I recently bought a aquarium and it came set up for SW with a hydrometer, ph balance, reef chemicals, about 40 pounds of base rock (used to be live, now its dry and dead) , salt water test kit etc I am using the tank for my africans but since I have some 29 gallon set ups kickin around I thought I would try my luck at SW in a 29G I was gonna clean out the tank, rinse the filter AC 110, install my bigger powerhead and add about 20lbs of baserock and 20 lbs of live sand. my question is how much live rock can I get away with at the minimum? and how long will it take for it to catch onto the baserock. I dont plan on adding any fish for a while, my goal really is to get the water able to hold life and than add assorted crabs, hermits, snails and shrimp. also I have a bucket of salt but its only about 3 inches full, I dont know how much that is but it says I need a half cup per gallon. do you think that will be enough to get started? so my steps so far are
1 clean my tank and filters
2 add bottled water
3 add base rock
4 mix in salt
5 add 20lb live sand and 10lbs live rock on top of base rock
6 let cure
7 keep testing water occasionally until parameters are in check
8 add clean up crew
anything I am missing, I know I dont need a filter if I have live rock, but it dosent hurt to add flow and mechanical filtration
1 clean my tank and filters
2 add bottled water
3 add base rock
4 mix in salt
5 add 20lb live sand and 10lbs live rock on top of base rock
6 let cure
7 keep testing water occasionally until parameters are in check
8 add clean up crew
anything I am missing, I know I dont need a filter if I have live rock, but it dosent hurt to add flow and mechanical filtration
