Help A newbie

L

loftyguy

New member
Hello All,

I am a total newbie to reef tanks. I been keeping cichlid for over a year now and I am in love with the little buggers. I love these types of forums, I find they are the best source of information. I have a 75g cichlid tank and I was looking to get a bigger tank and I came across an ad online from someone selling his complete salt system, the price was so low I was not expecting much, I was going just for the tank I was planning on tossing everything and turning it into a cichlid tank. When I got there to look at the tank I was blown away it was a complete 90g reef tank with …

• Sump he said it was rated at 200g/it was full of orange balls that looked like the blue bio balls but were orange
• Blaster with some kind of light called MH’s plugged into it
• A tank full of live rock
• A 14’’ tower thing that fresh water got pumped into and then it went from there to the sump
• The tank, stand and hood


That is my story, now my questions…

How do I transport/store live rock. The tank’s covered in this red algae and is a real mess and there are scratches on the glass. I have to empty the tank at his house then transport it to my house where the tanks will have to be scrubbed and then I will buff out the scratches. I will need to transport the rock and I guess I have to keep it alive, can I let it dry out do I have to keep it wet.

The second question is there a good step-by-step guide to setting up a reef tank. I am looking for something that will walk me thru it and explain all the parts of the reef tank system to me like I am a 5 year old.

Has anyone tried the Bullet Proof Reef system form www.garf.org is this a good system?

Thanks
Loftyguy (I live in a Loft )
 
looks like to jumped into somthing you knew nothing about. My suggestion would be to read up on the bobby b4 getting a 90 g tank.
This is a huge step from FW tanks. A ton of money and even more time are needed to support a healthy reef.

what kind of tank were you planning on having?

Live Rock w/ fish only?
Reef? what kind? mixed, sps?
agressive?

the MH stands for Metal halide, if you didnt know that i dont know why you are jumping head first into this.

i would suggest you read, read, and read more before you do anything

i think most people here will agree
 
I do not plan of setting up this tank for a while. But from what I have seen I am getting a lot of stuff for a very very little amount. I was planning on 5 to 8 weeks or research before even putting water in the tank. When I started with the cichlids I spent weeks reading www.cichlid-forum.com before I jumped in and got wet( pun intented).

I have looked at reef tanks and the one I like the most is Australian Reef...
 
Agreed. Altough you may have stumbled across a good deal, it sounds like there will be a lot of prep work in order for you to really get started (emptying the tank, preserving the live rock, moving the tank, buffing out scratches, etc).

If you follow through with this, I'd venture to say that you will have bitten off more than you can chew.

to answer your question though, in order to move the live rock safely you will need to buy buckets (5 gal buckets from home depot work great) or if it's a lot of live rock (90 gal, yea, i'd say it's most likely a lot) get one of those big plastic garbage cans. you will have to fill it with salt water and keep the temp at 78-80 degrees and have a pump going in it to circulate the water around.

good luck with everything, but I think you should read up and then read up some more about this hobby before you dive in :)
 
you mentioned you have LR coming as part of sale. You will need to find a way to park the LR until you are ready to set it up.

Hence its name, the LR will need to be kept alive for that time. This can be done as simple as keeping it in a big bucket with a few assorted items(which you will need anyways for a saltwater tank) for the duration to something drastic, like asking your LFS to hold it for you, at a price. I have done both things in my time.
 
If I let the live rock dry out, can i at a later date bring it back to life? As I said I do not plan on setting anything up for 5 to 8 week, I know I have a ton of reading and reasearch to do. I have been wanted to try a reef tank for a while now and when this deal came I could not say no. Am I crazy or is 200. for everything a awesome deal?
 
If you are saying you can buy the complete 90 for 200.00, do not pass it up considering that a good average price for LR is

As for the rock, you CAN NOT let it dry out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The rock and all of the organisms that make it up will die. This will render it useless and wasteful. LR can't be reconstituted.
 
That scenario happened to me a while back where I bought a full system and I was not going to be able to set it up for a few weeks. I went to my LFS and made a deal with them. I gave them about a 150 lbs of LR which they could in turn sell. The concession was that when the time came, I would be able to get 100 lbs back. this was ok since I didn't have the ability to store the LR. Otherwise, you would need to set up a holding system. It doesn't need to be elaborate, and since the LR will already be cured in the existing system, a holding system could be as simple as a pump or 2 for circulation, a light, a heater, and a basic filter system(power filters would work fine). A skimmer wouldn't be needed since you wouldn't be combatting die off.

Whatever you do, do your best to preserve the rock in anyway, shape, or form.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9817635#post9817635 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by wizzbane15
LR can't be reconstituted.
Click to expand...

