Dead Live Rock

[rmorgan]

As I may have mentioned in another of my recent posts, I had a catastrophe. An ice storm a few years ago wiped out all the electric in my town, for most people they were without electric for atleast 2 weeks. Needless to say the people with tanks pretty much lost everything, I lost everything.

After we got electric back, and I replaced everything in the refrigerator. I made it back to the tank and had no interest anymore after I realized what I had lost monetarilly and time and effort. It just sucked everything out of me, the tank was perfect, and nothing I could do to help save the little critters. I drained it, and just sat it in the corner.

I am getting it going again.....finally, I am up for it again now. I am going after a different livestock setup this time. Smaller fish, more rock, and some corals. But before I lost everything I had about 20 pounds of LR in a 55. I just bought 40 pounds of LR and going to get more when the lfs gets another good supply in. I have the old dead LR in the tank also, approxiamately how long will it take for the dead rock to become live again with fresh new LR 'feeding' it?

I have computer background and all of my servers have a battery backup, I will now put a fairly good sized battery to run the filter and heater for a reasonable time frame. It may not make 2 weeks but any would help. I am going to try and eliminate as many problems as possible this time. A battery may not have saved them but it may have kept them alive longer with the hope the electric company would get the power back on.

[melosu58]

After reading your story my no.1 purchase with my tax money is going to be a generator. I`ve already seen one and just waiting to get it. I said I was going to get one after hurricane Isabel came through here. But just forgot I guess. But I wont this time as I`ve already planned on it come Feb. or March.
Just add that rock to your tank with the LR you get and it will become all LR during the cycle. You will be OK. I really appreciate your ability to get up and try again. If we all stayed down after a hard hit and didnt get up then we would not be much. It`s one thing to get knocked down and another to get knocked out. We will help you,just ask.

[roka64]

Sorry for your losses! I believe a heater will suck the juice out of a UPS rather quickly (if anything, use the UPS for phs). How about a generator?
I would shoot for 1.5-2 Lbs of rock per gallon, for great biofiltration. I am using 150 Lbs of base rock, mixed with about 50-70 Lbs of LR.
Remember, we call "live rock" live because it contains the nitrifying bacteria, the critters are a bonus. It should take about 2-3 weeks for the new, cured LR to seed the dead rock, depending on water movement, how much LR vs. dead rock and how old/new the substrate is.

[rmorgan]

I understand that about the ups. I have had a my heater hooked up to a little 300 ups and when the heater kicked on, the alarm on the ups would go off. I am now thinking a 2200 ups, which is a spare at work and not being used . However, I think what killed the fish was the temp, not the filtration. When I came back to the house once the electric was restored, the thermomitor was reading 47 degrees. I think that was the what took them out.

[melosu58]

I`m sure that had a big part aeration had a part also. Surface aggitation has a good deal to due with the oxygen content in your tank. These two components temp and aeration did your tank in.

[t3hRobG]

In my experience, a generator is going to get you much much further than a battery backup. Computers have fairly low draw. Electric motors and heating elements are basically the 2 most consuming items you can hookup to a battery backup and these are essentially what a sw tank needs. You won't get more than a few hours out of any battery backup that can be purchased from a store for a couple hundred dollars. For that you could have a nice quiet generator that would give you as much power as you can feed it fuel. I would definitely recommend pursuing this if possible.

[rmorgan]

An APC SmartUps 3000 should give me a few days.

[t3hRobG]

You might try running the numbers through here:

http://www.apcc.com/resource/include...ist=SU3000NET;

75watts has a life time of 6 hours and 53 minutes. You might try getting a cheap meter and see what your tank averages with circulation and heater usage.