Bleeching LR Question For New Tank

[shaginwagon13]

Im putting a new tank in and I had a question regarding LR. I noticed that some of you guys bleach or wash completely your LR to kill everything on it and after I had to deal with a few unwanted hitchhikers that cost me 3-4 fish in the beginning stages of my current tank I am pretty sure I want to make sure there are NO crabs, bubble algae, aptasia, etc. I have 1 questions:

When I beech my LR everything will be 'dead' so how exactly do you get Coraline algae to start growing and how do you 'seed' the LR.

I know you can seed LR with other 'alive' LR but if I put in 'live' LR wouldn't that be defeating the purpose of bleaching my LR in the first place because hitchhikers then come into the system?

 

[bheld]

Well if you have an existing tank, you could add a piece of LR that you know is safe to your new tank. You can also use live sand as your substrate....and again if you have an existing tank, you can take a cup or so of sand out of that and add it to you new one. Luckily, I've never had a problem with hitchhikers so I've never had to worry about bleaching or anything. Hope all goes well!

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

The hard part about this is biodiversity. by using only lace rock you're going to need to introduce all the bacteria and critters that come with the live rock. This is not hard to do but time consuming. get some sand from other peoples tanks to toss onto your sand bed to start the culturing the more tanks the better. I would also recommend a small bag of live sand to help seed as well. I would order some copepods, isopods and amphipods to toss in the tank to start the breeding process for those guys. You might even want to get a few mini brittle stars to seed as well. As for the coralline algae just scrape some off of a friends tank and toss them in and hope they seed. I don’t think that you’ll avoid algae blooms but it might lessen them. Good luck.

 

[shaginwagon13]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14848243#post14848243 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sisterlimonpot
The hard part about this is biodiversity. by using only lace rock you're going to need to introduce all the bacteria and critters that come with the live rock. This is not hard to do but time consuming. get some sand from other peoples tanks to toss onto your sand bed to start the culturing the more tanks the better. I would also recommend a small bag of live sand to help seed as well. I would order some copepods, isopods and amphipods to toss in the tank to start the breeding process for those guys. You might even want to get a few mini brittle stars to seed as well. As for the coralline algae just scrape some off of a friends tank and toss them in and hope they seed. I don’t think that you’ll avoid algae blooms but it might lessen them. Good luck.

So in your opinion would you suggest just using the LR the way it is (so keep it alive and not bleech it) and then deal with any hitchhikers if they come along for the ride?

 

[stricknine]

Its a toss up. I had wicked awesome rock from tonga and cured it in the dark for 6 weeks. Only thing left was stone and bacteria. I had to add pods, (a bristleworm just in case), and 16 weeks later no coraline. At the same point, I have no crabs, mantis, sponge, aiptasia, algae, etc.

Tough call.

NEW ROCK:

CURED ROCK (in the background of the corals):

 

[billdogg]

why would you spend $$$ on LIVE rock then even consider bleach???

 

[96p993]

I agree with dogg, why not just buy rock from bulkreefsupply.com or from marcorocks.com and start from there...Save you money and time

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14849319#post14849319 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by shaginwagon13
So in your opinion would you suggest just using the LR the way it is (so keep it alive and not bleech it) and then deal with any hitchhikers if they come along for the ride?

Although I've never done it I think that doing this would be a good idea. The only thing is that you have to introduce the good critters. And I didn't list every single one of them, like the many different types worms. You may be onto something here and if you fail or succeed you can share your experience with the RC community. Good luck