I'm about to go into marine from freshwater tropical and I have just collected some wet sand and seawater directly from my clean non industrialised beach. I have also collected some lovely looking rocks from the cliff that runs along the beach. I understand that wet sand from the beach might be considered "live" and that the seawater may also have the necessary parameters for a small tank I have, to condition everything before I use them later, especially making the rocks into live ones full of the beneficial bacteria.
My 1st question then is, as my tank has fresh beach sand and seawater could it be considered that this would suffice as safe water without going through the nitrogen cycle before introduction of any resident sea creatures? I'm in the UK where the water isn't warm so I intend to catch a couple of small fish or shrimp from the rock pools to see if they manage to survive. My intention is to "mature or condition" rocks for the actual designated tank to be used. I can water change with fresh seawater as often as needed if it helps.
If that isn't feasible then perhaps introducing something like Aqua Care Bio-Boost might just assist. Basically I'm trying to speed things up and in the lease expensive way possible.
These are some of the cliffside rocks. They are in 45 - 60 cm layers in the cliff face and seem to be some sort of mineralised vegetation. The area is designated as being limestone by nature. They look lovely and all it takes to get them is either collect the bits that have fallen loose, or to take a crowbar to loosen them off.
I understand that what I'm doing is something that may seem risky by using natural sand and seawater but this is only to try and build up live rocks. When everything goes into a tropical marine set up tank I'll only be using the proper salt mix and water additives.
My 1st question then is, as my tank has fresh beach sand and seawater could it be considered that this would suffice as safe water without going through the nitrogen cycle before introduction of any resident sea creatures? I'm in the UK where the water isn't warm so I intend to catch a couple of small fish or shrimp from the rock pools to see if they manage to survive. My intention is to "mature or condition" rocks for the actual designated tank to be used. I can water change with fresh seawater as often as needed if it helps.
If that isn't feasible then perhaps introducing something like Aqua Care Bio-Boost might just assist. Basically I'm trying to speed things up and in the lease expensive way possible.
These are some of the cliffside rocks. They are in 45 - 60 cm layers in the cliff face and seem to be some sort of mineralised vegetation. The area is designated as being limestone by nature. They look lovely and all it takes to get them is either collect the bits that have fallen loose, or to take a crowbar to loosen them off.
I understand that what I'm doing is something that may seem risky by using natural sand and seawater but this is only to try and build up live rocks. When everything goes into a tropical marine set up tank I'll only be using the proper salt mix and water additives.
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