Live Rock, Lighting, etc.

[ihayat]

Hello everyone! I've finally gotten my 90g aquarium (with 20g sump) cycling now. The plumbing of the sump took a while! But at least now I know a lot more about PVC and creating fittings than I ever wanted to know.

Alright, now I have about 40lbs of live rock in there at the bottom and about 2 inches of aragonite sand (Mainly fine grained). It's been about 4 or 5 days now of running like this with the LR. A couple of days ago the Ammonia levels were just getting going. (Will try to check tonight)

Ok... some questions:

Q. Apparently I need about 60 more pounds of live rock. Any sources of cheap LR in the Edmonton area?

Q. Anyone familiar with cultured LR? It's supposed to be cheaper. Should I put in about 40lbs of this?

Q. Should I now add all the rest of the LR together, or should I do it in small increments? Should I wait until the aquarium has fully cycled?

Q. Aquascaping! How can I get LR going up vertically on one of the walls of the aquarium?

Q. Lighting! My aquarium comes with a (very nice!) wooden canopy with a wooden flip-up kind of a top. (So the lighting would need to fit inside the canopy and can not be suspended from the ceiling) Once the tank's getting close to fully-cycled I am hoping to buy the lighting. Any suggestions? From what I've read it sounds smarter to only have power-compacts or VHO flourescents, for energy efficiency but I don't know if there would be enough light this way. Any suggestions?

Here are some photographs:

http://www.canreef.com/photopost/showgalle...500&ppuser=1497

Thanks in advance!

Edited January 11, 2005 by ihayat

[albert_dao]

1. No clue, sorry.

2. Cultured rock is either one of two things; a. it's pieces of dead substrate (tufa or another calcium carbonate-based rock, or an aragonite/concrete composite rock) that you mature by maintaining it with your live rock, or b. similar substrates/ and rubble that collecting companies throw into reef areas to mature.

3. Your best bet is to get all the rock at once. Get it out of the way now so that you won't have to deal with curing, placement, critters, maturing, etc, later on.

4. Aquascaping all depends on the amount and shape of your rock. I'd take a look at nice reeftanks and note the technique. Here's a tip, you never want two flat sides of rocks to be touching one another. You lose visual surface area and the possiblity of creating caves whenever you do this.

5. Well, first off, I'd get all the rock and cycle the tank without lights for about two weeks. With regards to choicing your lights, it all depends on what you want to keep. Do you want a full blown SPS reef or keep the the easier to maintain softies and LPS?

Albert

[SaltWater_Freak]

1. No clue but the best bet is canreef.com and look in the buy/sell part.

2. Cultured LR is always cheaper. But if it is cured you can add it all at once without a problem.

3. I would get 2/3rd of your LR up and going then you can add it in small icrements AS LONG AS IT IS CURED IT HAS TO BE CURED otherwise you will get mini amonia spikes and that isnt good for fish, pods, inverts and corals.

4. Verticle isnt always good it is hard to get corals to attatch to a verticle wall but you can use marine epoxy.

5. As for lighting it all depends on what u put in the tank. If you do SPS coral you are going to need dual 25 watt Halides and that top isnt big enough. if you do LPS you are going to need 175 watt of Halides or place your LPS corals nearer to the top. Softies you can use PC MH VHO or T-5. Log into nano-reef.com there is tons of articles on lighting. In a closed hood like that I would use PC's or T-5's becasue of the low heat also put some fans on there. 2 pushing air in and 2 pushing air out.