Sniperhank
Giant Clam Addict
Well, after going through college and leaving my freshwater tanks in the care of my parents...aka them killing off 3 beautiful tanks where I somehow had swordfish reproducing in the one... I have picked back up the hobby. I am running a 36 gallon tank for my first run at salt water and am really excited about it. I would have gone bigger but my house has little room and my wood floor was attacked by beetles 10 years ago so don't want my setup to magically end up in the basement. I have it full of water that is doing great with the salinity and live sand on the bottom, roughly an inch deep. I ordered roughly 45 lbs of caribbean live rock that will be arriving sometime next week. I'm sure I'll screw most of it up and have a small ugly rock left over, but that isn't really my concern yet. I'm going as slow as I can so not to kill my investment and am nervous about starting my tank's cycle. For the last 2 days I have read different people say different things about the cycle and curing live rock. Some say do it seperate, some say toss that rock in after cleaning it up some and cure during the cycle. Which should I do? I'm sure that curing in the tank will give me some great dead stuff that'll be a pain to clean up... but isn't that why I'm going to have crabs, starfish, etc. or is that something I would have to clean out myself? I currently have a UV light, biowheel, and a heater in my tank. I know the biowheel will be replaced by my LR, but didn't when I started putting this project together, but will I need one of those canister sump things? This will make changing my water easier won't it? Am I missing anything?