Putting in Live Rock

M

Matthew_sample

ok so I am a new guy and I am about to get live rock .. I figure i am going to get about 100lbs of Haitian for my 80Gal Tank.

Been doing a lot of reading and I find a few things to be true... one of which is no one really agrees on the critters that are in live rock..
Some say that you should take the rock and mix a heavy salt when you wash it so all the critter come out. Then they say you take all the bad critters out including the crabs and brissle worms and leave the good stiff in...

1.) Some say the bristtle worms are good some say the a bad.. wonder which it is.
2.) How do you tell a bad crab froma a good one.
3.) Should I do this at all?
4.) What other critters are in there and will the heavy water hurt the good ones?
5.) should i take them all out or leave them all in?

My tank only has water .. My plan is to wash off the live rock and after every ones input here decide on the heavy salt wash as well..

put in the rock into a tank with no sand and let it cycle good and the rock clean up..

after that process then I am going to add live sand...


right now i have some dead raw shrimp from the store rotting to help cycle the water first before I add the rock.. (read that here some where) I figure It will be about 2 weeks then I am going to start looking for good live rock for the cheapest price... then when I wake up i am going to go for it..

wish i was ready now all the good stuff i see being passed around here and at the meetings... hopefully i will be ale to make one when I am ready to get the reef stocked up..
 
Depending on your source for the live rock there shouldn't be too much of a need for picking at it and taking everything off. Bristle worms are good, not for your fingers, but good for the tank. There are some worms that grow to epic proportions, however they can be removed once they've reached a noticable size. Generally most of the things on the liverock are good. I would just be lazy, since theres nothing in the tank, and add it to the tank to save as much bacteria, corals (possible), inverts, etc.

My only worry would be finding a mantis shrimp in the rocks - that would be my only excuse to put the rocks by themselves for a while.
 
I would say that most of the time, when you get crabs on the rock, they are generally good. The best way to differentiate is look at the last two legs, usually the smallest, rear facing one.

BAD CRABS:
They have little paddles on the tips of their rear legs, also look like little fins. These are known as swimming crabs. Swimming crabs swim, hence they can swim after fish. Keep in mind ALL swimming crabs are carnivorous and are likely just as good of hunters as they are scavengers.

GOOD CRABS:
These simply have rear legs that look just like the 3 sets just in front of them...pointy. These, even the carnivorous onces, are scavengers only. However, it has been my expereince that if they find a sleeping fish on the sand, they may try to take a bite, usually resulting in minor fin damage. (Sally lightfoots are notorious for this). Some crabs have a tendancy to bother stars, urchins, octopi (octopi almost always win) and other bottom dwellers.
 
If you are trying to cycle a bare tank with dead shrimp, you really aren't accomplishing much. Water alone holds very little of the good bacteria you are trying to cultivate. The only thing in your tank that can hold much of a bio-filter is substrate or filter material such as filter floss and/or sponges. Substrate holds most of the good bacteria, not water. Therefore you don't actually cycle the water.

If you plan to have a sand bottom, I suggest you add the sand before the rock, or at the same time. The die-off from the rock will cycle your tank, unless you get rock that is really well cured and you never expose it to air. This is unlikely.

I also suggest that you do not soak, or wash rock in hyper saline water, because you will be killing off a lot of the stuff you buy rock for. Add your sand first, put the rock on top of it, keep a good flow (Power heads) and good filtration and good skimmer going and everything will pretty much take care of it's self.

Watch your prams, ammonia, nitrites, and finally nitrates. Aim for triple zero on these three prams, look at at least six weeks to do this right, a little less if you are doing fish only.

The only thing you should actually remove from your live rock is any Aptasia or any obvious sponge matter. Anything dead on live rock will look white under water. Use a turkey baster or direct a powerhead toward the white dying matter and it will be easily blown off and filtered out.

Bye the way, I've never heard of Haitian Live Rock, but I'm intrigued. Do you have any pics or a link to a site selling this?

Best of luck to you
 
http://cgi.ebay.com/50-lbs-of-uncured-Haitian-Live-rock-Free-Shipping_W0QQitemZ260146992182QQihZ016QQcategoryZ117437QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
 
I found this stuff on Ebay I have not bought it yet... I am looking at buying from here maybe already cired... I have a few things in the works just waitingon replies from the ones that are saleing it.
 
@Matthew_sample wrote:
I found this stuff on Ebay I have not bought it yet... I am looking at buying from here maybe already cired... I have a few things in the works just waitingon replies from the ones that are saleing it. said:
Matthew,
Im fairly new but Ive learned a lot in a realtively short time. (5 months or so). I studied and read and studied more before I spent a single penny. And I studied more about LR than anything else...not that Im an expert because Im not.... but here goes....

Im sure others will agree with me here maybe, others that wont. 50 lbs for 140.00 isnt all that good of a deal for Haitian LR. (IMHO). Its uncured Plus Haitian (a.k.a. Florida LR) is a denser rock than Fiji, Marshall and some others that are considered Premium LR.


My humble advice....Keep an eye on the For Sale forum...very often... and I mean every few days, Good Premium Figi or Marshall Island rock ...very good porous rock...cured and full of life ...comes up for sale. The going rate is about 3.oo a lb for rock that is much better than the Haitian. (IMO)

Im sure you will have no prob finding some good rock locally from a forum member and you can have your tank up and running with some corals and fish MUCH faster than with uncured rock.

Also, from what I have read, Haitian rock is fairly dense...what that means is the filtration properties of it will not be nearly as good as a more porous rock per pound. Because of the density, it will also probably take longer to cure.

Example, 50 lbs of Haitian might be equal to 35 lbs of Fiji ...or something along those lines.

Given the filtration factor vs the dollar factor... you will spend more money on the haitian per unit of filtration that you would on a more porous rock... in this sense, even though it may be less expensive per lb. its not necessarily a good deal as you would need more lbs of the denser rock per gallon of water than with a more porous type of rock.

I hope this makes sense....

This post sounds like Im knocking the Haitian LR but Im not...its just that for the price on the rock you posted a link to, there are better deals to be had.

I hope this helps....

dd
Click to expand...
 
If I was going to start a new tank I would buy a box of marcorocks.com it is really porous...Then get couple pices of live rock from used forums or cup of live sand to seed my tank. But that is just my two cents
 
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