reef set up

Rock on! Thanks. One more question......I've been looking around at different online stores and they offer CURED and UNCURED rock. And I've seen something that said even CURED rocked has to be re-cured once you get to your house. So what exactly is the procedure? Keep in mine the fact that this will be a new up and running tank with nothing in it.

I've been looking around for sand and I've found stuff of all different sizes. (from like .2mm-2mm) What size is ideal?

uncured rock is shipped more or less from the ocean to you, then you'll have to place it in a tank or other container with powerheads, a skimmer, and heater and let the die off finish and the tank to cycle. the rock will be raw and completely covered in all kinds of things. cured rock is sent from the ocean to the online vender that cures the rock for you then when you order it they box it up and ship it to you. you still have recure it because there will be die off since it'll be out of the water for 24 hrs but there wont be as much die off because the rock isnt completely covered with things straight from the ocean, they took care of that part already. with uncured rock you will likely get more hitchhikers, some pleasent some unpleasent, and your cycle will take longer to complete and will be a lot more smelly. with the cured rock a lot of the hitchhikers are gone from the rock, into the tank at the vendor but you will still get things such as crabs and pods and other stuff. the cured rock is by no means devoid of life, its just been cleaned up some. your cycle will be quicker and smell a little less, still stinks though, because the rock is cleaner than uncured. its pretty much a personal choice on the rock. if you want to take the extra time to cure uncured rock, its cheaper so go for it. if you dont want to take the time with the uncured spend a little more and get the cured, either way it'll take some time, because it has to be cured or recured. as for the procedure, since your tank is new you can cure your rock in there. theres no animals to affect and it will seed your sand bed. just put the rock in, aquaspace as best you can, your water will become cloudy so it'll be hard, then make sure your skimmer is running wide open as you want to skim as much as possible. and keep your salinty, temp and other parameters in check. first you'll see your ammonia levels rise and as they start to fall your nirite levels will rise and as they fall your nitrate levels will begin to rise, when your ammonia and nitrite are zero then your cycle is complete.

if your going for dsb oolitic is the key word, basically sugar sized and smaller. for the 1" bed just to cover the bottom, any size will do.

If I put the rock in the main tank to cure how much water change and frequency are we talking about? Thanks for the awesome info. You guys save me a lot of time and research and I appreciate it immensely!

while the rock is curing no water changes, it'll dilute the ammonia and nitrite making your cycle longer, its a phase the tank has to go through so let it. as soon as your test for zero amm. and nitrite do a 50% water change and then you should do 10-15% water changes a couple of tiems a month, some do them weekly, others biweekly. avoid large changes after the initial 50% because when you change that much water your more likely to have ph swings, temp swings and sg swings because of the new water.

I looked up the southdown sand (yardright) and the company says the sand is not suitable for aquarium systems. What gives? http://www.yardright.com/sand.htm

That's so it can be re-packaged as aquarium sand for a rediculously higher price for LFS's. To the best I know and have read there is no difference, someone reportedly did an analysis of some sort between SD and some other caribean sand, they showed to be the same. Wish I could quote the sourse on that one.

Another way to look at it, take a poll of sandbed users and what sand they are using.

By the time we finish this thread off we'll have a complete "how-to" on setting up a reef, keep the Q's coming!

Well, I gave up trying to find the southdown around here. They all said to check back in the spring/summer so I just bought some Caribsea argomax. It's the sugar sized sand but it cost $25 for 30lbs. I'm gonna need 2 bags for the fuge and 1 for the tank. This hobby really nickels and dimes ya to death! Between this hobby and my R/C helicopters and off-road motorcycling I'm gonna go bankrupt.......

Keeping this 1 million questions to set up a reef tank going, how much and what kind of lighting do I need over my fuge? (it's 20gal)

For the fuge you can use anything, perssonally I prefer the power compact flood lights, another trip to Home Depot will locate them for you, they burn 19w of electric but output is ~ 75w @ 2900K, I run two, one 24x7 the other during the regular photoperiod. If you go that route look for the package that says PAR38, think they are Lights of America (LOA) brand. You can special order them up to 5100K, but the 2900's seem to be doing fantastic for chaeto growth.