new system need help water smell with lr

[fishguy007]

hello, i just set up a new 90 gallon tank.

i filled the tank with water and added the salt.

i bought live rock and added it..

its been set up for two days. after adding the live rock, about a day and a half after, the water is cloudy and the water smells bad.

did i do something wrong? what is happening here. what can i do to fix it?

[Myka]

You bought uncured liverock, and it is now in the process of curing aka cycling. Personally, I prefer to do this curing stage in Rubbermaid tubs in the dark (with a heater and powerhead for circulation) instead of in the actual aquarium, but that is a whole different conversation. I think it would be a good option for you to consider as it is a better way to cure your rock, and you will end up with MUCH MUCH less nuisance algaes. If you're interested I can elaborate.

For the record, your rock will cycle the aquarium just fine. You do NOT need to add fish to cycle a tank that has live rock in it. Cycling with fish in my opinion is very cruel, and completely unnecessary.

Do you have any test kits? If not, go buy some...try Salifert or Elos brands, in my opinion everything else is a waste of money due to inaccuracy. Start testing for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. pH is a good one to monitor at this stage as well. You should see the ammonia go up, then come down, then the nitrite will go up, and come down. Then you should see nitrates. If your rock is good live rock it should be able to do a good job eliminating the nitrates as well, or at least keeping them real low. So, once you see ammonia at 0, nitrite at 0 (not almost 0, I mean AT 0), and nitrate below 10 ppm then you can add a small cleanup crew. This will usually take 3-6 weeks. After the cleanup crew is settled for a couple weeks you can start to add a fish here and there. Once you start getting some coralline algae patches that are nickel to quarter sized then you can start to add corals. :)

Time to play the waiting game until your parameters are good. :biggrin:

[mark]

The smell is normal for new LR curing, the cloudiness I'm wondering on that. How cloudy, did you add sand also?

Either way keep the pumps, heater and skimmer going.

[kwirky]

use a larger than normal ammount of carbon? Like fill an aquaclear 70 or something of the likes with carbon if it's REALLY bad (had to do that once).

[midgetwaiter]

Seachem Stability actually does a good job of knocking the smell down.

[Starry]

Adding a skimmer at this point knocks the smell down as well. Also think it would speed up the curing as there is less gunk in the water.