Life from Live Rock

Our new tank was setup and our live rock was added on 1/13/10. SG has remained 1.025, temperature between 76.0-78.0F at all times, pH has been between 8.01-8.15 at all times (which seems slightly low to us). We used only "cured" live rock from our LFS (which is a 10 min. drive away from us). We believe our die-off has been very little. We have not been seeing the "normal" nitrogen cycle we are accustomed to because of this. We have detected ever-so-slight levels of ammonia/nitrite with our Salifert test kits however. All equipment is up and running (our new skimmer is still in its break-in period needing some adjustment), water is crystal clear, but we have left our lights off the entire time so far.

Last night, we already noticed that life is starting to come out of our rocks...small, thin worms we believe to be peanut worms. Since they sound helpful, we would like to know what we should do (if anything) to make sure they stay alive. Should we start to run our lights a little for algae (if so, what types (actinic/daylight) and for how long)? Should we add a little bit of a frozen food for them?

Ideally, we would like to continue to run our system as-is for the next few weeks...just continuing to monitor ammonia/nitrite/nitrate just to be safe...then do our first partial water change and begin to introduce the first members of our CUC- nerite/trochus snails.

Amanda & Matthew

 

You probably don't have to do anything to ensure they will remain alive. They can scavenge the rock for a few week and hopefully reproduce. I wouldn't add any food to the tank as that can re-start the cycle.