Questions on Brackish to Marine

[bigfatfish]

I know this topic has been covered a little before by others, by I need to know a few things!! (Many things!).
I currently have a 55 UK Gallon bowfront BW tank with 2 x 2" GSPs. I have coral sand & about 20kg of ocean rock. An external Fluval 305 & an internal Fluval 4 as my filters. The SG is 1.015. The tank has been set up & doing well for about 17 months. The GSPs have grown from about half an inch (they were the tiniest I had ever seen) to around 2" now. So, I am toying with the idea of going marine. If I slowly raise the SG to around 1.022, can I add a small piece of live rock? I plan on getting it from a good reputable source, straight from a tank - I don't really have the facilities for curing any rock, so wondered if it was acceptable to just add a little at a time (over a few months if necessary) & keep a close eye on the parameters. At what stage should I remove the sponges from the filters - could I fill with live rock rubble & still use them for water movement? & what stage should I start using a skimmer?
Could someone just come to my house & do it all for me, because I am getting a bit confused!!
Just wish I could find a book where everything was all set out in stages.
I probably have room for a sump underneath the tank but I am a bit scared to venture down the route of more pipework!!
Can anyone point me in the right direction, or I know I will just stay with brackish (better the devil you know & all that!).
Thanks.

[Pufferpunk]

If you pay my airfare, I'll be happy to stop by--I'd love to see the UK!

That's how I did it. Although, all it takes to cure LR is a 5g bucket, airstone (powerhead is better) & a small heater. Remove the sponge when you get the SG up to around 1.020 & then you can add a skimmer. I keep rubble in my HOB filters but it gets clogged after a month.

[jmiller]

That's how I plan on doing it except I'm going to add a lot of live rock at once. I have spent a ridiculous amount of hours searching the same thing. I'm also at the .014/.015 stage now. From everything I've been able to find the problems always happen when switching over filtration. Most seem to change over to fast and loose livestock during an ammonia spike. I'm going to add at least 20# of cured live rock and a skimmer at .020 and still continue with my current filtration also. During each w/c until I finally reach .025 I'll slowly remove the filter pad and ceramic rings and replace with rock rubble and filter floss.

Did the link I PM'ed you help any?

[Pufferpunk]

That's 1.025. How will you be sure the rock is cured? Even the time of transferring from one tank to another, will cause some die off.

[bigfatfish]

That's how I plan on doing it except I'm going to add a lot of live rock at once. I have spent a ridiculous amount of hours searching the same thing. I'm also at the .014/.015 stage now. From everything I've been able to find the problems always happen when switching over filtration. Most seem to change over to fast and loose livestock during an ammonia spike. I'm going to add at least 20# of cured live rock and a skimmer at .020 and still continue with my current filtration also. During each w/c until I finally reach .025 I'll slowly remove the filter pad and ceramic rings and replace with rock rubble and filter floss.

Did the link I PM'ed you help any?

Yeah it did, thanks - thought I had PM'd you back!

[jmiller]

That's 1.025. How will you be sure the rock is cured? Even the time of transferring from one tank to another, will cause some die off.

I've had the rock curing since the first of November and had very little, if any, die off on the initial move from where i bought it to my house (2 hrs). So the couple of minutes from the tote to the tank isn't concerning me. Right now the rock can process 2ml of ammonia to zero ammonia/nitrite in less than 12 hours so I hope that should take care of it.