Buying live rock- possible aptasia growth

[Dturner]

Hey guys,

Had a quick question. I'm considering buying live rock at 3$/lb from this car dealership getting rid of their tank on craigslist. Looking at the picture posted it looks like it has a little bit of aptasia growth. Should this be a deciding factor in my purchase? It's so hard to pass up this good of a deal. Thanks in advance

Daniel

 

[Hiker4twenty]

It depends on how much you're willing to do to get rid of the aiptasia. If there are thousands of them you might want to pass or heckle them on price since you'll have some work to do.

 

[14 gallon nanocube]

Hello if you do go for it.just qt the rock in a bucket or tote.and keep turning them over everyday.when you find an aptasia kalk paste it or inject with lemon juice.will take awhile if there's alot but it maybe worth it if you get some really cool rock on the cheap.try to haggle them down on the price though
happy tanks to ya

 

[Bifferwine]

If the price is good, and there are not tons (like hundreds) of them, I'd say go for it. You can do as 14 gallon said, and start injecting them with Aiptasia X, and you can add some peppermint shrimp. Depending on the size of the tank, you could also add a copperband butterfly fish.

 

[sen5241b]

Sounds like its not worth it. Pests like aptasia can take a lot of time to deal with.

 

[Dturner]

Okay so I got the live rock today. No aptasia on it at all. It just looked like it in the picture. I got 50 lbs of some great looking Fiji rock for $100.

I'm wondering if I can rinse it with fresh water to get some of the gunk off? Is that ok?

 

[bjohanson1234]

I would get a bucket of salt water and swish it around in that. Fresh water will kill lots of good things on the rock.

 

[Bifferwine]

+1 BJ. If you use freshwater, you will no longer have live rock; you will have dead rock. Use saltwater.

 

[Dturner]

After hours of carefully stacking rock and testing the structure, I finally finished adding 50 additional pounds of rock to my tank. I must say it looks a lot more filled in my tank. The only problem I had was stacking the rocks in one vertical column. My tank is so narrow (1 ft) that I can only stack one column so it took a while to make sure it wasn't wobbly. What do you guys think?

Also, I found this white cluster of egg looking things on one of the rocks, I'm not sure what it is. Can anyone identify this?



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[ErinCahir]

I believe your white cluster is a sponge. I've got a couple that look like that.

 

[Dturner]

Thanks Erin. I had no clue.

 

[sps]

Keep your eye on phosphates also. I got burned by someone selling me 300 pounds of live rock and now I have a massive algae outbreak. Phosphates keep leaching. At least you got to see the tank up and running, right?

 

[Dturner]

Yeah I saw it running. The rocks were a little dusty from the lack of a cleaning crew but now they are in my tank and look great. Probably going to test the water tonight.

 

[carter]

yep make sure too check phosphhates and you may wanna go out and get some phosphguard and keep it real close just in case but looks like a real beauty of a stack

 

[Dturner]

Yeah my phosphates went up to about 2 ppm from 0.5ppm and I noticed my nitrates went from 10 to about 20-25. I am going to do a 25% water change tomorrow to see if that helps.

 

[carter]

it will help, the sudden change was from die off most likely, no matter what you do there will always be a little die off when you add live rock.