live rock advice

[scubasteve247]

i live in florida and love saltwater fish.

i have a eclipse 12 and want to go nano, i had it set up as a sucessful saltwater tank before, i had a blue chromis, hermit crab, three tide snails and a feather duster, i went and got my own live rock from a reef and feel like i already made a mistake, i didnt cure it so i have lots of lil stuff crawling around on it like a small spider crab, i belive its sea hare, or spanish dancer, you know the ones that secret a purple toxin when stressed. plus theres some small white things moving around, some kind of worm(looked like a white earthworm) and thats all that i see right now.

 

does anyone have any advice, should i remove it and cure it, or what.

any advice in particular for a newbie

[uglybuckling]

Howdy,

 

The curing process is basically concerned with allowing the dead stuff on the rock (which usually dies during shipping) to decay in your tank, and then letting denitrifying bacteria get established in your tank to take care of the problems.

 

If you got your rock from a reef (is that legal?), and you kept it underwater most of the time, there should be very little die-off on the rock, so you shouldn't *need* to cure it.

 

If by "cure" you mean "remove bad organisms from the rock" then you'll need to take some pics of your organisms and have people on here ID them....or have somebody local ID them, or ID them yourself. And then remove them if they're bad.

 

In general, the more life the better, so long as it's not going to eat your fish.

 

--B