Update on my Marshalll Island Rock

[Lilgrasshopper]

My RO/DI wasn't producing enough water and I found myself not having it ready to receive the LR on Saturday so I bought 30 gallons of water from The Reef Shop and headed for the airport. I got it home and unpackaged it. It came in 3 boxes instead of 2. The rocks didn't have much life on it other than a bunch of macroalgae which I scraped off most of it. I was hoping to have some sort of crabs or cool hitchhikers but all of the crabs I saw were dead. Overall, I was disappointed with these rocks. It didn't even have that much coralline algae on it. While I was scraping off the stuff off the rocks and then putting them one by one into the tank, the Euroreef skimmer was actually producing foam. Man, I had some dark looking stuff. Anyways, I'm worried that because I didn't have any biological filters in the first place, my rocks would eventually all die. I used the water from the reef shop directly...I hope that is okay. I would think u get high ammonia from these uncured rocks anyways, with or without a nitrogen cycle. How long do I have to wait until the rocks get back their colors?

[Kyle McClain]

Shipping can be rough on the rock, but most likely their is a lot more life on the rock than you think. Give it a week or two coupled with your skimmer and things will start to pop up on the rock you didn't see before. This of course assuming that your lights are in place ?

[rldavis]

As far as coralline goes, Marshall doesn't seem to be very plentiful :( We've bought it before and it did have some really nice pastel colors, but they soon bleached and died. The only noticeable life we had on the rock were some black and white snails and some BIG fat worms. The worms didn't make it though. Now our Marshall blends in great with the Fiji rock. The coralline from the Fiji seeded the Marshall stuff. Be sure to stay on top of your water changes though, cycling almost 100 pounds in a 75 gallon tank without them will likely kill off anything that survived the trip. If I were you I'd be prepared to do a 25% change daily until you have nitrates. Also lights are important during cycling so I hope you've got them on. :) Good Luck!!

Becky

[Lilgrasshopper]

Thanks for the tip Becky. I thought that you're supposed to turn the lights off for a few days like some websites tell you to do during curing rocks. But it makes more sense with the lights on since the rocks are deprived of lights for some time. I need to make a temporary hood.

[Mickster]

Ouch! 25% daily H2O changes!!! Can you manage that??? :)


Later,

Mickey

[DrkShadow]

LOL.. Get the RO unit running 24/7 dude... I'm going to get a 50g food safe trash can to stock up for my changes. :D If I don't flood the bathroom again.... Don't ask.. lol