First Piece of Live Rock!

Alrighty my tank is up and running and I added my first piece of live rock, is there anything I need to be adding to the water for it to spread, like any kind of weekly chemical?

 

Congrats!

You will need a consistent ammonia source. A few ways to do it. I recommend a raw deli shrimp in a mesh bag, but there are also cycling chemicals that people use with success like Tims. I've never used them, but in sure other folks in here will chime in. There are some so use cheap hardy fish like damsels to do the cycle, but I'm not a fan of this technique for several reasons. It's not nice to the fish and second they are aggressive fish and you must likely will not end up wanting them in your tank and they can be hard to remove and then find someone to take them.

 

agree on the negatives about cycling with a fish. The raw deli shrimp is a great idea and the mesh bag a really good idea (once it decomposes, it can come apart and be quite nasty). Don't add in any chemicals for your cycle. You just want an ammonia source to start. You'll need to be patient and I think that's the hardest part of starting in this hobby. Are you planning on adding more rock? perhaps some dry rock? if so, I'd add your rock all at once so that the beneficial bacteria can spread throughout all of the rock.

 

^+1 it is the hardest part for me.

I used life rock instead of live rock and am really happy with it. It's infused with good bacteria..

 

I used the bottled bacteria when I started my tank but only used it because i did not have any LR to seed with. It may have sped up the cycle process, i can't account for that because I added the bacteria and didn't test the water for 6 weeks. With seeding with LR I don't see any need for anything other than the shrimp.

 

I had put fifty pounds of base rock in and then put a seven pound live rock on top to seed. And what I meant by adding chemicals is to keep the levels where they need to be so the live rock doesn't die off.

 

It won't die without Mag, Cal, Alk levels being spot on. I would suggest just making sure the parameters are right where you want them to be before you add anything livestock to the tank so if it swings it won't stress any livestock.

 

Been a while since this post, but my tank has been up several months now and I have not seen any coraline algae growth, its kind of disappointing, what do I need to do to make it spread, I want the tank full of purple.

 

If your 'live' rock has any, scrape some off and let your powerheads spread the shavings around the tank. FWIW, I used all dry rock on my current tank. When I purchased my CuC, some of the snails had a bit of coralline on their shells. The hermits started picking at it and in no time it was growing everywhere.

 

Thats what I was hoping for, my snails have it too. Do I need to add anything to the water that may be needed. I only have the base saltwater test kit, it does Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrite, and PH