Puffer Chick's 46 Gallon Bowfront Reef

All that stuff is normal, you havent seen anything yet..........lol

Luna

 

haha i can't wait! lol so long the red stuff doesn't do any harm, i kinda like it, lol gives the tank some color

 

I started a couple of weeks ago and was soo excited to watch the rocks aswell lol. Wait till you see the pods cruising round at night, and the worms that come out!

I do frequent tests just so i can stare at the rocks :-[

 

haha lol i can't wait until i see stuff come up from the rocks.

Also, i noticed it looks like my rock could by dying, i see big blotches of white on a lot of the rock. If this is dead rock, will it come back

 

The rock will have some die off. But, it's still "live" and once the cycle is complete will start coloring up again. That die off will contribute to your cycle; you should go get a YT damsel - he'll help. Some are against cycling using a fish but it works well.

 

i think i'll do a fishless cycle, i still don't even have all of my equipment and it will be a lil while until i can get it, so i think i'll just let the tank run empty

 

I'd put a piece or half a piece of grocery store RAW shrimp in the tank and let that decompose, that will help get the tank cycled similar to how a fish would. Plus, when you add your clean up crew and fish, any leftovers will be eaten.

All the critters that come out are normal, you will probably see mini feather dusters (they'll go away), hydroids (which cling to the glass and everything for a week or two and then go away for good), and other stuff. All of it is part of the cycle of live rock as your tank establishes. I wonder what your reaction is going to be when you see your first bristle worm...my mom freaked out. We had a peanut worm for a while, but ever since our Six Line went into rock king predator mode, we haven't seen any worms since then. Well, I've seen a bristle worm, but it was just my six line killing it .

Now with our tank almost 9 months old, we have pods running around everywhere when it's dark, whether it's dark in the tank or in the fuge. Copepods and amphipods mainly. We still have our mini brittle stars that hitch hiked in, one lives in the chaeto in the fuge (don't know how he got there) and the other lives in our "tank" with the GSP on it.

Cycling a tank can be super cool! Especially wasting away night hours looking around with flashlights We still have our red tinted LED flashlight to watch our serpent and brittle stars, because they're blind to red light.

 

haha i havent seen any animals yet, just red and green stuff growing on the rock and some rock dying, root looking type stuff, a shell stuck onto one of the rocks, and so far that's it. My tank also smells kind of like the ocean right now, i think that's because i don't have a skimmer yet, whenever i get close to the tank i'm able to smell it. And the root type stuff is making a mess of the sand

 

That's also the smell of cycling rock...it can get pretty iffy sometimes. Once you get a skimmer, maybe run some carbon, and get the tank established the smell will go away. Some people like the smell, myself included, but not alot of house guests do

 

You'll see a lot of algae and various creatures, it's all normal. Just keep on monitoring your parameters and you'll be fine. The rock does look nice in there.