live rock

[townsdp]

I ordered 40lbs of "fully cured" live rock from ***************.com last monday. They said 2 day air would be fine. It arrived on wednesday and I put into my cured 75 gallon tank. It had alot of growth(sponge?) on it. From that night until this morning my ammonia has been at 1.0 and has not budged. 0 on nitrates and 0 on nitrites. I have a protein skimmer, hang-on filter, and 2 maxi-jet 1200 going. This afternoon I took the rock out, scrubbed it with a brush in clean water, cleaned the sand by running it through a net and did a 25% water change. Tonight ammonia still is at 1.0. Can anyone tell me how long it will last, how to quicken it, etc. (suggest anything)?

 

[stapler]

It all depends...might be a day or so...could be over a week. Then you might have a nitrite reading after amonia goes down.
Do you have any livestock in your tank? It might be cured rock, but there might be a little dieoff after the rock has been packaged off and in the dark for a few days. Thats why ammonia rose a bit.
I think you should give it time...and it will go down.

 

[townsdp]

thanks for the reply. my main question I should have asked is, will it eventually balance itself out or do I have to do continuous water changes? The tank was cycled and I was going to add my 80lbs of lr to the 40 lbs I ordered and move my fish from my 29g to the 75g but now I have to wait. Just being impatient, and I know that's a good way to lose fish.

 

[lestregus]

the numbers will balance if left alone. in my opinion it will actually take longer if you do water changes. after your ammonia and nitrite levels come back to 0 then do a water change. as mentioned it could take a week or more depending on how much die off was on the rock. anywayz, good luck!

 

[obtusewit]

Your tank will settle down pretty quickly. This is a common occurance for shipped LR, the ammonia was in/on the rock when it got there. If your system was cycled before the addition, it will work on the ammonia and subsequent nitrite levels in fairly short order. I don't recommend doing water changes either, they will do little to drop the levels. If you change 10% of your water, this will only serve to reduce your ammonia from 1.0 to 0.90. Doing a 10% water change would therefore have a negligible effect.
Someting else to consider. Most hobbyist test kits are not made to be accurate at the 1 mg/l level. That is at the high end of their range. You can dilute the sample by 1/2 or 1/4 and multiply the results by 2 or 4 respectively, which is more in keeping with their range of accuracy, generally 0-0.8 mg/l. Since most test kits use a 2 ml sample which is approx 20 drops per ml a difference of sample size of 2 drops would yield an error rate of approximately 5%. So your 1.0 ml/l measured level could be from 0.95 to 1.05 mg/l.
Personally, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it, just 'let it rock' and the bacteria know what to do.

 

[townsdp]

thank you for everybody's reponses. This morning, there was a snail on the glass and all the little white critters on the glass so I tested it and the ammonia is at 0.2, nitrate 0, nitrite 20 I think. I'll put the rest of my old live rock in tomorrow. thanks again.