What to do!

[ggg111]

Hi all,

 

So I took the plunge and got a 5.5 aga, and just added my live sand and "cured" (who knows if it really is) rock. I went to go open my aquarclear 70 and it is broken. What should I do? Is my rock going to die just sitting in the water with no filter or powerhead? There store has none left... should I just get any old filter (20 gph whisper whatever) for the cycle and then afterwards get my aquaclear 70? Or is it OK with no filter/powerhead and it will still cycle?

 

HELP!

[jeremai]

it needs some movement. just go get the smallest, cheapest powerhead at petco or something.

[vaporlockv2]

+1 to the powerhead. you need some movement in the tank. they have powerheads for like 10 bucks at petco or even at walmart.

[.Newman.]

get that powerhead on there asap. also w/e EMPTY filter you have around that works will do a job of moving the water around your LR.

[ggg111]

UPDATE:

 

The only thing I could find was an aquaclear 30 which I installed and it is running in the tank right now on medium flow (the max flow setting was kicking up my sand). I just found a karolina nano powerhead (420 gph... is this too much???)... should I put that in ALSO or can I just leave the aquaclear 30 in for now and just add the karolina powerhead once I get a fish. My concern about adding it now is just power/noise consumption. Also, do I need to use a heater right now or is room temp OK?

[.Newman.]

you want your heat to be stable at around 75-80F. room temp fluctuates in the summer no?

[ggg111]

yes - I'll get aheater. So now should I add the 420 gph powerhead, not add it, or got buy the 240 gph powerhead, or just wait until I add fish and just use the motion from the aquaclear 30 as enough to for my cycle flow? Thank you.

[.Newman.]

add the 420 and see what happens. it not too much sand gets moved youre good

[drakkor]

My opinion is that you should set it up the way you want it set up long term, even if you don't have fish or coral in there yet. The reason being that if you make changes when you add livestock you're taking the risk that you're making changes that could cause unforseen problems. Better to have all the kinks worked out before hand and just take it one step at a time.

 

That said, you'll want to make sure you're doing your normal water changes, the heat is stable, flow is how you want it, filters on and working, etc. If you're rock is live-rock w/critters on it you'll probably want the lights to do their normal cycle as well, otherwise you'll most likely want to cycle with the lights off to help control algae growth early on.

 

Best of luck