Tank setup question

partonks

partonks

Member
I just got on this site yesterday, and all of you were so helpful, I decided to show up again today.
I am setting up a reef tank right now and I have put in my live rock and 10 pounds of live sand. On the recommendation of the seller, I am mixing the live sand with 40 pounds of CaribSea Aragonite (tell me if you think this is too much). I tried to rinse the aragonite as much as possible (with water from the tank) but it still made a big cloudy mess of my tank. Overnight, the cloudiness went away some, but not totally. Is this something I need to wait out, or should I try to use my skimmer to get rid of some of the dust. Also, this saind is covering up some of my rock, will this cause that rock to be "wasted"?
Thanks,
Kevin
 
flydan

flydan

Active Member
Hey,
That does not sound like too much sand.
The dust will settle and I would not run a skimmer while cycling your tanks.
The lr that is covered by sand will die off. I used basic rock on the bottom of my reef and stacked the good lr on top of that. The base rock that is exposed is becoming lr. That way you don't spend $7/lb, or what ever you can get it for, and then bury it. I don't know how much rock you have, but for a 50gal you'll want at least 75lbs. I have about 120lbs now in my 55. The first 50lbs was just tufa/lace rock out of a box and then the lr went on top of that.
HTH,
Dan'l
 
partonks

partonks

Member
I currently have 75lbs of live rock, but some of it has been covered by the sand. I tried to make the rock as cavernous as possible on the bottom so not too much would touch the glass, but I'mnot sure if this was as successful as I'd like it to be. Hopefully I won't kill to much of my bio filter. I didn't get any base rock, all live.
Thanks,
Kevin
 
nanook

nanook

New Member
Kevin, you can use the old stand-by tool, the turkey baster, to clear the rock of any sand.
Tip: buy a new one for a couple of bucks and keep it for future aquaria uses.
cheers...
 
partonks

partonks

Member
It all cleared up OK, it left soem dust on the rock, but no appreciable amount of sand (except on the bottom of course). thanks for all your help, I'm just in the wait stage now, but I'm sure I'm going to have more questions when it comes time to stock, or before!
Thanks,
Kevin
 
blutang

blutang

Member
I totally freaked when I added the argonite, but its no big deal the dust will settle in the period of like 2-3 days and the tank will be back to its clear self :)
 
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