I would actually recommend you let the rock dry out and start from scatch. If there is no livestock in the tank and no pressing need to have it ready "right now" than starting from scartch will probably help you to understand the hobby alot more.

And yes, if you let the rock dry out, it's can be used again just fine. The reason live rock is "alive" is due to the bacteria on it. You also get some microlife that shows up with liverock, and this would all die off as well, but can be re-seeded later on with no problems. The bacteria WILL grow back when you are cycling the tank. Dead rock can be "reconstituted", otherwise we wouldn't not have dry rock for sale anywhere and we would all have to purchase live rock for our systems. 1/2 my 55 was stocked with dry dead rock, 2 months later, it's just as live as the rest of my rock and just as colorful. Microlife from my live rock seeded the dry stuff just fine, covered it with bacteria, coralline, feather dusters, sponges, ect. ect. ect.
 
I had a poor choice of words. Of course LR can be reseeded and Reconstituted, but that takes time and if you already have good LR, why let it die, only to start over? When you decide to start a tank, the LR will be the key to keeping a good stable system from the beginning.
 
Reef Keeping is very expensive, make sure you are aware of the cost to keep a healthy system.
I have a 20g tank that has cost me around 1.5-2K for example. Yes twenty gallons.
you already have some things since you are keeping a FW tank...like test kits, net, etc...

oh and get rid of the bio-balls...they are nitrate traps

happy research!
 
Why don't you just setup the tank with the Live Rock (LR) in there? LR is not hard to keep. just turn everything one and change the water every now and then. OR go and buy a rubbermaid for $15 and throw the rock in there with a power head and heater. simple as that. OR yes, you can dry the rocks out and they will become "live" later on down the line.
 
1st off Thanks all of you guys for responding so quick. I have an empty 55 and 29 I will set them up one of them to keep the live rock in while I do my homework. I plan on bringing a very large rubbermaid bin to collect the rock and water from the established tank. If I set this up in one of my empty tanks and just put in a heater and a powerhead is there anything else I have to do to keep the rock alive and kicking?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9817850#post9817850 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by wizzbane15
I had a poor choice of words. Of course LR can be reseeded and Reconstituted, but that takes time and if you already have good LR, why let it die, only to start over? When you decide to start a tank, the LR will be the key to keeping a good stable system from the beginning.
Click to expand...

I'd recommend he starts fromt he begining just do the fact that obviously his knowledge in marine/reef systems is very limited at the moment. If Ihad been given a complete setup, 100% mature and doing well, I'd have a ncie tank setup but wouldn't understand why it's a nice tank setup. Letting him get his hands dirty from step one would go a long way. I guess alot would really depend on the quality of the live rock as to weather or not I would invest the time and effort to keep it live.

but fwiw, wizzbane is right by saying the live rock will be key to keeping a good stable system. Quality, well seeded live rock makes all the difference in the world. And as a bonus, if the rock is porous enough to support plenty of bacteria in anerobic zones, than keeping it alive instead of drying it out will give your tank a naturally occuring nitrate reducer from the start, which otherwise would take some time to develope.
 
Don't jump in to anything! I had a 75 gallon African Cichlid tank before my venture in to saltwater and my first two saltwater tanks were "expensive test tanks". lol.

First off if there are scratches on the glass of that tank any decent light that is made to support corals will show off every scratch.

Next, that live rock will not stay alive for long when you set up and cycle your tank so consider it dead then you will have to start from scratch. It could be used as base rock, but it will take a while to re-establish itself. Therefore it might take over a month to get your tank completly cycled, and longer for the rock to completly re-seed itself.

Those orange bio-balls, toss them in the trash. They are just a nitrate factory for a reef tank.

Good Luck!
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9818035#post9818035 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by loftyguy
If I set this up in one of my empty tanks and just put in a heater and a powerhead is there anything else I have to do to keep the rock alive and kicking?
Click to expand...

lights would help with any corraline algae but not nessecary for the rock or filtering purposes of the rock. Skimmer would help if there was die off occuring, but this could as easily be handled with water changed. And the rock would probably do well with at least some bioload in the tank. Maybe toss a molly in there while it's waiting. Cheap easy fish to care for and if it dies for some reason, you're out a couple bucks instead of a more costly non-aquacultured marine specimen.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

B
Left Tank for a long time, now want to reboot
Replies
8
Views
367
SantaMonica
S
A
New to saltwater
Replies
3
Views
167
Acetaprofen
A
D
How to safely transport 125 gallon aquarium across town?
2 3 4
Replies
67
Views
2K
ddang
D
M
Back to this wonderfull hobbie after 10 years
Replies
4
Views
274
griss
griss
S
Tank is not cycling
2 3
Replies
44
Views
821
wvned
wvned
Back
Top