feeling guilty my critters will die

[LochNess23]

I’m in the process of setting up my first reef tank. I need to build the cabinet and plumb the system. Meanwhile, I purchased 20lbs of live rock and 10lbs of live sand from TBS and currently have them in this 20gal bin:

Ideally, I’d like to cycle with ammonia chloride because I’ll know the exact amount I put in. The problem is that TBS also included a handful of snails and hermit crabs with the package. While it’s still cycling, I’ll be gone for a month overseas. I’m feeling the guilt that the CuC will eventually die while I’m away. They’re not expensive, but these are my first live reef creatures.

I’m thinking about switching from ammonia chloride dosing to pellets in an auto feeder. The one thing I’m worried about is if the autofeed malfunctions and dumps the whole load in, the live rock and critters will basically be poisoned. I can throw in a shrimp but I’ll have no idea how much ammonia that will produce, and how long it will feed the hermits. Also trying to avoid coming home to a house smelling like sewer.

Any alternatives to keeping these critters alive for a month?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

I’m in the process of setting up my first reef tank. I need to build the cabinet and plumb the system. Meanwhile, I purchased 20lbs of live rock and 10lbs of live sand from TBS and currently have them in this 20gal bin:

Ideally, I’d like to cycle with ammonia chloride because I’ll know the exact amount I put in. The problem is that TBS also included a handful of snails and hermit crabs with the package. While it’s still cycling, I’ll be gone for a month overseas. I’m feeling the guilt that the CuC will eventually die while I’m away. They’re not expensive, but these are my first live reef creatures.

I’m thinking about switching from ammonia chloride dosing to pellets in an auto feeder. The one thing I’m worried about is if the autofeed malfunctions and dumps the whole load in, the live rock and critters will basically be poisoned. I can throw in a shrimp but I’ll have no idea how much ammonia that will produce, and how long it will feed the hermits. Also trying to avoid coming home to a house smelling like sewer.

Any alternatives to keeping these critters alive for a month?

Now, I’m not an expert, so take this with a grain of salt, but if you have live rock and live sand, you’re probably already cycled (i.e. your tank should already have the bacteria it needs to complete the nitrogen cycle and convert ammonia to nitrate). If you’re worried about it though, you could always add some bottle bacteria (like Fritz Turbostart 900, Biospira, or Dr. Tim’s One and Only) to the tank just to be safe. People have shown numerous times that you can instant cycle/skip cycle a tank with either live rock, bottle bac, or both (see Brandon429’s threads on cycling for mountains of evidence), so personally I’d add some bottle bac to be safe and call it good.

With regards to keeping the hermits and snails alive, you can either 1) try the auto feeder, 2 ) hire someone to feed them while you’re gone, 3 ) ask your local fish store or a member of your local reef club (if you have one) to watch the creatures/your tank while you’re gone, or 4 ) give the creatures away to your LFS or a local reefer.

That’s about all I’ve got for the moment. Hope it helps, and welcome to Reef2Reef!

 

[Rtaylor]

You’ll have a good jumpstart on cycling with the live rock. It will probably also have pods and other micro fauna that will seed natural food sources in the tank. If you run the lights a few hours a day, you should get plenty of algae growth to feed the cuc. You probably don’t need to add ammonia or do any feeding and most if not all of the critters will survive. Maybe feed some pellets before leaving just for an extra boost to the cycle.

 

[Tired]

As soon as any die-off on that rock is completed, your tank is cycled, and far more mature than it would be from dry-rock cycling. That's years worth of cycling in a far more biodiverse environment than our reefs, after all.