Is my LR good?

[ReefStick]

Hey everyone, I'm just getting into the hobby of reef aquaria. I have experience with freshwater only. Like most things in life I have gotten in over my head with this one due to a huge sale at a store near me moving locations. Everything was nearly half off so I figured it was time to try it out.

To the point. I am curious if my LR is carrying anything I may not want to introduce to my tank. I have my LR in a 30gallon tote with a power head running 24/7, no light other than natural during the day. Salinity is right where it should be and tempature is 80 degrees. I have my stand built and am getting ready to run the RODI as it will be a long process (100gpd filter) into a 90 gallon tank. Here are some pictures of the LR, I noticed a small clam as well. Any input is much appreciated and look forward to hearing everyone's opinion and joining the community.

 

[Brew12]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

I'm not good with pest identification and that is definitely on the "alive" side of live rock. Lets get some more eyes in to look at it. #reefsquad

 

[cdness]

Looks like some healthy sponge on that rock. Cool black sponge too.

Was this stuff rock that was farmed or wild reef rock? Only thing I would consider is watching it for bad crabs and worms, but it looks really nice!

 

[ReefStick]

I am assuming that it was farmed as it was purchased from a large chain; Aquarium Adventures, but I could definitely be wrong. I am making a trip later today for my freshwater set up as I upgraded that tank as well due to the sale haha.

Really happy to hear that it is looking healthy, I will google search the bad crabs and worms and try to identify before adding to the aquarium.

Thanks for the welcome and quick responses!

 

[Waters]

You unfortunately will never be able to really tell until it is in the tank. Hitchhikers have a way of hiding inside the smallest openings in rock and will not emerge for days/weeks/months afterwards. It does look pretty porous which is good though.

 

[brandon429]

if that was my live rock I would scrape off all the black sponge material, simply because your new tank isn't likely to keep it alive and the exporting off the rock is pre removal of something likely to dieoff anyway, polluting the good portions of the rock including the bivalve neat hitchhiker. other than that growth, the LR is good to go and fully cycled, it has all the bacteria you could ever want its skip cycle rock but after you remove the dark material, its surgery. rinse off the live rock very well after to export all the bits off the rock you scraped using a stiff brush or even just a kitchen knife tip is how I would do it. scrape, rinse, use.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Yup Yup to all the above...... If its from a tank the only real concern is flat worms IMO. Scrub a little, rinse in tap water(yes I said it) and soak for 10 20 30 min, with maybe a little peroxide. Drop it in the tank. Youll probably only need a week or two before you add snails and clean up crew.
Youll probably lose some beneficial animals, but if your concerned about bad ones its the way to go. Me, Id just drop it in the tank after the above treatment. The hungry cuc will do a lot for you and eat stuff you didnt know you had.

 

[brandon429]

agreed none of that will kill the bac on the live rock, it has just too much. prob 4 football fields worth in the chunks above. keep the clam man!

literally the only bad thing I see is that potential sponge which if its selected for, w just come back anyway. the rest I would put in on purpose, to seed the tank with fanworms and pods and coralline etc, all pictured there.

 

[jsker]

Welcome to R2R and the hobby.

You are good to go, as stated above drop the rock in the tank and watch to see if there are any bad hitchhikers otherwise with time the rock will mature in your system.

 

[ReefStick]

Hey thanks for all the input everyone, much appreciated. Brandon429 definitely keeping the clam! Was hoping he wouldn't be a problem. I'll keep everyone updated on how it goes. I'm currently filling the tank now, long process with the 100gpd RODI filter. Going to add salt once tank is relatively full and let that work in with a power head before adding CaribSea reef sand carefully laying the bags in, cutting open and shaking out slowly as to not disperse throughout the tank. Once that's done I will add rock after manicuring and hopefully all goes well from there.

 

[brandon429]

its an easy recommendation to heavily pre rinse the sand before installing, trick of the decade. Make all of the sand you add this silt free:



That is the sand from my current old pico reef being rinsed and reused, rinsing does not sterilize sand. That's tap I'm using in the vid the final rinse is sw, it's caribsea sand. After the sw rinse, years of rock and coral are set back on the super clean sand.

Having zero cloud is 100% beneficial and there's zero benefit to not pre rinsing sand to make it cloudless.

 

[Bunnee911]

Definitely rinse the sand. Even rinse live sand.

 

[ReefStick]

Thanks guys will be sure to rinse the sand before hand, great demo Brandon you made a point with that. Working on wiring up my stand today and wrapping it as well. Hope to have it filled in the next couple of days. I've been filling five gallon buckets with RODI all day, luckily have quite a few on hand.

 

[ReefStick]

So here is the current situation.

I hard wired the LED cabinet light into the box. Also the SO cord will be tacked up neatly like the power cord to the LED I just plugged it in for a photo. I decided to do a complete service change to my panel so I will be postponing the build as I need to add a couple of outlets to the wall behind the tank and won't be able to just pull a full 90 gallon off the wall in order to do so. As you can see I got the bottom put in and the sump fit just fine. I will be wrapping the frame soon so stay tuned I think you guys are going to like the finished product.

 

[ReefStick]

So I was at a hobbyist run shop today and the guys had quite a few really nice tanks set up, all of which did not contain sand just bare bottom (covered in coralline obviously). I questioned them about it and the guy told me it's easier to just avoid sand and that I should just avoid it as it's not necessary. Thoughts?

 

[ReefStick]

agreed none of that will kill the bac on the live rock, it has just too much. prob 4 football fields worth in the chunks above. keep the clam man!

literally the only bad thing I see is that potential sponge which if its selected for, w just come back anyway. the rest I would put in on purpose, to seed the tank with fanworms and pods and coralline etc, all pictured there.

Found another clam on the same rock, unfortunately he wasn't as lucky as his buddy. It didn't make it.

 

[jimmyzhou]

is those outlet are water prof and gfi?

 

[ReefStick]

is those outlet are water prof and gfi?

Nice, the outlets are fine.

 

[jimmyzhou]

Nice, the outlets are fine.

Just want make sure safety first

 

[ReefStick]

Just want make sure safety first

Any input on sand vs. no sand? A guy told me to just do without it (he has amazing tanks) because a lot of times it just makes the tank cloudy because all the current and current is much more important. The video with the sand makes me believe I shouldn't have to worry about it if I rinse it well before adding to tank.