Seeding live rock?????? please help

[philsmein]

I have about 10 pounds of dead live rock that has been sitting in a plastic bag for about a year now. Was wondering what the best way would be to make it alive. I have a Eclipse 6 tank with water in it and about a week into the process. But I was told that you MUST wait until the tank is cycled before you can add live rock. Is the dead stuff going to have a bad effect on the chemistry of my tank??? What should I do??? What is the process, should I keep lights on during the seeding process?? How long should it take? Thanks for any input!!!!

Thanks,

PHIL

[Pinecone_Jeff]

It's been a year out of water, so there's almost nothing on it that could possibly be living. I'd just go ahead and place the rocks in your tank. If you can get some live sand, that'd go a long way to seeding your rock. Live rock that's placed in totally new tank water will almost always have some die off. That's why your LFS didnt' recommend putting in lots of LR all at once in a brand new tank. But there're sevearl other ways of speeding up the seeding process.

You could add a piece of table shrimp and let that rot in your tank for a while. That'll get the anaerobic bacteria going and you'll be well on your way to cycling your tank. It may take well over a month or two for your rock to be seeded and growing with bacteria (and maybe longer for a fully reliable filtering rock). With some light later on, you'll start seeing coralline algae growing on your rock within about 4-6 months (maybe even sooner).

[mswt5]

You need to start doing some reading. Do some searches on cycling.

There was no reason to wait on putting your live rock in the tank. Im not sure how many lbs of rock you will need for that tank, but I would prolly use half base(what you have) and half live from the LFS. When you put the rock and sand in there the tank is going to go through a big cycle. I dont know why you were told not to put the rock in there.....thats kinda odd. Water by itself isnt going to do anything. You have to have stuff dying for it to cycle. And you have to have something for the bacteria that cycle it to live on(live rock). Putting a bunch of live rock in your tank isnt going to hurt anything as long as there arent any fish or anything in the tank. If you put rock in there a little at a time its going to be a long time before the tank completely cycles. So get your rock in there. And I wouldnt recommend putting a piece of shrimp in there unless its really small. Just feed the tank as if there was a fish in there. That will work just fine. Post any questions you might have in the new to the hobby forum. They will help you out.

[Agu]

Uhhh Phil, Didn't you just ask this question yesterday ? http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=156104


Agu