How do you move rock in tank

[budbreak96]

I just got a piece of coral and i wanted to rearange my rock alittle and the coral was in the tank for 2 days and when i went to move it it sucked back in and the fish spooked. the fish look ok now i hope i didnt stres them to much. I hope the coral will come back out. Its a frog spawn. I think. My tanks been up for a month. and i checked the water for the last week and a half and two different lfs have checked it for me and said its good to go. Can you stress the coral out to bad and kill it? Also i am going to buy some LR this week and i am going to have to adjust again. SHould i put the new rock on the bottom and stack my rock with coraline on top? The rock i have is 5 years old and looks great. I dont know what to do.

 

[Bifferwine]

Just moving the coral won't stress it enough to kill it. It's normal for a coral to retract and stay that way for a day or two after it's been moved. You can rearrange your new rocks however you want to -- it will eventually get coralline growth too. Anytime you rearrange rocks, you run the risk of starting a mini cycle from releasing trapped detritus and crap into the water, so watch your parameters carefully for a few days after moving stuff around, and try and filter out as much of the suspended materials as you can that you stir up.

 

[Doc]

realistically, you should try to keep your hands out of the tank as much as possible. The more you are moving things around, the more stress your lievstock experience. A couple times a week is no big deal though. I think we all experiment moving coral around. It is normal practice and your inverts will not die from it. Make sure that when you move things around you give enough space for the coral to expand to its full size without bumping into other corals (especially LPS corals). It is normal for the coral and fish to hide for a while after moving around rocks. Hope you are happy with the move

-Doc

 

[messiah023]

Bud,

I see you have fish and are adding coral now.
Did you get your filtration/skimming worked out?

You may want to start a tank thread as the more information you have, the better your responses from people will be.

Good luck!