When/what to add?

[deano77]

My 100 gal tank has 125lbs of live rock and 4 inches of sand no skimmer yet and normal floresent lights. The tank is 4 weeks old and I am just adding crabs and snails. When can I add hardy inverts and how slowlyy do I need to go. The rock had been in another aquarium for 7 years. The water tests great. What now?

 

[Len]

Well, crabs and snails are inverts I'm assuming you mean corals and other photosynthetic inverts. You'll need more lights then normal fluorescents for these, but if the water tests fine, nothing else should hold you back. Of course, the longer you wait, the better (even if the water tests fine). Add one specimen a week and gauge how the tank is doing. Again, you'll definitely need more lights.

Make sure to acclimate inverts by slowly exchanging bag water with tank water. you can do this by adding a cup of tank water into the bag every 10 minutes. A lot of inverts, especially crustaceans, snails, and echinoderms (stars, urchins, etc) are very sensitve to changes in water. Stuff like big salinity gradients can kill since many of these inverts are poor osmoregulators.

 

[deano77]

Thanks Len, can I add several dozen small snails and crabs at once to start cleaning as long as I acclimate them properly? Any recomendations on lights?

 

[Len]

I'd personally wait until you start seeing a crop up of algae before adding these scavengers and herbivores. I suppose the hermits can go in first, but to be honest, I'm not a big fan of crabs of any type. I always say crabs have shifty eyes and can't be fully trusted

The easiest lights to implement is Power Compacts, and I think 4x96W (two 2x96W) is the mimimum you should go for the easier to keep corals. 8x96W (two 4x96W) will allow you to keep most anything. Metal halides, of course is a good option too. You just need to take a little more into consideration, such as a taller canopy or, if your tank is canopyless, some way to suspend pendants above the tank.

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Deano, if the rock is from an est. tank and was not "killed" in the transfer from the prev. owner to you, there should be plenty of life in your tank already. The bacteria might even be starving for some amonia. The live rock is your filter bed if you have not I would feed it(little fishfood, pieces or shrimp). Of course test for amonia, nitrite, nitrate. If no amonia or nitrite but a trace of nitrate the tank is cycled. Like Len said go slow. I would add a couple of fish, maybe a brittle star, or a few feather dusters.
If you want to stay low light when the h2o params. allow you could add some sponges, sea fans/pens, chili coral, tubeastra, etc. These low/no light animals need to eat quite abit so you would need to keep a close eye on water quality. Andy

 

[romunov]

Define "great" water parameters.

 

[Tackett]

If you go for the lights that Len said, I would just go with metal halides. For some odd reason when you get up to the monster powercompacts, its actually cheaper to get metal halides. In my personal opinion, all the aquarium lights are WAY overpriced, but what can you do?