Breeding live rock?

[badpacket]

Hi All,

 

I'm rather new to saltwater, and currently have a 29g s/w with 5" DSB, ~30# l/r, shrimp, fake clowns, bubbletip, and various shrooms and moon polyps.

 

I recently acquired an Eclipse 6 for about $10, and would like to set this up in my office as a small reef tank. I know Eclipses are not the best for such, due to its small size, and poor lighting.

I mainly would like to have:

a clown

small bubbletip

peppermint shrimp

Some Polyps ( would need to retro the lighting somehow, I know)

 

I have about 10# of live rock that I just took out of my 29g. Unfortunately, I had to dump it in a 5g bucket and it had no power head for a couple of days.

 

Would there be any bio left on it?

 

 

Tomorrow, I am planning on setting up the new tank, adding 20# of bagged Argonite sand ( Core-Life), the rock and fresh s/w.

No livestock.

 

I am also going to seed the sand with either some of mine, or some from a very good LFS I know of.

 

I expect to take an Amm reading after setting it up, which should be low, although I did throw some Amm into the bucket previously, and it is now reading off the scale > 8 ppm with Aquarium Pharm. test kit.

 

Any thoughts on whether or not I will have to re-cycle? If so, I have some other small rocks I could temporarily take from my 29g as temp seeders.

 

But, my main question is, has anyone ever tried to force a L/R-DSB to increase its bio load capacity?

 

I was wondering if using straight Amm I could cause it to grow 'stronger' so that it could accept a large bio-load?

 

Or, will the NitrI/NitrA bacteria colonize all available surfaces to a certain density, regardless of amount of free Amm/food available?

 

 

Am I overstocking this 6 with the above livestock levels?

If so, what if I lost the clown, and simply got a pair of anenome crabs?

 

 

thanks

[Rocket_155]

well either way you will have to lose the bubbletip, because it'll out grow that tank fast. I would recomend just having a clown and a pep shrimp. What do you plan to use as your clean up crew?

 

rocket

[chufa]

Yes, I would not keep the anemone either; read the anemone article in this site! How long have you had yours on your 29 G?

 

You could retrofit some lights (I think Chris sells them in this site), and keep some LPS corals; which have the anemone "look" but stays put and may even host your clown.

 

Sounds like you're going to have a lot of dieoff and a new cycle with that rock. I wouldn't even bother to seed at this point; you may want to after the cycle is done.

[Mnesarchus]

Get some PC's for light, and definatley drop the anemone.

 

There are lots of corals that a clown will host in instead of an anemone; Frogspawn, Galaxy, Elegence, Plate, Leather, Star Polyps... and even the powerhead!

[badpacket]

rocket-155, didn't think of that, I guess the anenome is out. For cleanup, was thinking of cirith snails most likely. I kind of like the really small Emerald crabs though also.

 

Chufa, the anenome in my 29g has been there for about a year or so. I would actually like more coral, less fish so thats good.

Souns like re-cycle it will be.

 

 

Mnesarchus, cool.

 

 

A question. If I moved up to a 10g, would I be able to perhaps keep the anenome?

 

A guy at wrok wats to buy this tank off of me, so I'm wondering if it wouldn't be smarter to just sell it as I'm not going to be using the bio-wheel or filter very much. If I'm going L/R-L/S anyways, then I could use the extra size/depth.