Lighting colour and cleaning of LR questions

[Rxcp14]

Hi! Starting my first topic with a few newbie questions. do help and suggest/ recommend. Thanks!

Im planning to go FOWLR first with my 2ft tank and slowly move to corals and reef. Here are the questions that i want to ask about.

1. I got a 2x 24w T5 actinic blue and daylight each. Is it the most common colour setting or would an all blue or all white be better visually and effective for corals and such?

2. Do i switch on both during the day or on the white usually and blue when i want the nice effects?

3. Do i need to scrub LR to remove hitch hikers or any other more efficient way to clean them without disturbing or remove the good, useful organisms?

4. Anything i need to do with live sand after getting the home? Just dump them into tank?

- Additional info, will be getting stuff from jireh.

Any other shops to recommend getting the live sand/rocks? Staying in the east and no transport but willing to go for quality instead.

Thank you for your time and your replies with your experiences and knowledge would be greatly appreciated.

Regards

Ezekiel

[Zoa guy]

no, you dont need to scrub your rocks. for t5, get white and blue and use a timer. Unless you can manually on one bulb at a specific time each day, get a timer. MOst reefers on both. blue doesnt really bring out the colours in fishes and white looks too whitish. For sand, why use the carribsea ones. MAny varities too and if u order from madpetz, they deliver to u. saves u time. LOL.

[Rxcp14]

no, you dont need to scrub your rocks. for t5, get white and blue and use a timer. Unless you can manually on one bulb at a specific time each day, get a timer. MOst reefers on both. blue doesnt really bring out the colours in fishes and white looks too whitish. For sand, why use the carribsea ones. MAny varities too and if u order from madpetz, they deliver to u. saves u time. LOL.

Ahh i see, pheww luckily didnt get the wrong choice... what's the difference in the sands and what kind u recommend? I dont know abt the brand and stuff as its my first tank. Thought live, in tank maturing ones would be good. haha dont mind my questions. Got more to come! Lol!!

[Harlequinmania]

You just need to dump your live sand straight into the water. Live sand will cut down your tank cycling time, but it is expensive. Some of us here uses Live sand mixed with normal sand in order to save some money. Aragoniate sand will also help to buffer the water and stabilize your PH in your tank.

For live rocks, there are many to choose from in Irwanna/ coral farm or you can also consider buying from reefer who decomm .

Happy reefing

[Rxcp14]

You just need to dump your live sand straight into the water. Live sand will cut down your tank cycling time, but it is expensive. Some of us here uses Live sand mixed with normal sand in order to save some money. Aragoniate sand will also help to buffer the water and stabilize your PH in your tank.

For live rocks, there are many to choose from in Irwanna/ coral farm or you can also consider buying from reefer who decomm .

Happy reefing

Oohhh... there's more choices at Iwarna? Any other place that sells good live sand that can recommend? Saw only one site that has cured sand... Have to consider these factors since i've never been to any and time constraints/ cost to travel to prevent wasted trip... thanks for the info!

Oh yaa btw will aragonite lose its buffering capacity like coral chips?

[tropic]

maybe for live sand... you can just get off the shelf packet rather than you scout around for livesand.. For a 2ft tank it shouldnt be deep for your pocket. But if you consider eg carrib sea for a 5ft then.....another story. Think most of the items you need are avail at madpetz and they do deliver , except no livestock.

[Rxcp14]

maybe for live sand... you can just get off the shelf packet rather than you scout around for livesand.. For a 2ft tank it shouldnt be deep for your pocket. But if you consider eg carrib sea for a 5ft then.....another story. Think most of the items you need are avail at madpetz and they do deliver , except no livestock.

Thank you! Guess carribsea is the more popular choice....

[kira76]

My advice is to inspect all your LR for hitchhiker and get raid of them before you start your cycling process. I didn't do that and now coming to 4 months later and I'm still trying to catch crabs that came with my LR.

[Zoa guy]

haha, lol. What kind of crabs? most crabs are actually just scavengers. Why not use a trap? Actually, even if u inspect every cm of your liverock, the hitch hiker will just be waiting in some crevices. I had some crabs in my old tank that came with the liverock, i just left em alone and they didnt really do any harm except scavenge

[tropic]

I think for some crabs like hairy crab they will distb the sps. It gets quite a size if not remove. Unless it's fowlr then I think they will just scavenge around for food.

[yongshun]

3. Do i need to scrub LR to remove hitch hikers or any other more efficient way to clean them without disturbing or remove the good, useful organisms?

There is no way that you can remove the hitch hikers completely unless u kill all your liverocks. One way to do it is to kill all your liverocks and afterwich make the rocks 'live' again. You can consider putting all the rocks in fresh water and soak them for a week. For me, i more kiasu, i used boiling water instead to kill all. Then sunbathe them for 1 week to let them dry up and kill watever stuff tat survived the freshwater bath. After wich, manually remove all the dead bodies. This will remove all the hitch hikers but good useful organisms will also be killed.

Then use the dead rocks for cycling. Bacteria will slowly start to colonize ur rocks, making them 'live' again.

This is a 99.99% way to ensure that there is no unwanted pests / hitchhikers. It is easier to cultivate useful organisms than to remove unwanted pests. my 2 cents

[finind]

curing the liverock in new salt mix water, say 2 weeks, not enough to starve the crabs to death?

[Rxcp14]

So no scrubbing for LR, just dip and rinse in salt or freshwater correct? Where u all recommend for LR?

[Rxcp14]

So no scrubbing for LR, just dip and rinse in salt or freshwater correct? Where u all recommend for LR? Iwarna or jireh? In terms of quality, variety? Thanks!

Goshhh... Its so much different from freshwater! Perservering on and excited!! Haha!

[yongshun]

curing the liverock in new salt mix water, say 2 weeks, not enough to starve the crabs to death?

nope...some crabs or pests are super hardy...tats wat i experienced for my previous 2 setups