First setup questions

Hey all,

Aloha and Welcome to the WMAS and utahreefs.com. A famous expert hobbyist may still live in Smithfield. Do you know Tom Miller?

There is an alternative way to set up a reef tank. See the link below if you would like to have a reef tank up and running in 7 days.

Mahalo,
Mark


Edited by Mark Peterson - April 15 2013 at 8:55am

Aloha,

Yes there are a lot more hobbyists there than we know. Two suggestions:
1. Become a WMAS member so you can have access to the membership directory and call or email all the members there in that beautiful valley.
2. Start a new topic in the buy/sell/trade section asking for a bit of live stuff from others tanks. We often share limited amounts of LS and LR for free and sometimes someone is harvesting their Refugium so you can pick up a bucket of Macroalgae for nothing. When hobbyists do water chaqnges, all you have to do is give them a bucket and they will fill it up with LW!

See how nice this hobby is here in the WMAS.

Mahalo,
Mark

Oh and last I knew, Tom worked at that exercise equipment manufacturer there.


Edited by Mark Peterson - April 16 2013 at 7:23am

Aloha Kelley,

I consider it a great advantage to obtain LS and LR from an existing healthy tank. I believe my feelings on that are pretty evident in my 7 day tank set-up procedure linked below.

There is only one pest that should be avoided at all cost. The Majano Anemone is almost impossible to eradicate. Any other pests can be handled with a minimum of trouble. We know how to deal with them. Many of the so-called pests, Bristleworms for example, are actually beneficial parts of the CUC(clean-up crew).

I have never used rock from BRS. Why it must be cured for 4-6 weeks is probably the third item on this list:
1. If it is ordinary LR, recently collected from the ocean then there is a better way to "cure" it than leaving it in the dark for 6 weeks.
2. When you say "dead dry rock" that conjures up images of rock that was recently live but was left to dry and die. This kind of rock can sometimes take many months to recover, requiring some special handling to speed up the process.
3. If it is neither of the above, then most likely the rock is ancient aragonite, mined from the earth and it may have Phosphates that need to be leached out in water, otherwise it will cause a huge algae bloom almost immediately.
4. Utah rock, also called Lake Bonneville Tufa Rock(LBTR) can be used immediately after pressure washing. It's sterile, yet all kinds of marine critters start living in it within days after introduction to the reef aquarium.

Hope this info helps.

Mahalo,
Mark

BRS has good dry rock. It has proven to be good stuff over time. It does leach some phosphate at first (thus the curing time) but the levels are much lower then other mined rocks like Marco etc. You can speed cure the rock using Lanthinum Chloride and changing the water in the curing tub every couple of days. There is lots of information on this available. I'll see if i can find a link.