Hello all. I am in the middle of a rebuild after the ice storm. It has been a while and I have a few questions that I did not have to deal with when I first set my tank up. So here we go. 1) IS there a sure fire way to tell if my rock/sand is live. I still have what looks like some coraline on the rock but the tank was with out power for close tow weeks. What is the likelyhood that something is still live in it? Nothing survived save one snail. 2) If said rock is still live what is the best way to promote the growth while I rebuild. I have a brute in the garage with salted water that I could load all my rock into if that would be a better situation while I get my tank running.
Hello Im very new at this hobbie, but i would think that there is something still alive. I could see that most would be dead. I would think that the rock will need to go back through the cureing process. Going through this process itself should let you know somthing is alive. If it were me I would set it up get it running and maybe trade a cup or two of sand with someone that has an established tank. this should seed the tank again. I started my new tank with just some live rock rubble. Im not the expert at this but i think living things have a funny way of living through very suprising events. I feel with a little time and some simple reseeding and it would be back to normal. Good luck
get the rock in water that has the proper salinity and temp. after a day or two test for ammonia an dnitrite. you will have some die off but probably not going to have to completely cycle the tank again. if you do not have any ammonia spike in the first couple of days i would feed the tank like a normal feeding. even if there is nothing in there to eat it when it decomposes it will feed the bacteria and keep it going. if there is already traces of ammonia then dont feed teh tank and wait for the cycle to complete.
live rock = live bacteria! Live rock is first and foremost a place for bacteria to break down nitrates, nitrites, and ammonia. You could use little foam blocks to the same effect, and that's what I do in my QT. If you go online you'll read about coraline algae, extra critters, fantastic shapes on live rock, but these are all secondary to its main function as bacteria home. Natural uncured live rock from an active aquarium or from the ocean also comes with a bunch of extra livestock, most of which dies off and causes the ammonia to spike. If you have base rock then there's no ammonia spike since nothing's dying off. If you have "fully cured" live rock be careful--any mishandling and you'll cause another die-off and ammonia spike. A new aquarium wants the ammonia spike. Once you have any critters you like, you have to be really careful upon adding new live rock. The extra critters do provide some additional food and cleanup for the tank, but there are also bad critters that'll show up--aiptasia, nasty snails, etc. Suspect live rock can also come tainted with ich or even copper.
So after about a week of running and topping off and checking parameters I have seen some coraline that is still purple and appears to be growing. Can I assume that the rock i have in there is live again ? (or never died off completely) ?
coraline Oh, if you have coraline algae you've got all the other stuff as well. The algae is a much more advanced lifeform than bacteria.
Re: live rock = live bacteria! Correct me if im wrong but the parasite that causes Ich is always present and it will attack when the immune system of fish is low of fish are stressed? Theres no way to rid a tank of the Ich organism...right?
theres alot of debate over this. ich is a parasite and has to have a host to complete the life cycle. if a tank that has ich goes fishless for 6-8 weeks then the life cycle should be broke and unless it is reintroduced it will not come back. it can live in teh live rock but still has to have a host to survive.
