converting a FO tank to a reef tank

peiji · 11-18-2001, 08:50 PM

I've got a FO tank and I'd like to slowly covert to a reef tank. I'm contemplating new lights, etc. and know that I have to get lots of live rock in there. It's something I never did with my FO. Anyway, is it possible to add my live rock now? I've heard of ammonia spikes. Is that always the case even with cured live rock? Is it possible to buy cured live rock? I've got a 45 g tank that I've had for about 18 months or so. Right now I've got two starfish a couple damsels, a clownfish, and a bicolor psuedochromis. Also what kind of wattage do I need to keep live rock healthy and a few simple, common corals. I've read about MH but is there something I can get without having something hanging from the ceiling and still making the tank look good? Most of the tanks I've seen have horrible-looking light contraptions.

tdwyatt · 11-18-2001, 09:15 PM

get a rubbermaid trashcan on wheeles (the roughneck ones) and put the LR in it with a skimmer and a heater and a PH, run it for a few weeks and test for ammonia and nitrate. then the nitrate begins to drop off and the ammonia has been zero for a while, the rock is ready to go into the tank. Then you can use the trashcan to make up your water changes 24 hours in advance...

peiji · 11-18-2001, 09:20 PM

what about lighting? Doesn't live rock need good lighting to keep the critters alive?

Doug1 · 11-18-2001, 09:27 PM

whats the dimensions of your 45g tank, what light do you have now?

tdwyatt · 11-19-2001, 01:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by peiji
what about lighting? Doesn't live rock need good lighting to keep the critters alive?

Not necessarily, only if you have good coralline coverage or zooanthids or the like on the rock, then you may have a problem getting a tub large enough to give all the rock exposure to the lighting. For the most part, if you have obvious coralline or if you can see polyps or encrusting autotrophs, then light them, otherwise, most of the stuff we want to keep is non-photosynthetic, or will survive the darkness for a few weeks. If you have some really sweet pieces with obvious life on them, put them on the top of your rock and light it, otherwise, everything from the top layer down will not get light anyway, so you decide what you want to keep and light it from the top.

peiji · 11-19-2001, 11:26 AM

The only lighting I've got right now is the flourescent lights that came with it. I've posted another thread asking about lighting because I'm considering a powercompact smartlight 96w. My tank is a 45g bowfront, 36" wide, I'm not sure how high. If I had to guess I would say it's about 24-30 in high.

Also, the only reason I've put off buying the live rock was because I was told that all the reasons you needed live rock maintain good water quality depended on good lighting. I'm a bit confused about the whole LR thing now. Could someone pretend that I'm stupid and fill me in.

tdwyatt · 11-23-2001, 09:03 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by peiji
...the only reason I've put off buying the live rock was because I was told that all the reasons you needed live rock maintain good water quality depended on good lighting. I'm a bit confused about the whole LR thing now. Could someone... ...fill me in?

Sorry to take so long to answer, I was in Pittsburgh for (part of) the holiday. Keep in mind that there are never any stupid questions here... The deal with lighting live rock is to maintain any autotrophic (photosynthesizing) life that might be on the rocks, such as zooanthids, shrooms, octocorals (softie creatures like Sarcophyton or Nepthea) and the coralline algae that usually come on really good live rock. The biological filtration performed by live rock is a funchtion of the heterotrophic life (non-photosynthesizing) that we push to cultivate. These are most often bacterial, although at higher levels will include the benthic infauna and miscellaneous other life forms (i.e., Foraminifera, the sponges, etc.) that help the sand bed process carbon as well as the bacterial cycle associated with nitrogen cycles. For many years, it was recommended that in order to process the live rock, you must keep it in the dark upon delivery for 3 to 6 weeks to allow curing. This was to keep a number of problematic creatures from appearing in your tank (yeah, you think this will REALLY stop Aiptasia???) as well as preventing some of the blooms of nuisance algae. This period of time also allowed for any die-off of sponges and other creatures that didn't survive the shipping process to be consumed by the bacteria in the rock and fully "cure" the rock, or make it ready for use in the tank as a biological filtration medium. This does not require light, and many aquarists keep LR in their sumps (I do) to give a greater capacity for denitrification should the need arise, as well as a home for creatures that might not make it in the regular tank due to predation (isopods, copepods, bristleworms, shrimps, etc.). If you decide to later on, you can light the sump as well and use it as a medium for growth of macroalgae to aid in the export of nitrogen from the tank. If you want to read more about this, Bob Fenner's book as well as John Tullock's books deal with this subject in detail.

Hope this helps...