Michael changes a Freshwater into a Saltwater Tank

After reading some of 'The Reef Aquarium' volume 3, I was a bit dismayed by what the authors had to say about the use of aragacrete and other aquacultured rock. They felt that nothing comes close to Live Rock from a reef area. Homemade rock was looked down upon, and it had me questioning my own experimentation with making live rock. So after a few days, I decided to do a couple of things. First up was to convert my 29 gallon Freshwater into a Saltwater tank. Second, is to make this tank my Aragacrete tank, and see how it actually compares to a tank with all live rock. Compare that is, when the new tank arrives sometime towards the end of June.

In the mean time, here is a pic of my 29 gallon tank with my own homemade rock, 20 lbs. of Bio-Active Aragonite sand (read: a calcium carbonate sand, that has nitrifying bacteria and other beneficial microbes present for the marine tank).


I should also mention that this tank now has Sunpaq Dual Daylight (10,000 & 6,700K), Dual Actinic (460nm & 429mn) lighting system at 65 Watts. This is so that I will be able to keep the Live Rock and corals that I put into this tank healthy and alive (more on this later).

The tank looks barren, but when conditions stabilize (pH, temp, etc) I will be adding some select pieces of Live Rock to seed my Aragacrete rock. From there, we'll see how things go. That's it for now.