With all my equipment in place and running, I was feeling pretty silly about not having any money for live rock. I soon became quite emo, and admit to letting things slide a bit because Woe Was I.
Well luckily, a few weeks later, the live rock fairy twinkied in and brought me some fully cured rock! Ok, he would object to being called a fairy, most likely, but you get the idea. This was a good 50-70lbs of live rock from an established and healthy system that was being torn down. Not the magical straight-from-ocean experience, but a stable one and one that will result in adding more life sooner.
I picked the bits I liked and let it sit for a few weeks. When my water tests kept coming up nicely (not even an ammonia spike to speak of!), I added the bits from my old tank that I wanted to keep, including the leather coral, and remaining snails/hermits. At this point I had the fasted ammonia spike in history, and then everything settled back down again. When all was well a couple of weeks later I ordered my first batch of cleanup crew.
At this point, I should stress that I went this fast only due to the fact that all my rock was cured, from other established tanks. I had no significant die-off on this rock -- that is the only reason I could add anything living so soon. Had I ordered fresh live rock, I would have waited another month at MINIMUM. Even so, I did water tests every other day just to be safe!
Last tuesday, my initial cleanup crew arrived. This is what I now have living in my tank, one week later.
6 astrea snails
6 mexican turbo snails
6 nassarius snails
6 cerith snails
5 blueleg hermits
5 redleg hermits
1 serpent star
and my original 1 astrea, 1 blue hermit, and the leather coral.
All is well -- slight nitrate reading today, but the skimmer is going nuts and soon it will be water change time again.
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