need advice on buying live rock with green hair algea

[pelochas]

found a classified for quote "approx. 90 pounds of live rock that has been living in a rubbermaid tub It's fully cured and covered with coralline algae, and there are lots of little critters (pods, worms, snails, crabs) in the mix as well - and about 2 quarts macro algae (wire) too. There is also quite a bit of sand as well - about two 5-gallon pails worth I think. It's getting some green hair..."

is the green hair algea easy to remove before i place in my tank? im sure this a good deal for $140

 

[pelochas]

 

[HoopsGuru]

I wouldn't put anything with hair algae into my tank. If the price is right though, I would take the rock and further cure it on my own keeping up excellent water quality until the hair algae went away...then I would add it to my tank.

 

[boardsurfer]

For what it's worth, I got some LR from the LFS and had some hair algae on it. At first it spread rather quickly. After getting a good amount of Turbo Snails and kept up with RO/DI water changes and keeping Phosphates in check- my hair algae was gone within 1-2 months.

HTH...

 

[pelochas]

thanks this helps alot. i have sent a couple of emails to the seller out the live rocks but havent got a reply. i hope this deal is still available. for the amount of rock and extra stuff even if it has hair algea, it a great price at less that 2 dollars a pound. shipping will be free since its only about 45 minute drive.

if i do get the rock, do i just a power head to circulate the water and do water changes until the hair algea clears up?

i have started adding water from my ro/di unit. its slow but getting there. 75 gal plus a sump below will take all day. then goes the salt. how long till i add the rock after the hair algea is gone?

one more question, i believe this has been answered already from a previous post long ago. the tank i have came with some sand, its almost a 5 gallon amount of sand. i remove the same and clean out the tank when i brought it home. its been a few weeks that the sand has been sitting in the 5 gal bucket. i went to look at it and saw it was moist. the top half was a little dry and felt like good beach sand. the bottom hald was moist and smell really bad and rotten like sewage or bad eggs. i probably should not use it but if possible, can i spread out the sand on a large table i have outside and dry it out. is it still usable, i can really use it for my sump.

thanks for all the help. its has been a long start but i prefer better later than sorry now.

 

[HoopsGuru]

Yep, I just do changes on my LR buckets (actually change all rock to a new bucket of fresh aged/aerated sw....shaking the rock in the bucket to remove debris/dead matter). I actually keep a bucket of rock going at all times in my shed and every few months swap out some pieces from my display...it really seems to keep the diversity up in the tank (tons of pods, etc.).

I would not use the sand, but I imagine you could spread it out in the sun and/or rinsing it very well.

 

[pelochas]

i got some pics of the rock im picking up.

 

[pelochas]

one more pic

 

[HoopsGuru]

Heck, forget just the liverock....take the whole system there home and ye got yerself a ghetto tank!

I see some corallines through the water, I would take it and get it all cleaned up.

 

[pelochas]

yep, i saw the nice color there too. going to pick it up on sunday morning.

i saw a tank set up like this but at a LFS. in fact its huge, about 30 foot long about 5 t0 10 feet wide. looks like a pool with live rock all over and fish swimming in it. its about 4 feet from the floor so you see straight down into it. no cover and you practically put your hand into it, but signs posted no touching. fish will bite

 

[pelochas]

man what a day! i pick up the live rock and about 10 gallons of live sand.
man 75 gal tank was almost full with ro/di water. then i started to work!
added the appropiate amount of salt. i dont know if i should have waited a day or so until the salt is completely dissolved but i decided to go ahead and add the sand and rock. so i move the rock out of the container and place them in another bucket. removed all the water and placed all that water in about 6 of the 5 gal buckets
then started shoveling the sand into another bucket and started dumping it to my main tank. i dont know if i screwed that up but the tank is all cloudy and looks like mud water. the smell is great but no too pleasing.
then in went the live rock, since the tank was all cloudy, i could not see what i was doing. so instead i just place them anywhere in the tank and wait till the tank clears, which should be tommorow? i started my maxi jet and also a canister filter to filter out some of the sediment floating around.

i do not have the sump up and running yet and should have done this before i added the rock. with out any test runs i decided to try and see what will happen. i do not know how to get the overflow bx with the two U tubes to start siphoning the water! i tried adding water, flushing water down the tubes, forcing water thru the u tubes, but i cant get the siphoning to work! How do u do this?

while doing this, i had my fluval 404 to pump water into the overflow box that hangs outside the tank to get some flow going to the sump. i had a leak but quickly fixed it, then after the sump started to fill, i turned on the Quite One 4000 pump, its too strong, pulls out more water than the fluval pumps into the sump. so i turned it off and also turn the fluval off. then disaster! the quite one pump was now siphoning water back into the sump, by the time i saw this, my sump overflowed and i had a big big mess , had about 4 gallons of water all over the floor. thats it i cleaned that mess up. im resting now, the tank is still cloudy but a tiny bit better now. cleaned up all the buckets, floors, tank, and everything else inlcuding myself. what a day, help me out with the siphoning trick to get those U tubes flowing. i need to stop by at HD and get some check valves to that pump. thanks for all the hel p!

did some tests on the water
PH = 8.0
NH3/NH4 = 0.5 ~ 0.25
NO2 = 0
NO3 = 0 ~ 5.0

 

[pelochas]

this morning i find my tank all clear. there is very fine "powder like" silt or sand all around. it has covered everything, all the rocks, filters. Do you remove that or just let is sit. i can see some snails all over and the tracks they leave behind on the sand.