I am getting impatient

[Meredith]

I keep reading how people are discovering all these cool things on their new lr, and there all these mysterious things swimming around in their tanks. The lr I got was very old and dirty, and I am sure that everything in it died in the move. Its very plain looking. How can I start sprucing things up?

 

[RLG2182]

Where did you get your LR?

 

[Meredith]

I got everything from a guy who had the tank for 10+ years. He got to the point where he couldn't take care of it. Unseen complications in the move of the tank, had the rock sitting in buckets, uncovered, not in water for about 7 hours. I am sure that there is bacteria colonizing in it, which is the important thing, but (and I know this sounds shallow) I want it to look pretty

 

[RLG2182]

I'm sure the rock will spring back to life. Coralline will grow if the CA is right. As for the hitchhikers, they might have died off if the rock was completely dry. Not all LR comes with a ton of "life" - mine was PACKED with color, but the few crabs that came with it didn't make it through the cycling process.

Why not just get some hermits & snails? A lot of what comes on LR is undesirable anyways... like mantis. Maybe it's a blessing that you get to put in stuff that you actually want

 

[Phyl]

Order a couple of show pieces from LR.com. Figure out where you want to put them and exactly how big you want them and what life you'd like to have. Then call them and see what they could do! Good luck. My LR.com rock is beautiful. Clams, feather dusters (one of those has moved to my base rock and another to my sand now), undesireables, etc. Very cool though. You wouldn't need much, just a couple of show pieces. That will seed the rest with color and the clams and such will bring a very cool look to the tank.

 

[clowninround]

I got lr.com rock and it's bueatiful, but we got mantis, pistol shrimp and huge worms that were not good for my corals, had to weed of of them out. I can not understate the amount of life you get on those rocks. we bought something like 60lb's from them towards the 290lbs that I have, with in a few months ALL the rock cool stuff on em. Here's the thing, weeding out the undesirables can be a pain. You can purchase spagetti worms, bristle worms, pods and things of this nature online and they will multiply if all goes well. My husband has a 90g he is going to set up after we buy our house and put the tile down. He is going to get all his rock from Hirocks.com, grab a piece from my tank and put some liquid aragonite in his tank and watch things grow. Shouldn't take long. I feel your pain though, I am not a patient person myself .

 

[Meredith]

Thanks everyone! I like the idea of getting just a few "show" pieces. There seems to be some encrusting algae on small areas of the rock that I have, how can I tell if its alive?

 

[malkore]

dead coralline quickly bleaches out, within a few days, so if its holding color, it's alive.

Liverocks.com is good stuff. the gulf rock has more hitchikers, but the keys rock is prettier. I found that my keyes rock had plenty of neat things: spaghetti worms, mythrax crabs, small dusters, tons of brittle stars...but no real pods to speak of. I also ended up with either a mantis or pistol shrimp. it's been 10 months though, and not problems, so probably a pistol..and he seems to have died at some point.