LR - anxious to add more - too soon?

[Nate C]

I purchased 70lbs of uncured Tonga rock from marinedepot.live and put it in my new (unestablished) 90gal tank on Saturday.

I have a fair amount of coraline algae, and several unidentified polyps, but no other visible invert life (no crabs, no shrimp, etc..) I saw nothing moving when I unpacked the rock and loaded it into the tank for the first time. I have stalked my tank at night with a flashlight and haven't caught anyone scurrying about.

Couple of questions:
Is it too soon to expect to see movement? The rock has only been in the tank for 3 days. If patience is the answer then I'll give it a try...

Is it too soon to add additional live rock? My ammonia is at 5, my nitrates and nitrites are still zero. SG is 1.024 and ph was 7.8 until I did a 20 gal water change yesterday then it went up to 8.0.

I was thinking 20lbs of live gulf rock from liverocks.com as the next addition. Perhaps it isn't needed, 70lbs might be enough....

For Lighting I have 3x30w of flourescents. 2 are 10,000k coralife bults, and the third one is a generic aquarium light bulb. Will these be sufficient to encourage the coraline to grow?

Thanks yet again -

Nate C

 

[malkore]

tonga rock...isn't that the stuff that just looks like branches of stone (tree-like)?

if so, I doubt there's really many hiding places for hitch hikers. you might see a few worms, dusters and pods, but I doubt you'd see crabs.

I would order 40lbs of Keys rock from LR.com. it tends to come with plenty of life, even though they'll tell you gulf rock has more. You want at least 1 lb of rock per gallon, up to 2lbs per gallon. 110lbs total in a 90g would put u at a really nice lvl. You could probably eventually keep a mandarin once your pod population was dense enuf (and that makes me reallly jealous)

 

[Nate C]

thx.

Thanks for the reply -

The tonga rock I think you are visualizing is tonga branch rock, mine is 'lumpy' the big pieces are the size of basketballs or volleyballs with several grapefruit-size pieces in there.

I was leaning towards the keys rock, just because it is supposed to be more colorful and that would be nice.

How bout lighting? Do you think 90w is enough? I don't have immed plans for coral, but it would be nice if the coraline was thriving as well as the polyps..

Nate C

 

[quarryshark]

I ordered 180 lbs of lr from another place, liveaquaria.com it was void of critter life as well. Thats the problem with the places that ship from the west coast, too much die off.
I recently ordered 40lbs from liverocks.com, couldn't believe the difference. Critters galore!! Added to my system, no ammonia spike whatsoever. They ship overnight and it makes a big difference.
I say go for it.
I ordered #20 of keys and #20 of gulf. I like each of them for different reason. Great stuff.

 

[malkore]

I'm still too much of a SW noob to know about lighting and coralline algae. from what I've heard tho, you really don't need much light to keep the coraline happy and spreading. as long as your bulb's putting out a full spectrum, I think you're probably fine