Blog Comments

thanks to all you guys.

Congratulations on the successful surgery and the new livestock. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Can't wait to see pics. I hope the recovery goes well.

hope you feel better. i had surgery a couple of years ago and man. i couldn't move for a month. even the drugs werent enough. i was taking 4 perc's and a beer ever 4 hours.
take it easy, and make sure you keep it clean. i had an infection in the suture and spent 16 hours in the er.
gl
mark

Can't wait to see pics! ;-)

I'm glad your tank is okay. Battery powered air pumps are definitely the way to go if you have nothing else.

I prefer to get the return pump running to keep the circulation up in my system. That way the water isn't stagnant in any zone, including the sump, overflows, and refugium. As the water drains down, it mixes with oxygen. If you can keep your return pump running, that would be ideal.

When I had my 29g, I had an APC 1500 that would keep the Mag 5 return pump running for about 5 or 6 hours. On my 55g, I had another APC 1500 to keep a Tunze Turbelle running in the display tank. That 800gph powerhead would maintain flow in the display for 8 or 9 hours. Once an hour, I'd take water out of the sump and pour it into the display to get some minimal circulation and avoid water temperature shift and stagnation. For my 280g, I have batteries connected to the Vortech pumps, and a generator. If the power is out for an hour, the generator is hooked up until power is restored. That way I can run almost everything.

Money vs. time. You can use lots of dry and a little high quality live, then wait several months for the dry to become live. Or buy all live, and be raring to go as soon as it's cured.

I just bought 60 lbs from www.liverockusa.com, im fortunate to live near them and picked it up, but let me tell you, you get primo rock smothered in coralline ( purple, yellow, pink, and orange ) really cool looking for $5.00 a pound, and some nice hitchhikers to go with it including sponges, feather dusters, anemone's and i got a porcelane crab. Good stuff and its all aqua cultured in the Keys! So no reefs taken from!

i got a bunch off of brs and it was nice shapes, light, and they gave me more than i ordered.
and it's alot cheaper.

I think dry rock is great in fact most of my rock was dry. But, if I were to have a bigger budget, I would have all live rock. Why, because you don't have to wait till the few critter that are in the seeding live rock to multiply are migrate to the dry rock. Cycle time is a lot faster. On live rock you have living things everywhere on them. Feather dusters pop out every where. You have a lot more good critters the are awesome for you aquarium then not good. That's my opinion. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with dry rock, I have it in mine, but if you can afford live you can enjoy the hobby MORE faster. ;-)

I like using dry rock. I've even made it before like GARF does, but you can buy dead reef rock almost anywhere now. You don't have to worry about pest and undesirable life forms and die off. My current reef started out as 40lbs dead rock and 20 pounds live, its been up and running for over 2 years, and once the coralline and critters got going you couldn't tell the difference. And the nice thing about dead rock, is if you get the tank up and full of corals and fish, and you still need a few more pieces, you can drop it in with no worry of having to cure it. And dead rock allows you to build elaborate structures while it is dry. Some folks use minimal live rock to seed the dead rock, but i would use atleast 25% real, but it sounds like you got it covered.

i upgraded from a 55 gallon to 125 gallon tank. when i changed tanks i put about 100 lbs of dry rock from marco rocks in it and then put about 60 lbs of live rock from my old tank and some live rock i bought. as long as you are you are willing to wait for the tank to cycle i think you will be fine and it is much cheaper to buy dry rock. i waited for my tank to finish cycling before i moved all of my fish and coral and i did not have anything die in the transfer and i still have not had anything die and the tanks been up for about 3 months now. its up to you what you want to do but from my experiences i have found that as along as you have patients dry rocks works fine

I would add more live rock. I never use dry or base rock in any of my tanks.

considering how much rock you already currently have, I would just buy some dry rock. You won't have as much filtration so just keep the livestock on the lighter side. As long as you don't add 7 new fish right off the bat I think you should be fine as long as your current tank has been solid as is.

I had the same problem with my 50 long (short 55). I finally pulled out all the rocks, scrubbed them off completely, added a DSB, and about 50 snails. A little bit of the hair algae has come back, but the snails and hermits can keep it in check now. I've also found that keeping my Alk, Ca and Mg all up where they need to be seems to help. If the Alk drops, so does the pH and that seems to favor the aglae.

Perhaps a pic would help. I agree though, it's probably diatoms. If it's reddish then it's probably cyano. If it is detritus or cyano both of those can be easily vacuumed out of the system. Lets take a closer look at your water parameters though. What does your Po4 and No3 look like? What is your water change schedule?

You say it's detritus growing but my definition of that is fish waste and other things that are in the water and would not "grow". It is likely cyano bacteria or diatoms. What color is it?

The reason your nitrates and phosphates read undetectable is because the algae uses it as a food source. A sandbed can only help as it transforms nitrate to nitrogen gas. Unless you periodically disturb it, which you shouldn't.

I had the same thing in my 55. I went from frozen food to pellet and only fed as much as the fish would eat, and that seemed to take care of it over time. I also started doing a lot more water changes.

Something has to be fueling. Post some pics.