Eric Alvarado

Everything is gone to a new home. Thank you!

Box of test kits, water jugs, filter media, and assorted random stuff. I also have a 5G tank with hob filter you can grab if you want it. Wife is politely asking me to move it out of the middle of the living room. North Central Austin by Parmer and Mopac.

Alan, you're going to become frustrated with your options I've been struggling with the same question for 8 months. You have a ton of options, but the place to start with is telling us what kind of corals and livestock you wish to keep. Basically, we need to understand if you need low, medium or high intensity lighting. From there, there a dozens of options based on the dimensions and depth of your tank. All the different lighting options have different pros and cons, such as electricity use, heat generation, light output, spectrum, price so it is critical you let us know what you are going to want to keep, SPS hard corals, softies, LPS, Clams, etc. You can use any lighting that fits over the tank, and if you are already hosting corals with your current lighting setup, then you should be ok on the 55. Since you are going larger to smaller, that will work out positivity for you. Fish only tanks just need lights, the fish would be fine with any type of inexpensive lighting. Light the tank to your taste. I like the look of the doublebright LED lights for a fish only tank.

The skimmer is a DAS skimmer that goes in that H99 filter. http://stores.petorama.net/Categories.bok?category=Aquarium+Supplies%3APumps%2FFilters%3AFilters

It has been growing like mad. I see it about 1/4" longer each week. How do you transpant it? It just started growing out of that live rock.

Since I have been busy roaming the forum today, thought I would post what these tiny buds turned into.

Is this still available?

Pay Shane to drop by. He would probably do it.

Anyone recogonize this grown on the live rock?

Don't think I can ever really relay how much I appreciate everyone's feedback!

curing the rock in RODI won't work. The bacteria you need is saltwater based, not freshwater. I'd kill the rock by leaving it out in the sun for a couple of weeks, knock off the big dead stuff, then put in your tank aquascaped the way you want, add saltwater, add bacteria in a bottle and let the cycle roll. It should only take a week with the bac in a bottle products. Starting all over i mean in terms of the tank. Dead sand, dead rock. Ah, no new tank. I moved everything over to the 125G a couple weeks ago. SO I am dealing with adding rock to an existing tank. I have 100lbs in there now, thought to add 25-40 lbs of the rocked cleaned to the tank. Sounds like everyone pretty much sticks to only adding live rock to an existing tank, not adding dead rock.

Thanks for the detailed steps on preparing the rock. My biggest challenge with option #2 was the cost and time. Trying to figure out the long term benefit out of using the debris to seed the rock. If I make it go dead, but get it "clean", couldn't I just add it to the tank and it would seed itself over time anyway? I see speed advatnage - and suspect there is a safty net in there as well - as you have already tested and confirmed clean and safe rock before you introduce it to the tank. If the objective is to clean the rock, could I just use RO water to "cure" the rock, what does salt bring to the mix? How risky is it to add "cleaned" rock to the tank without making it live first? Mark, when you say starting all over again, do you mean from the LR point of view or the tank? Everyone likes throwing rocks at TVs. It's a national pasttime.

I have about 100 lbs of dead rock. The rock was pretty foul smelling when I got it, and I just couldn't bring myself to place it in the tank. It might have been normal smelling for 7 year old rocks. Regardless, now I need to decide what to do with it. The options I have read are: 1. Fill my 50 gallon tub with the rock, add a bleach water to the tub, use power head to circulate and knock out debris from the rocks. Dry. 2. Do similar to #1, but use salt water and no bleach. In theory, this would turn it from dead rock to live rock at the same time. 3. People take turns throwing the rocks at Mr. Saltwater's TV. 4. Open to other ideas

hehe, poor peeps. My wife likes it as much as I do. She did the LR arrangement, we discuss the fish, the corals, what to do next. She gave me an open checkbook to make it as nice as I want Got me from a 55G to a 125G in 4 weeks.

So I found another hitchhiker on my live rock. Fairly certain it is a Asterina starfish. How bad are these things for the tank?