Beginner Second day.

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ZaNe

New Member
River rock are probably igneous or metamorphic rock. They are generally not porous at all depending on where you are from. If it's Gabbro or Shale, they will not absorb any relevant amount of water. I will remove the river rock because they are taking space for live or base rock. You can google some rock name to identify the river rock you have but I'm pretty sure that they are either gabbro, shale or a rock with the same properties.

Congrats for your tank :D
 
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deans7269

New Member
I was thinking of an experiment separate from my large tank.

I was thinking about taking a big tub. I have an extra Magnum 330. Use it for filtering. Take maybe 6lbs of live rock. Putting the river rock on the bottom. With the live rock on top. Maybe 20 gallons of water. Add some tank water when it matures. Water temp would be about 75 to start. About room temp.
I would like to see if I can get anything to grow on the river rock. The river rock might be useful as a sump. I'm guessing if this works I wont want to add any live fish until I combine the sump with the tank. Circulate them for at least two weeks before they balance out. I'm wondering if its OK to test the sump with a Damsel. Only once its established. I'm not sure what else to test it with. I'm probably better off buying a used sump full of rocks off Craigs list. Then doing the combo for two weeks before taking the next step. I just thought it would be cool to test out river rocks for a sump. Probably to much work.

And I found this web site. It will help me pick out beginner fish. It seems to have good info. Just thought I would pass this on. If you have concerns about this web site please let us know! You can search beginner and it lists everything for beginners.

Fish
 
BigJay

BigJay

Well-Known Member
getting stuff to grow on it will not be an issue. Stuff in the ocean will grow on anything. Sunken ships come to mind? Inverts will inhabitant just about anything non-toxic or made of certain metals like brass that are available. Just like smooth tank glass can be inhabitated and if maintence isn't preformed it will be with small fan worms, coraline and sometimes even larger corals.
Again river rock can contain contaminents that may leach at any given time with no way of knowing. In fish only tanks this isn't an issue. With inverts like corals that means a .01 part per million of something like copper can be deadly. It also is not pouros so its displacing a lot of water with little to no surface area. A pourous piece of reef rock might have somewhere like a million times more surface area then a comparably sized piece of smooth rock. Surface area is what you need for beneficial bacteria and maybe more importantly is the internal surface area of the pores as this is the low oxygen areas where nitrates can be consumed.
 
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deans7269

New Member
Ive looked around. It does not seem that easy to find a sump pump. Where should I look. And how much flow etc. will I need?
 
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