And so it begins...

[gooch]

Live rock is nothing like it was years ago. I think the last time I imported rock was about three years ago and the quality has gone down since then.

I did like the Tonga Specialty rock that one of my wholesalers carried. Nice pieces. I do know a guy that just turned off the power to his tank....seriously he unplugged it and it is sitting in his basement. I think everything has got to be pretty much dead but since you are in the curing stages and I am sure you can get the rock for very little(or nothing). I can not remember how much he got or has but I am guessing over 100 pounds. I also may be able to talk to a buddy of mine in the business to see if he can get you some Tonga Specialty rock sent to the GB airport.

I like the look of the florida stuff but the temps that rock is grown in are lower than the temps we keep our tanks at. So most of the life on it dies in the first year. I did the Tampa Bay Saltwater and Gulf-View. I preferred the gulf view rock.

 

[siropa]

Guess we were kinda spoiled "back in the day" with the LR. sure sound like an old fart with that talk

PM sent to ya gooch.

 

[gooch]

Replied

 

[jmkarcz]

http://sealifeinc.net/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=31

Ken has some good lookin stuff to...

J

 

[siropa]

well its been a week with the great "live rock". still haven't seen a single sign of any life or anything. Decided to use up the credit I got from that from LA and rolled the dice on another kind of rock from them. Turned out much better:

That is their lalo rock. Only bad thing was it was only 3 pieces, one of which is probably 28# of the 30#. suppose that is good since I didn't have any really big rocks though. got one now

 

[customcolor]

now that looks better!
i made a kaulk reactor for like 25 bucks that i took pics of wile i made it. i even made my own magnet mixer. i get no cloud at all. it is a slow mixer and runs 24 hours aday mixing. im going to post a few pics in that kaulk fourm we posted in and i will do my own form too. i even did a 30 sec vid.

 

[siropa]

what did you use to make the mixer?

 

[customcolor]

here is the build slow mix kulk reactor

 

[siropa]

We'll i'm impatiently waiting for the cycle to be done. Ammonia seems to have peaked and is almost gone so its getting there.

With a huge thanks to gooch, I got a lead on some really, really cheap rock. Probably 70-80# in that tote. some really nicely shaped pieces too.

as you can see its stacked for crap at this point, but that's not what i'm going for yet. I don't know what effect the new rock will have on the cycle. Not sure how alive it still is. We'll see.

 

[hobbzz]

Looking good Bill! Nice find. I too just lucked out and found some nice rock for my new tank for cheap. Coraline encrusted for $2/lb!

 

[siropa]

find some good stores down there?

 

[hobbzz]

Yeah there's three that are pretty good. Not as nice as Oceans Floor or Sea Schor (sp?), but better than Green Bay or Milwaukee. The nicest one (Robs Reef) is on par with Sharky's, but with a better sps selection. He can also get everything you can find online with very competitive prices...koralia, tunze, octopus skimmers, every kind of bulb, salt, additives etc. I've never seen one store that carried so many brands. He has some very nice sps, and some lps/softies. Another has more lps, although not very colorful stuff, just more run of the mill, and some nice sps. The third is just so-so. I think they run 10k bulbs on their sps tanks because 90% of the stuff is brown. Their lps is also so-so. Rob is a really nice guy. I stopped out there a few times while looking for a replacement tank in town. He didn't have what I needed in stock so he recommended a few shops I could try. After that I called him and priced things for a good 20 minutes. I ended up ordering an oceanic tech tank (45g) from him. My roommate owns a pet shop that doesn't do fish, but one of his distributors sells Oceanic...Rob (the owner of the shop) gave me the tank for $10 less than list wholesale, the stand for $30 over list wholesale, but then gave me $55 off for paying in cash. Needless to say he's my new favorite guy in town.

How long are you figuring it will be before you're up and running?

 

[siropa]

Sounds like you have something there. Why do you think the 10ks cause the brown at the one place? I run 10k and haven't had any issue with that. the few that I bought that were brown have slowly started to color up too.

The cycle should be done soon. I'm going to let the tank run as-is for a couple of weeks after that to see what kind of algae blooms I get. Once that seems ok, i'm going to start thinking about moving stuff.

Originally I knew I had to use all of my rock from the 75 to setup the new tank. but now i've got enough stuff in there to make at least one of the island stacks. So I might do one of those and start by moving corals to that. Once the rock from the 75 is cleared of corals, I could use that to make the other island stack. The remaining rock will go into the 75 as a FOWLR setup.

 

[hobbzz]

He doesn't use actinic supplementation, and knowing him, he probably uses a cheap bulb. It could be other things though.

Sounds like you're coming along well. I'll have to stop by and check it out the next time I'm in town.

 

[siropa]

for sure. just let me know when you are going to be up sometime.

 

[siropa]

woohoo! the tank is cycled. tossed in a few shrooms from my frag tank to see if they live midas blenny who has been living in jail will probably go over tomorrow. I would have done it tonight, but I don't have any covers/guards rigged up to keep him from surfing.

 

[jmkarcz]

I'll keep my fingers and toes crossed for ya...

JK

 

[siropa]

Hey hobbzz, checkout the fish. I've been watching him moving the sand around to his liking.

 

[hobbzz]

Sweet! Glad to see he is doing well. Has he changed back to his orange/pink color for you yet?

 

[siropa]

We'll see tonight. I took that pic after he was in there like for an hour. how long did it take for him to color up for you?