907defelipes
Community Member
Greetings All! I am jumping back in the hobby after being away for about a decade or so. Previously at the max I had 5 tanks which were a 150 gallon mixed reef, 50 gallon sps, 55 gallon softy and lps, a 90 gallon fowlr and a 60 gallon freshwater. My most recent foray was in a 29 gallon high tech planted tank that did very well until I decided to up and move from Oregon to Alaska, where I currently live.
I just recently got the bug again and decided it is time to start a new tank and get back into the hobby. The tank is a 75 Gallon standard which I have drilled and using an eshoppes external overflow. The sump is a 40B with a skimmer and a reefmat 500 (which is new to the hobby I guess)
I do have some questions. I decided to go with dry rock which is Caribsea Life Rock which apparently gets good reviews and I went with Arag-Alive for the substrate. I have dosed with Ammonia from Fritz and am using Microbacter XLM. The ammonia was added on Saturday and I did microbacter Saturday and Sunday. As of last night I could already detect nitrates which is awesome. (there were non prior to adding the ammonia) The ammonia was still at 2 PPM.
Here are those questions:
1. Normally I would add CUC almost immediately if I were using live rock to start but since I do not want to introduce anything unwanted, this time around, when should I start adding. Right now, there is no food for them.
2. What is the best way to introduce pods to the tank and get it colonized. This was never even a question when using live rock.
3. Using pure live rock, the cycle always went very fast for me. Like, I never really cycled because I always used rock directly from the store where I worked to start my tanks. Once my ammonia and nitrite hit zero, I should be ready to go but do I need to rush to add life to the tank or can it wait? With the bacteria die if I don't keep an ammonia source in the tank? Would dosing vinigar keep the bacteria alive until I get livestock int he tank?
Sorry, these sound like very noob questions but it seems like starting with dry rock is a night and day difference.
I just recently got the bug again and decided it is time to start a new tank and get back into the hobby. The tank is a 75 Gallon standard which I have drilled and using an eshoppes external overflow. The sump is a 40B with a skimmer and a reefmat 500 (which is new to the hobby I guess)
I do have some questions. I decided to go with dry rock which is Caribsea Life Rock which apparently gets good reviews and I went with Arag-Alive for the substrate. I have dosed with Ammonia from Fritz and am using Microbacter XLM. The ammonia was added on Saturday and I did microbacter Saturday and Sunday. As of last night I could already detect nitrates which is awesome. (there were non prior to adding the ammonia) The ammonia was still at 2 PPM.
Here are those questions:
1. Normally I would add CUC almost immediately if I were using live rock to start but since I do not want to introduce anything unwanted, this time around, when should I start adding. Right now, there is no food for them.
2. What is the best way to introduce pods to the tank and get it colonized. This was never even a question when using live rock.
3. Using pure live rock, the cycle always went very fast for me. Like, I never really cycled because I always used rock directly from the store where I worked to start my tanks. Once my ammonia and nitrite hit zero, I should be ready to go but do I need to rush to add life to the tank or can it wait? With the bacteria die if I don't keep an ammonia source in the tank? Would dosing vinigar keep the bacteria alive until I get livestock int he tank?
Sorry, these sound like very noob questions but it seems like starting with dry rock is a night and day difference.
