I'm moving and I have some questions

C

coral_reefer_25

New member
Hi all....

I'm soon going to be moving and I have a few questions about keeping my live rock and sand.

I'm going to sell my setup with the exception of the LR and LS, and maybe the MH, but I want to keep the live sand and rock in a tub of some sort in my parents' garage while I setup a new tank in my new house. I could possibly have to store the rock and sand at my parents' house for up to two months.

I'd like to keep as much coraline on the LR as I can, and I just wondered what I needed to do to sustain that. Water quality would be a must....but does it need a light in order to grow like regular algae does? I plan to use a powerhead and a heater inside the tub. Will I need to do anything else?
 
Yes, it needs light, but not nearly the intensity needed for corals. I believe it should be full spectrum light though. You should also plan on a protein skimmer to pull out the inevitable gunk that will be created.
 
to me and from my experience you wouldnt need a skimmer. I had live rock in a bucked for almost 6 months and it stayed alive with barely any water changes and a cheap lowes pc light. you got to think its like running a tank with just live rock so you wont have a huge bio like you would having other livestock.

Luckyfish may be thinking of when you cure uncured live rock which is the only time id say you could use a skimmer but with cured live rock id just do a water change once a month and make sure you have good circulation with a cheap 6500k pc or any pc light that you can hang over the bucket or what ever you store it in. It doesnt take alot of light to keep the caroline growing and actually ive notice caroline likes lower light anyways.
 
another thing i just noticed was you said you were gonna keep it in your parents garage. you will want to make sure to keep an eye on the water temperature to be sure it doesnt get to hot.
 
Do I hear tank upgrade??? :)

Where are the new digs going to be?

Most people I've seen leaving tubs of live rock around have had skimmers in them, but it seems to me that as long as you have some flow and not a lot of die off, there shouldn't be all that much waste produced. Of course, I don't have experience here, so I'll bow out... I mostly just wanted to ask a few questions.
 
Pitbull...that's what I was thinking too. The rock is definitely cured, and there shouldn't be much dieoff. I'll have it wrapped in wet newspaper for about two hours while in route to my parents' house so there shouldn't be that much die off. Their garage is partly under ground, so the temperature is fairly constant.

Yeah Brian, I'm building a house in Spring Hill. I'm hoping that the wall where I want to put a new tank is long enough for a 135g. I really think it is about 7 or 8 feet long, so I should have plenty of room for a 6ft long tank. I'm hoping to plumb through the wall and put the sump and stuff in the garage. I think the foundation may have been poured this week, so I'll have to wait until frame stage to go check it out and see if it will work. This will be a huge change for me. I've never had a tank larger than 30g.
 
The LR should be fine but from what i have read the sand wont. I have no experience moving LS but from what i've read the die off from digging it all out will be very high.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9772926#post9772926 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by KAiNE
The LR should be fine but from what i have read the sand wont. I have no experience moving LS but from what i've read the die off from digging it all out will be very high.
Click to expand...
good point. I didnt even think of the sand. most people throw the sand out and use new sand when they move or change tanks just to be safe.
 
I agree with Kaine. The LS would be the problem. I also agree that you don't need a skimmer for just the live rock. I used regular old fluorescent lights over a tub with some LR on it for several months and the coraline and other life stayed happy. All I did was feed a little bit of flake every once and a while. Keep a heater in there and some circulation and you should be good to go.

The upgrade sounds awesome!
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9773437#post9773437 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by coral_reefer_25
Okay...so ditch the sand....good to know!
Click to expand...

If you wanted to keep the sand, I have in the past rinsed it all really well, then used bleach to kill off stuff, then rinsed and let sit with a bunch of prime. That basically turns it back into clean dead calcium carbonate sand. It's messy and a little time consuming but can save you some $.
 
I recently moved to Knoxville and did the same thing you are doing ditched everything but the rock. I kept it all in a tub with NO fluorescents and a few powerheads and a heater. Never did a water chance just topped off and I kept it in the tub for about 2 1/2 months and didn't lose any of my coralline and even had some shrooms that I must have missed when I cleaned house grow back. Nice thing about it was I just used about half the water from the tub and the rest new water and tank was cycled in no time I only did one water change. tank has been up for about 2 months now and I have had some of my easier corals in it for about two weeks and all is well, Ill probably be moving my SPS back in in a couple of weeks. Just thought I would share since I just did the same thing.
 
We can't prove it to be true, but Brian and I have a strong feeling that when we transfered the sand bed from the 55 into the 90 we created the hair algae problem that we have now, or at least contributed greatly to it. We haven't reused sand in any of the tanks since, and have no hair algae in the other tanks.

Coincidence? I think not.
 
I would get rid of the sand myself. When I replaced the sand in my 110 I went with regular silica sand. I actually thing my tank is a lot less dirty than it was with the stuff from the LFS. The aragonite was a little larger and the detritus eventually worked its way into the sand and I think that was the cause of all my problems for a while. I know everyone recommends against it but I have had no problems so far with silica. I also had my first tank set up with silica and never had any problems with it over several years.
 
I have a clip on light base you can use and just get one of those 6500K light bulbs for the bucket. My fuge grows better coraline than my MH!! I agree, No using sand over. Just a mess and I have heard it can house Po4 and cause alage issues down the road, kinda like "old tank syndrome" from very old live rock. Besides you would only be ditching 1 bag from the 30 so you wouldn't need to replace much. Drfostersmith has flat rate shipping on sand also. I used 85-90% silica sand and have no alage problems at all. Don't even have to mag float much unless I feed frozen which makes a film fast from all the nutrients.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9777129#post9777129 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Angela Short
I have a clip on light base you can use and just get one of those 6500K light bulbs for the bucket. My fuge grows better coraline than my MH!! .
Click to expand...
yea thats exactly what i always experinced and like i stated in my reply i used the 65000 k lowes lights and i have always had better growth with lower lighting for caroline and growing softies under the 6500 k bulbs from lowes. I always used my refugium as a frag tank for my softies to grow along with my macro since i always run skimerless.
 
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