live rock question

[ZOOT098]

hi everyone

my tank has been up and running for about a week now

i bought my live rock cured from drs. foster and smith
when it showed up it was many colors of green and brown, some purples etc.

well now that it has been in the tank for awhile it has mostly turned a white color, almost like its crusted over

is this just part of the process???

 

[Marke86]

I would check your calcium for sure. That doesnt sound normal to me.

 

[daugherty]

coraline alage will turn white when it dies it will do that because it was exposed to air. it sounds normal to me just give it some time.

 

[Damseluver]

Was it mail order or did you pick it up. At any rate if it spent more than a few hours in transit you are having some die off of the rock so its not really cured. Completly normal.

If this is a new tank with no fish, no problem. Just let it cure right in the tank while it cycles. Water changes and aggressive skimming will be necessary.

 

[ZOOT098]

it was mail order so it spent a few days in transit

if this is die off, do i have to do anything to the rock or will the white eventually fall off and reveal my true rock

it is a new tank with nothing in it yet

 

[Bifferwine]

The white will eventually be replaced with other colors as your coralline comes back. Like Damseluver said, if it was exposed to air at all, the coralline dies off and turns white.

 

[Mtrueblood]

Completely normal just give it some time. It will be nice and colorful in time. Your tank will be cylcling for a little while so the color will take a while to come back.

 

[reeffreak]

It sounds perfectly normal to me.During the cycle the coralline dies off or bleach(sometimes from drying out during transport).In almost all cases the color will return slowly starting after the cycle is over.

 

[ZOOT098]

ok sounds like i should just be patient

the wierd thing is im still not registering any amonia

i put a few pinches of flake food in a few days ago and checked it and still registering 0

 

[UnderwaterWorld]

Throw a piece of table shrimp in there

 

[daugherty]

it will take a couple days before it reads anything.

 

[fatman]

Throw a piece of table shrimp in there

Please do not advise that, it is completely unnecessary as there is more than enough nutrients being supplied by the die off of life in and on the rock to supply all the organics needed to cycle the tank. Using a lot of organics when cycling is detrimental as it just lowers a great deal the amount of oxygen available in the tank. It requires abundant oxygen for bacterial multiplication, above and beyond what is required for nitrification of the organics. Therefore throwing in a bunch of organics means the available bacteria use all the available oxygen to try and nitrify and therefore not to reproduce. Meaning you end up with a biosystem with a smaller capacity to nitrify.

To thread Writer:
Figure the live rock you bought was put through shipping and handlers hell before it made it to to you. First likely set in open air (in tropical temperatures) in piles for a few days before a buyer purchased it. Then it was probably soaked in a trough of old sea water for a few hours (hopefully at least this) as it was taken and wrapped in old newspapers and put in old cardboard boxes whereby it was air shipped to L.A. California and then set overnight in a card board box (in a hot warehouse) until the next day when it was shipped to Drs. F. & S. West coast Live Aquaria warehouse (hopefully not its main warehouse in Wisconsin) where it finally made it to some water. There it sat stock piled in overly filled, unlit, poorly circulated, possibly but doubtfully skimmed water until it was shipped to you by pony express mail. That means your the only good treatment it's gotten in a week or more so it is nothing you did that caused the death of anything.
The white you see where the Coraline algae was, is the calcium (in the form of aragonite or calcium carbonate) that the algae had extracted from the water to form its hard plate like body. It is now trying to reenter the water after the Coraline starts dieing off. Typically the calcium is not all taken back into the water system as the pH is not low enough to dissolve it. New Coraline typically builds back up over the old calcium. Usually there is still enough Coraline that survives even very harsh treatment and it makes a come back. Not necessarily all colors and plate types and plate sizes will come back necessarily though. Depends on their hardiness.