Newbie Q- How does my Live Rock Look??

Hi,

I've been cycling my tank for about 6 weeks now, but three weeks ago I added some Live Rock. I went away for a about two weeks and when I came back there it this kinda of sediment stuff sitting on the bottom of the tank.... So I have a few questions:

1. Is my live rock healthy? I read on a website that if it has any black or filmy looking areas then that means its dying, I can't see any black areas, but there seems to be some filmy areas. Do I need to remove them?? See pictures.
2. Is the sediment normal? It's mainly in an area of the tank where there isn't much water movement, so I thought maybe its just not being picked up and sucked through the filter??

Here are pics: The red circles are around the filmy areas I was talking about, on the smaller rock I've put a blue circle around the bits of the rock that I think are normal.... what do you think??

Thanks for all your help so far! I don't know what I'd do if it wasn't for you guys answering my questions!

 

I think your LR looks good. Lotsa life on it.

Filmy/slimy stuff on newly added rock is just some of the life living on it is dying off...(died before you got in your tank)

Perfectly normal.

FYI...adding LR to already cycling tank, extends the cycle period. But you probably already knew that.


Keep us posted.

Good Luck.

 

Looks good to me as well. FYI, all of that white dead coral you have will soon be covered by algae, and then hopefully coralline...As Omard stated, your cycle will be extended as some of the life will die off. You may also experience a mini second cycle because of the die off. Just monitor your parameters and don't add any fish or coral until your parameters are good..

 

Looks good to me.. Hang in there...

 

Dude where did you get your rock from? It looks awesome!

 

yes that is some amazing rock, wheres it from?

also if you turn those dying corals to face the light, they may have a small chance to come back to life.

 

Wow thanks for all the answers!

I had no idea that white corally stuff was dying coral, but I'll take your advice argan and face it towards the light to see if I can get it to come back to life.

That's ok if the live rock prolongs the cycle, I'm doing a pretty good job of being patient before I put fish in, I don't want to kill any! So I'm happy to wait longer. Plus I realised its kinda fun looking at live rock, I noticed this little white flowery thing that spends all of its time open, unless something falls on it, then it closes, I'm assuming thats its way of eating. Anyway I was very excited when I noticed that!

I live in Canberra, Australia, and my boyfriend just picked the live rock up from our only pet shop that deals with marine fish. I don't know if they had different grades of live rock or not, but this one was pretty expensive, it was $15 (AUD) a kilo, I'm hoping we can find some cheaper stuff to fully stock the tank with.

Since I don't have any fish in there can I use lower grade stuff, like base rock or something? (not 100% sure what base rock is exactly) I'm not sure if my pet shop even has any lower grade stuff, but if they do it might be a cheaper option to do with!

 

welcome to the 3reef,
So what made you decide to use a bare bottom instead of sand.

 

that rock was'nt fully cured.you have both live and dead coral on it.if you have reef grade lights alreaddy,you may be able to keep whats still alive growing.otherwise great rock.

 

We don't have the special reef light, thats the blue or actinic light is it?

We just have a plain fluro light, will that do anything to keep the corals alive??

We aren't going to have a bare bottom on the tank, we just haven't gotten around to getting sand yet We plan to have sand eventually... when we get around to it... cause at the moment you can see the foam through the bottom of the tank that it's sitting on... not very interesting.... and all that sediment shows up really well on the bare bottom, so I'm hoping once we have sand in that the sediment won't really show up