Stocking Baserock

[bj5z25]

As of this moment I have around 30 lbs of lr in my newly setup 75 gallon tank. I have read all of your responses to my other posts which tell me to buy some baserock at hirock.com, and eventually the 30lbs of lr i have will seed the baserock. My question now is, how quickly do I stick the tank with the baserock? Do I add all of the rock that I want and just wait, or do I slowly add baserock to the tank as the baserock I have already added becomes Live? I was thinking of buying 30lbs of base rock from hirocks.com. Please tell me how I would go about stocking my tank with this rock. When it is all said and done, how long will it take for all 30lbs of base rock to become live? I'm very desperate for answers becase all 3 of my damsels have died in the past 4 days. I really want to begin this hobby right and I will be patient, I just don't want to spend a fortune on lr, if i could be patient and convert baserock to live rock. TIA

 

[aznbob]

I would start by putting all the base rocks in first, at the bottom. Then all the lr can be put on top. The base rocks will become live within a day or so. But the coralline from the live rocks will not cover the base rocks for another few months.

 

[lando]

The sooner you can add the baserock, the better. If you order dry BR from hirocks.com all you will need to do is rinse the rock in SW and add it to the tank. It should not effect your cycle. Your BR should become live fairly quickly, in a biofiltration sense. It will take a lot longer for it to develope coralline algae and such. As long as all of your damsels are dead, go ahead and throw in a cocktail shrimp from the grocery store and start your cycle from there. Starting a tank is an exspensive venture. Down the road you can consider adding some more LR from liverocks.com once your wallet recovers