reefer_al
05/17/2010, 12:00 PM
Hey guys,
Im completely new to the marine side of the hobby. Have been keeping freshwater setups for a while, and finally made the move. To warm myself up, im setting up a 35 gallon FOWLRLS tank. I wanted to use the Berlin method of filteration, so I dont intend to use a mechanical filter. Just a skimmer, LR & LS.
Now I managed to find someone with a mature tank, who was selling exactly the amount of LR & LS I needed. I went to pick up the stuff, and found out that his tank was in a pretty bad state. Was having a decomposed fish floating, a dead starfish rotting and some half dead anemone. Looked like he gave up on his tank, when waiting for a customer to buy all the sellable stuff. There was just a surviving cardinal and some snails that were the surviving inhabitants.
When taking out the LS, pockets of H2S erupted, and the whole room was smelling like a drain. His sand had compacted badly at the lower levels, and was stinking (i powdered these compacted cakes of sand before using them myself). I came and rinsed it well with a saltwater and got most of the stink out. The LR on the other hand had a really nice coat of Coraline algae, some attached red marine algae and some round leaved green plants.
Now im wondering whether my rocks are dead/semidead or live. Same with the sand. I suspect that most of the organisms must have been killed off. I just saw some snails. No Birtleworms, shrimps and little critters at all.
And to top it off, my coraline algae is dissapearing (I still havent got the blue spectrum lights, skimmer. Has just been shipped).
My concerns are, would I have to cycle these rocks and cure them, like the way you do when you get normal LR? (It was out of the water for about an hour max) Also anything else I should do, considering the sand and rock have come from a pretty foul environment. Anyway I can save the coraline algae? The setup is a couple of days old. Twas without light, as I read you dont need to have light for the first few days of cycling. Now Im in a fix, whether these rocks should be cycled or not.
And the tank has wavemakers/power heads that have a total turnover of more than 100X. Im wondering if even thats bad. Its like a small storm in the tank, if the wavemaker heads point in the wrong direction. I have precisely pointed it so as to produce continous currents without disturbing the sand. But some granules from the surface of the sand are still being moved around continuously. And sometimes i get to see small twister like movements of sands, thats pretty entertaining.
Im completely new to the marine side of the hobby. Have been keeping freshwater setups for a while, and finally made the move. To warm myself up, im setting up a 35 gallon FOWLRLS tank. I wanted to use the Berlin method of filteration, so I dont intend to use a mechanical filter. Just a skimmer, LR & LS.
Now I managed to find someone with a mature tank, who was selling exactly the amount of LR & LS I needed. I went to pick up the stuff, and found out that his tank was in a pretty bad state. Was having a decomposed fish floating, a dead starfish rotting and some half dead anemone. Looked like he gave up on his tank, when waiting for a customer to buy all the sellable stuff. There was just a surviving cardinal and some snails that were the surviving inhabitants.
When taking out the LS, pockets of H2S erupted, and the whole room was smelling like a drain. His sand had compacted badly at the lower levels, and was stinking (i powdered these compacted cakes of sand before using them myself). I came and rinsed it well with a saltwater and got most of the stink out. The LR on the other hand had a really nice coat of Coraline algae, some attached red marine algae and some round leaved green plants.
Now im wondering whether my rocks are dead/semidead or live. Same with the sand. I suspect that most of the organisms must have been killed off. I just saw some snails. No Birtleworms, shrimps and little critters at all.
And to top it off, my coraline algae is dissapearing (I still havent got the blue spectrum lights, skimmer. Has just been shipped).
My concerns are, would I have to cycle these rocks and cure them, like the way you do when you get normal LR? (It was out of the water for about an hour max) Also anything else I should do, considering the sand and rock have come from a pretty foul environment. Anyway I can save the coraline algae? The setup is a couple of days old. Twas without light, as I read you dont need to have light for the first few days of cycling. Now Im in a fix, whether these rocks should be cycled or not.
And the tank has wavemakers/power heads that have a total turnover of more than 100X. Im wondering if even thats bad. Its like a small storm in the tank, if the wavemaker heads point in the wrong direction. I have precisely pointed it so as to produce continous currents without disturbing the sand. But some granules from the surface of the sand are still being moved around continuously. And sometimes i get to see small twister like movements of sands, thats pretty entertaining.