Satchmo Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 Nice! Looks sharp man. That baby's gonna look sweet in that corner. Perfect compliment to the mammoth flat screen tv set. Link to comment
jojopus Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 Lookin good Crak. Thatl be a doozy once shes all filled up. peace. Link to comment
Crakeur Posted June 3, 2003 Author Share Posted June 3, 2003 the rock will be there tomorrow, which means I will make a huge mess right after the cleaning lady leaves. to add to the trouble, my sister is dropping her son off tomorrow so I can watch him while she attends some celebrity filled event (she didn't bother getting me and the wife tickets because then she would have had to pay for a sitter) and I am going to be exhausted and filthy by the end of the night. I might have to leave work a bit early to try and get the rock in before he comes over, otherwise my wife will be stuck dealing with two kids while I arrange and rearrange the rock. Link to comment
SeaMountain Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 d00d I'm jealous. Seeing your new tank and knowing you'll be playing with your LR soon is making me itch to get my mitts into my tank again! And I've left teh aquascaping alone for almost a month now too! How old is this kid you'll be watching? Maybe he can run beers for you! Link to comment
Crakeur Posted June 3, 2003 Author Share Posted June 3, 2003 Sea, if he was old enough to run beers, he wouldn't need a sitter. Link to comment
SeaMountain Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 Originally posted by Crakeur Sea, if he was old enough to run beers, he wouldn't need a sitter. This is starting to smell like a hijacking so don't go Akoostick on me but... You folks with nannies and house cleaners! : Old enough to run beers? My kids did that when they were two. Needing a babysitter? Well you got me. According to my ex I needed a sitter when I was still married! Being single and kid free? Priceless. Now teach that young'un how to run booze! Link to comment
kennerd Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 Originally posted by Crakeur Sea, if he was old enough to run beers, he wouldn't need a sitter. Not neccesarily true....I may have been better of with a sitter up til about a year ago. Just keep an eye on the tank when you walk away from it.....nothing worse than monkey-see, monkey-do trying to help out Uncle Crakeur (no relation to that chitty band, either) Link to comment
Crakeur Posted June 3, 2003 Author Share Posted June 3, 2003 I think of beer run and I assume going to the store to purchase beer. Unlike Monkey Mountain Man, I don't need to keep 20 cases on hand to avoid the 12 hour drive to the nearest store to pick up beer. Link to comment
kennerd Posted June 3, 2003 Share Posted June 3, 2003 Nah: he stockpiled plenty for y2k in his bomb shelter. Link to comment
Crakeur Posted June 3, 2003 Author Share Posted June 3, 2003 has anyone told him it's ok to come out of the shelter? poor guy must think it's a wasted landscape out there being patrolled by vigilante mailmen. Link to comment
Crakeur Posted June 5, 2003 Author Share Posted June 5, 2003 rock arrived today. what a mess. First off, I ordered a 36 pound of lalo from fostersmith. Two boxes arrive and I drain some water and open the first box. Nothing special in the box. No visible creepy crawlies and the rock is filty with detritus. I rinse it as best I can given the confined space and start plunking it in. THe sandstorm gets worse with each rock. The rocks are mid-sized, nothing too big and they will be easy to work with once the storm dies down. Then I get to the bottom of the first box. One giant rock. This thing is massive. So, I dig into the tank and start moving rocks to make room for the one that clearly must go on the bottom. Finish the first box and in box two is almost the exact same layout. So, I put all the smaller pieces in and there was no room for the momma rock in the second box. Unfortunate too because that one had squirts and other visible life all over it. The coloration of the rock is decent. Some red, yellow and bit of purple corralline. Nothing to write home about. My sister drops off her son and I go to the bedroom to pop a video on that will keep him entertained. I go back to the tank and the smell hits me. The tank stinks like rotting corpses. It gets worse (as is expected but not this fast) as the night progresses. So, I set a fan up to blow as much stink out the window as possible. I still can't see in the tank but I know I will be doing heavy scaping once the storm dies down and I will have a hell of a time moving things around and making the little caves, nooks, crannies and most important the shelves and overhangs that will be the home to my many corals. I'm sure I'll be taking a few pieces out of the tank and giving them to Kennerd and Satchmo when the time comes as I will want to make room for some porites/x-mas rock (love that tank in the member's section). Anyway, I'm off to sit and breath in the stench of a cycling tank. I pray the lobster and my inverts manage to survive but I highly doubt it. In the future, I strongly suggest ordering live rock from a place where you can talk to someone about the pieces you want. Pay a little extra and get stuff that is better suited for your tank. Link to comment
kennerd Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 Ouch: sorry to hear about this cycling crap....Hope it clears out! Link to comment
caja Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 Originally posted by Crakeur In the future, I strongly suggest ordering live rock from a place where you can talk to someone about the pieces you want. Pay a little extra and get stuff that is better suited for your tank. Better yet, find a place where you can actually handpick your own live rock. Nothing better than sniffing a vat of LR or digging to the bottom only to churn up that smell that Crak is describing. Ugh! Link to comment
