only in the hobby six months with freshwater and this is my first marine tank (and a bigger expenditure than i realized) i dont want to spend hundreds on critters and have them die because i didnt do it right........

thanks again, b.t.w. pucks website is very cute

sue

[OrionGirl]

:) Thanks--he's proud of it, but really lazy about updating it. :)

[Cearbhaill]

i live in ny and we have had a few warm days, even with my heater all the way down the ambient temp in my house is warmer and my tank is like 80! ive opened up the glass halfway on top .......any advice on balancing the temp with warm/cooler days and ambient room temp?
In my case I found that I just had to remove the glass cover.
I had no choice and would have really preferred to have kept it. But my room temps are as low as I can tolerate (I garden outdoors in the heat most days), so the glass had to go- I have a small fan blowing across the surface of the water and the lighting elevated a bit. Truth be told I am coming to love the ready access to the surface of the water- both for practicle reasons as well as aesthetic ones.
The difference is remarkable- as is the topping off!