Ok Part 1 of "The Package" has arrived and been installed.
I picked it up at the freight counter at the airport and my tank went from empty glass box to awesome stuff to look at in a few hours. So cool. I'll never do it another way again. I cannot wait for the rest.
A couple tips/comments:
- I covered my floor with a tarp. Do that... this is messy. I had porcelain crabs running across the floor at one point
- This was a little high on the creepy crawly factor. Embrace that now Wear gloves. I had a long rubber glove on my left hand and a dive glove on my right. Worked out.
- Eat your Wheaties, you'll be lifting 50lb bags of sand up over the tank.
- You get a lot of boxes that say "Live Tropical Fish" I intend to save these... endless fun at parties.
- I dunked each rock in a bucket to try to knock off any hitchhikers and go through them. I pulled out a few dozen small gorilla crabs and some snails that looked sketchy.
- I quickly realized... I'm not going to get all the bad guys out right now. You could literally pick through the sand for days. This is awesome and part of my plan. I'm not putting any fish or corals in here for a while so the hunt will keep me busy.
This live rock is simply amazing stuff. It is really live rock. The boxes were packed so well and rock came out wet and covered with life. NO smell. My last shipment of "live" rock years ago was wrapped in news paper and I almost died when I opened them, flies came out. NOT THIS STUFF... It is fresh...
The rocks are cool... But the SAND! Wow... I dumped it in and hermits and worms took off all over.
These worms flew all around the tank until they found the sand again.
... and here is one of the hermits that went for a walk