tow-up Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 great tank crack ^^. reminds me of mine =p. truly a nice tank. btw a 175 watt mh looks great over that tank. Link to comment
Crakeur Posted June 5, 2003 Author Share Posted June 5, 2003 tow, I'm putting a dual 150 with one 55 watt powercompact actinic over the tank. It should arrive some time next week. I put a fan near the tank, blowing the stench out the window and when I woke up this morning and went into the living room I found the smell had gotten worse. Hopefully it will start to dissipate soon as my wife is going to kill me. The tank did start to clear a bit and I can see some nice caves in the bottom of the rock pile so I might not need to rescape too much. I will need to make sure that I have plenty of spots for coral placement but hopefully that won't require too much stirring up of the tank. On the plus side, I have seen a ton of movement of worms into the southdown so the seeding has begun. Link to comment
palaegic Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 Did you buy uncured rock crak? No chance you can blame the smell on the nano-crakeur's diaper genie? Hope things break in quickly for you. Link to comment
Crakeur Posted June 5, 2003 Author Share Posted June 5, 2003 yeah, I bought uncured rock. I was prepared for the smell (not as fast as it set in but prepared nonetheless). The quantity and shapes were something I knew was a complete crapshoot. I didn't take my own advice of not skimping. I should have stuck with Marty at Aquarium Arts or Yup's place in CT. big mistake on my part. No control over what I got. C'est La Vie. It will clear up and the stench will go away. Once the water settles I will get the skimmer going and possibly run some filter media in the hob until the smell wanes a bit. Link to comment
SeaMountain Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 Originally posted by Crakeur Hopefully it will start to dissipate soon as my wife is going to kill me. Better grab yourself a spoon to defend yourself! I ordered 22lbs of Fiji Select from the same place and I got a HUGE chunk as well. Ditto on the hand picking if you can. I'm going to trade it out with a friend on Errrrr... the other side of the mountain... for some smaller pieces. Still all in all Crak... It sounds like fun at your place! Link to comment
Satchmo Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 When I ordered from F&S I got two humungo pieces too. It worked out for me cause I had the room in that tank. Smash 'em up if you need to. I was the guy who pointed Crak to this rock. I sent him a link saying, "hey, check out this new stuff." He writes back saying, "I just ordered it." Quick-Draw Crakeur. I take no responsibility over your apartment smelling like a morgue in July. At least it sounds like you got a good deal of life in there if critters are plowing through your sandbed already. This is the part that will drive you nuts, cause the skim milk effect doesn't wear off nearly quick enough to accomidate all the aquascaping you'll want to do. Each day I would get to make two or three rearrangements and then would have to wait until the next day to see how it looked. Link to comment
Crakeur Posted June 5, 2003 Author Share Posted June 5, 2003 not placing blame Satch so don't worry. The life I am seeing in the sandbed is coming from my old crushed coral. I tossed the one massive rock as I had absolutely no room for. I have more than I need now and will, hopefully, make it look pretty over the month of cycling. Most important is to get that smell to go away. You didn't warn me that the rock was stinky and filled with death when you got it (it says uncured so I expected some of the smell). I'm sure it will all work out eventually so I'm not too concerned. Link to comment
Satchmo Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 Mine didn't reek, but it was their pre-cured regular Fiji, not this high-falootin' Lalo stuff. Link to comment
Crakeur Posted June 5, 2003 Author Share Posted June 5, 2003 I'll bag some stench and drop it on your doorstep - lit of course. Link to comment
SeaMountain Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 Originally posted by Satchmo I take no responsibility over your apartment smelling like a morgue in July. You don't need to Satch! Craks window most likely looks over an alley facing the back door of 'Crakasan's Vietnamese Cusine'. That dumpster with the vapors rising up is the cause of the smell Crak! On another note... After reading a bunch of the new tank posts - I'm ready to start another one myself! Going CrAzY here ordering corals. BTW... How'd the kid in the home turn out? You didn't toss him with the chunk of rock, did you?! Link to comment
Crakeur Posted June 5, 2003 Author Share Posted June 5, 2003 he was fine. he's a real good kid but he has a strong desire to pick things up and bring them to you. lots of strange things were brought to us during the two hours he was over. I popped teletubbies on, gave him my daughter's blanket (he likes soft fabric - we're a bit concerned) and he sat still for the last hour of his visit. Link to comment
Satchmo Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 Originally posted by Crakeur I'll bag some stench and drop it on your doorstep - lit of course. Thanks. I was beginning to feel slighted. Good point Monkey. Come to think of it, maybe my rock did stink. Living in Jersey, you quickly become olfactory tolerant. It takes quite a stink for it to even register as being foul. Link to comment
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