Need Some Advice

[PRW1988]

Hey, so it's been quiet sometime since I've really been into the hobby. I've kept my tanks and kept them going however over the last 2 years I've made more of a movie towards reptiles that weren't so demanding.

I've now decided to get back into the hobby full swing, seeing as I have the freshwaters still going I want to start up on my saltwater adventure again that I took such a long detour from. So I've got about 25lbs of dead live rock, which I need to culture, the salt mix live sand and all the equipment. But now I need some refreshers on FWLRO tanks, and how to maintain my water quality for the fish and inverts.

Any sites, or just general advice would be greatly appriciated.


Thanks much,

PRW

 

[Donya]

If the rock is bone dry then you will need to soak it for a while in freshwater for a couple of weeks and give it a good scrub. Run some carbon in the water if you don't want to have to deal with some really interesting smells indoors during that step or just do it outdoors if you can. Once the rock isn't shedding layers of muck anymore, you can start re-curing. You can do it in-tank or in a tub again, just get a bit of nice quality LR and use it to seed the old rock. If you do the curing step in a tub, you will need lots of flow and such like it would get in the tank, so many people decide to do it in-tank to avoid getting extra equipment. You will probably be looking at 2-3 months for all that before the tank is really back in the swing of things, although you will probably need to add a few hardy inverts before that to help keep the rock maintained as it is colonized.

There are some good startup resources here but the stickies are a bit of a mess right now (we're working on it! But it will take a bit). For the moment, have a read over some of the journals of similar size to your tank to see what other people have done and what they've been advised along the way.