starting from scratch setting up SW

FishFanatic13

FishFanatic13

I LOVE FISH!!!
Aug 25, 2007
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ok so everyone tells you how to cycle the tank and how to make sure ur water paramaters are good. but i need to know, when do u make the salt water itself?...do you put Live Rock and Live Sand in a dry tank? do u put LR and LS in the tank first before you put the salt mix in the water? how much LS and LR do u put in? this is gunna be my first SW tank and i want it to last me a long time
 
You do it all at once.. first, mix your water with good RO/DI water and salt mix and heat 24 hours ahead of time. Next morning, go to your LFS and buy all the live rock you can afford/want in the tank (live rock must stay at least damp at all times or it becomes dead rock) and also buy your sand. Once you have good saltwater mixed (or bought from your LFS) and rock and sand bought then follow these steps.

1. Get home ASAP with live rock to make sure it stays live.
2. Fill tank 1/2 way with saltwater
3. Place rocks in tank directly onto the bottom/glass of the aquarium
4. Take sand, put it in a bucket, and rinse well. Either with a garden hose in your yard on low and let the bucket overflow until it is clear, then drain as much water out as possible or you an do this in a bathtub as well if you don't have a yard to do it in.
5. Take sand and put in your tank, filling around the rocks (you want the rocks on the bottom so it is a strong foundation, if you put rock on top of sand it will shift and possibly cause rockslides in the tank).
6. Once rock and sand are in the tank with water, then fill the tank the rest of the way until it is full, turn on heaters, filters, powerheads, and sit back for about 24-48 hours until the dust settles so to speak. After a day or 2 then you can pick your preferred method for starting the cycle. Myself, I am a fan of a piece of shrimp from the grocery store placed in a baggie with holes in it and placed in the tank for about 4 days then taken out. This is the easiest way to get a cycle going IMO without harming any living creatures.
 
could i also just set up the tank with live sand and add live rock later after the tank has cycled for awhile? i got about 10 lbs of live sand and 5 not. i want to make sure alot of the live rock stays alive
 
FishFanatic13 said:
could i also just set up the tank with live sand and add live rock later after the tank has cycled for awhile? i got about 10 lbs of live sand and 5 not. i want to make sure alot of the live rock stays alive
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Unless you got your "Live Sand" from an established tank, chances are it isn't very live. Putting in dead/dry sand with live rock will make the sand much more "live" than buying the wet live sand in a bag.. but if you already have it, use it. No problem other than the extremely high cost of live sand vs dry sand. The live rock you put in the tank will seed the sand and make it live before your cycle is even complete. You need to have the majority of the rock you want in the tank at setup to get the bio-filtration established. Sand does not do much filtration on its own, the rock does the large majority for you, so you want as much as you can afford or want to put in the tank.

Mustang Boy said:
why would you rinse the sand with the hose wont that pretty much defeat the purpose of using RO water in the first place
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I have found all kinds of things in my bags of sand.. candy wrappers (Chinese), small plastic toys, lots of plastic shreddings, among many other things.. all float out of the bucket when you rinse it. As long as you tip to bucket and drain out as much water as possible when done rinsing then the very small amount of tap water left isn't going to cause an issue on a newly setup tank. The junk in the sand isn't even the primary reason for rinsing either, it is the fine dust that will make your tank a lovely milk white look for a few days if you don't pre-rinse the sand first. Obviously this only applies to dry sand, never rinse "Live" sand or you will just be killing anything that may be alive in it.
 
i agree with ace about the stuff in dry sand, i found many strange things in the bags and its very very dirty not just dust but dirt, it was a very very cheap bag of sand
 
ok now what if your adding dry sand to established sand from an established tank. do i still rinse it and add it to the tank once the tank is mostly full of water?
 
If you just add it dry your tank will look just like you filled it with milk. You won't be able to see 1" into it. Depending on your filtration it can take days to a week to clear up. If you have a sump with a bunch of 100 micron filter socks and replace them at least once an hour you could probably clear up the tank in under 6 hours that way. Or spend 15-20 minutes rinsing the sand ahead of time so you don't get that problem. Up to you.
 
I'm going to throw in another method for you. It's a little slower, but (IMO) a lot safer.

Put the dead sand in the tank. Put in about three/quarters of the total live rock you want to put in, but use only dead rock (preferably stuff with lots of pores). Reefcleaners had a great deal on some really nice rock. The stuff you want is ancient coral beds that are no longer in the ocean.

Personally, I buy my salt water from the LFS. It's a dollar a gallon and it's cheaper for me than to deal with the fuss of mixing. I mixed my own salt water for about a year and hated every second of it. I never could get the ratio correct and always had to start with half a bucket because I'd have to adjust to the point where I filled the bucket.

Anyway, put in the dead sand, the dead rock, and add salt water. Let everything settle. Then add the live sand, let everything settle. Add the live rock (only about 1/4 of your total rock) and turn on all your equipment. Wait.

You'll have to do something (probably to jump start your cycle), I threw a dead shrimp in the tank and that took care of it. I never had a huge ammonia spike, I never had to 50% water changes to keep my live rock alive. I did have the diatom bloom, but cerith snails took care of that.

There are two advantages to this method. The first is cost, the dead rock is much cheaper than live rock ($2-4 a pound vs $5-9 a pound). The second is control. You have a lot more control of what ends up in the tank. In my first tank, I ended up with two mantis shrimp and a variety of crabs that just didn't belong. With this current tank, the only things in the tank are the things I selected and placed in the tank (except for some calupera that came in, but I can trim it easily enough).

The disadvantages: The first is that it takes time to do this properly. It was 6 weeks before I put my first organism in the tank. The other disadvantage is that looking for and IDing hitchhikers can be quite fun. It depends on what you want to do.

I hope that helps you. This method has worked very well for me and my tank, your mileage may vary.
 
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