I am buying a 90 gallon tank with live rock, I was wondering about the live rock. The heat and power heads have been on the last couple of months but no fish. All they have been doing is topping off water to keep salinity up. Is this still live rock or do I need to cure it. It has a ton of coriline on it.
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Live rock
- Thread starter scubadude
- Start date
I would assume it is fine if it has coraline on it regarding it's living. Most fish stores just run water and some/no light to cure their "wet rock". I would make sure there are no pests or unwanted critters living on/in the rock before trying to start a new system. Nothing worse than bringing unwanted guests to your system.
There are a few options. You can add lets say 20/30 gallons from the old tank into the new tank to help get some bacteria going in the new tank. If the rock your adding is cultured than that is also a positive.
You may choose to add lets say a Chromis (cheap fish) and plop 1 or 2 in to help build up the bio while not risking nicer fish. I have also heard of people dropping small amounts of food into the tank (very small) to hasten the process.
Instant Ocean and a slew of other companies offer a Bio Additive for start ups if you want to go the chemical route.
You may choose to add lets say a Chromis (cheap fish) and plop 1 or 2 in to help build up the bio while not risking nicer fish. I have also heard of people dropping small amounts of food into the tank (very small) to hasten the process.
Instant Ocean and a slew of other companies offer a Bio Additive for start ups if you want to go the chemical route.
I just started up a Red Sea Reefer 350. I put 40 gallons of my water from old tank (over 2 days because you need to remake water for old tank if livestock still in it), put 1 piece of live rock from old tank in the sump, added the completely new dry rock in and added Bio Start Up Additive the first 7 days. Ran the tank without additive for another 7 days, and on the 14th day, I added the fish. They did well immediately and 3 days later I added the corals. Everything is alive and well. Most importantly you need to make sure the parameters in each tank are very close because temp/salinity/etc can throw everything off if its a shock when they transfer. The one thing I didn't do is add any "test" fish in beforehand.
Good advice I didn’t think of adding water change from old to new. I just redid my reef tank and took out about 40 lbs of live rock out of my sump which is in my quarantine tank now. I can add that to sump, have the new live rock in dt and I was going to add some damsel to Tank anyway so I will add them first.