Death trap under rock?

[Reef4Rose]

Was thinking about my upcoming processes which are laying egg crate to put aquascape on. My rock needs to be cured so I was going to lay aquascape on the egg crate then put in sand after cure. This will create voids under the rock with no sand. Will there compartments be an issue? I don’t want to pull rock after curing. Should I put sand in the areas the rock will be placed? I read it’s not good to have sand in during cure. Maybe the voids are a non issue? My aquascape will have a minimal footprint on the floor of tank. See progress of aquascape pictures. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

The rock should be fine to cure without the sand. Most folks just stick their rock in a big bucket to cure so I think the voids you're referring to would be a non-issue.

 

[mcarroll]

That looks like dead, dry rock. No curing is likely to happen unless it was put away really dirty. If it's homemade cement-based rock, that's a different kind of curing, and you won't want that in the tank.

I would avoid eggcrate if you can. Also avoid having the rock on top of the sand – build on the bottom of the tank, or push rocks down into the sand all the way to the bottom.

Make sure you start the tank with a very small bio-load and build your bio-load very slowly – dead rock is not easy (or quick) to resurrect. I would front-load your snails and corals to the beginning of your stocking....keep fish at-or-less-than your coral population.....take around a month between all major livestock additions...at least a few weeks between minor ones.

2¢

 

[Reef4Rose]

I appreciate all cents!

I purchased Fiji shelf and pukani described as dry live rock. 40 pounds is an Carib Sea product called base rock. The Fiji and pukani came out of the ocean but appears fairly clean. There is a little dirt and I picked out a couple muscle shells. From research found that dry live rock needed to be cured? Seems your point of view makes more sense. So do I consider my start the start of cycling and can add sand directly? Again research pointed out not to add sand during curing due to nutrient issues getting into the sand.

Just want to get off on the correct direction.

 

[mcarroll]

If there's any worry, starting with that rock in the tank (or even a single representative piece of rock in a bucket) just to see how it goes is a great idea.

Nitrates and phosphates are not to be worried about when starting a tank, BTW. The worst thing that will happen is that algae will bloom. All that does is form a nutrient reserve in the tank.....if you don't interfere, it's unlikely to be anything to worry about. Folks who get into GFO and carbon dosing and try to control things get into very bad algae that can compete under poor-nutrient conditions....so don't even go down that road. Nutrients are your friend – especially at the beginning while the tank is still developing its microbial community.

Remember that healthy animals ( snails, fish, corals) will be your tank's only "real" source of microbial inoculation outside of bacteria and other air-born critters (some, but NOT MUCH!).

So take everything you do slowly, and do it in small steps. Allow weird things to grow and just see if they go away on their own. If your CUC population seems low or to not be handling the load – add more!

Focus on growing and removing nutrient limits rather than limiting nutrients and killing. The former is a long term strategy....the later is an emergency maneuver. You don't wanna live by emergency maneuvers.

The more things you can grow – from viruses to corals to fish...all count! – the more self-balancing the system will become. Starts with algae and snails....then corals and fish.