Husbandry

TekCat

New member
I have pretty much virgin 90g tank. It has 50lbs of base (dry) rocks, and 70lbs cooked LR, and 80lbs of dry sand. I don't have pods or worms. And I want to build bottom-top proper husbandry. Where should I start?

I think I need to start with:
1) bacteria
2) worms
3) pods
4) ministars
5) snails

Basically, I need to know if what I've described sounds sane, and where can I get diverse micro-fauna?

Any thoughts on the subject?
 
You can get pods from www.reefnutrition.com for one, after cleaning crew goes in and algae starts up. I'd get the ordinary cleaning crew, after cycle, then consider getting some rock that brings in sponge, bristleworms, dusters. Start feeding phyto, for both pods and sponge and dusters. You may be able to get some really-live rock from some other reefer that's re-scaping, and that would be a good start: don't cook it, just put it into a good clear container full of drawn-off water-change stuff and watch what crawls out of it. If nothing scares you off, go ahead and put it and all its passengers in, go on feeding, and bring it up. I was incredibly lucky to get somebody's castoff rock when I started up: I didn't cook it---I just put it in, and almost all my hitchhikers have been good, give or take the asterinas and the caulerpa. The caulerpa is one I'd avoid, but not at the price of losing the diversity on those great rocks. www.garf.org also sells some 'grunge' that's alleged to have a lot of cryptic fauna, but I can't vouch for it one way or the other, and I think you may find other packages at the tyree site.

My own theory of tank management is to have everything run off sunlight as much as possible, in the sense that I have pod-eaters that eat pods that eat algae, or fish that will eat pods at a pinch; I have algae eaters [tailspot blenny] and detritus eaters [worms, ywg, nassarius, conchs], and a couple of fish [wrasse, chromis, firefish] that I didn't choose, but that's another story: they at least contribute biomass to the worms and the worms to the corals. I note that my maze brain seems to favor detritus that gets kicked up near it [feeding tentacles go out] and I also have a crocea clam [mh lighting] and sponges of different types and colors. I want the whole thing to be a pretty good food chain so I can go away 3-4 days and not worry about having to feed. Hmmn, I note my urchin [tripneustes gracillis: caulerpa-eater, algae] has just found the nori clip with stuff I put in for the fish. The rat.
 
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I like the idea of getting all good hitchikers from existing LR, however in my previous experience I was getting too much of the unwanted stuff, like flatworms. That's why I am looking for alternative ways of getting worms/pods/sponges/dusters. I have a few extremely small dusters, planning to visit LFS to get big ones :) But what about pods and worms? Getting commercial products from sites like you've mentioned is one option (and pricey as hell). I was wondering, some places that sell LS must have some critters in it besides just bacteria. Anyone knows them?

Now another question. If I had my way and get all the needed life to build stable bio-system, which order should I stack up (or down) crittes. For instance, should I start from fish->snails->pods->worms, or in reverse order, or no order is needed?
 
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