Aquacultured Rock From KP Aquatics

[chipmunkofdoom2]

I think like rock is great, but also feel people blame failed systems on "dead" rock as well.

I'm sure this happens, but the opposite is also true. Mike Paletta had nothing but failure for 12 months straight with a tank he set up with dry rock. Triton water tests showed no anomalies in any of the parameters tested. Yet, when he put some live rock in from an established system, magically dinos and cyano went away, and three months after that point his tank was full of healthy and growing SPS. Mike Paletta is no noobie to reefkeeping, nor is he the only case of someone adding live rock to a dry rock system and seeing a massive improvement in the aquarium almost overnight. As I said in my first post, some people don't have problems with live rock. However, some people do. It's not fair to put all the blame on aquarist skill.

I think another factor in this is how well reefers quarantine. My QT procedure is almost militant, and it mirrors the AZA-accredited procedures we use at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, where I work part-time. Nothing wet gets in my tank without at least a 1 month QT. My last batch of corals were in QT over 3 months and were dipped heavily before being put in QT. There's no way any extra life makes it into my tank. If you don't introduce life on the rock and you don't introduce it via the livestock, then you're not going to have much life. Which I think is the problem at the end of the day.

I've been reefing for about 12 years now. This is by far the hardest tank I've ever kept. It's also the only one in which I did not use a quality live rock from the get-go. There's more at work here than just an aquarist's skill.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Really glad I found this thread!

I was all set to buy live Pukani rock from Blue Zoo and before I could get my curing station ready, they sold out...smh

Now I'm back to square one on how to start my new 120g tank. I will NOT use dry rock to start a tank again. One year in and I can't make anything work for long. Yet, all my numbers come back fine.

I'm not very interested in $10/pound though. I go super light on my rock but at 60 pounds that's $600 just for rock. Blue Zoo easily had the best value I could find and I missed out. Now I'm seeing if my LFS has a contact to get me good live rock and they won't have to cure it. I'll come pick through what I want and take it as is. They can keep the rest to cure in house.

I feel your pain there. Been having nothing but trouble for 2 straight years.

The rock isn't cheap, that's for sure. It's certainly not $4/lb like dry Pukani. I think it's all a trade-off though. 60lbs from KP Aquatics is $495 overnight to your door, so really it's only about $8.20/lb. From Tampa Bay Saltwater, it's only $390 for a 60lb box, but that's air freighted and you have to pick it up. Still though, that's only $6.50/lb. I don't personally think that's that bad, but I've been failing for 2 straight years.. I'd probably sell a kidney if I could just get some stuff to work in my tank. Maybe you could do half and half? Maybe go half dry rock and get a 30lb order from a site like KP Aquatics ($250 shipped to your door, or $8.33/lb).

 

[hart24601]

.

I've been reefing for about 12 years now. This is by far the hardest tank I've ever kept. It's also the only one in which I did not use a quality live rock from the get-go. There's more at work here than just an aquarist's skill.

Fair enough. I personally disagree, but that's the beauty of the hobby - it's all good. Take care and happy reefing!

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Personalty I think all that business about pest and hitchhikers is just hype from equipment vendors who tell you to buy their Dry Rock... THEN tell you that you need live sand. both systems I started, 1997 and 2017 were started with Real LR and I never had problems that I was not responsible for. But best of all, can you do this in 3 months of setting up at tank with dry Rock?..... Best of luck on the reboot.

Yeah that's a great amount to get done in 3 months. I agree on the hitchhikers. If we only had in our tanks what we intentionally introduced, we would never have successful tanks. We've decided that some hitchhikers are bad (mantis shrimp, gorilla crabs, bryopsis), but what about all the beneficial organisms that we miss out on when we use dry rock?

Like I said, I think we moved to dry rock for good reasons in this hobby. We failed to take into consideration how important the biological diversity of life rock was though. If live rock was only a vector for pests and diseases, of course, we shouldn't use it. What I don't think we realized is how important all of that diversity is to a tank's success.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Fair enough. I personally disagree, but that's the beauty of the hobby - it's all good. Take care and happy reefing!

So in your opinion, what was the cause of Mike Paletta's 12 months of problems?

EDIT: by the way, I replied to you 21 minutes ago. You replied to me 10 minutes ago, claiming that you disagree with my point and the video I posted. Did you watch the video? If so, I'd be curious to know how you watched a 28 minuted video in the 11 minutes between my reply and yours.

 

[hart24601]

Or I had seen it before.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

Or I had seen it before.

Then I would have hoped for a bit more discussion than simply saying "I disagree, happy reefing." What do you think was Mike's problem if it was not lack of biodiversity?

 

[hart24601]

I never said diversity wasn't potentially important however there can be alternatives to just using liverock solely for the display. Some sand from another person's tank, perhaps bottled additives, some garf grunge in the sump, heck maybe even water from another tank. Adding pods, or algae like chaeto from another system is perhaps a good choice.

However I wouldn't state that was Mike's problem because I didn't live with his system everyday and I am not going to speculate. That's the conclusion he came to, however adding diversity statement is pretty open to interpretation. What divirsity exactly? How did the overall populations of microorganisms change? No one knows. At this point microbial populations are not something average hobbyists can determine - I have done microbial environmental community profiling for work and it's very expensive still.

It's very possible adding diversity is the key, it's also possible it's not. I have dinos in a system right now that has all old live rock from the ocean, plus sand from another couple older systems locally. It might be adding or having the right kind of diversity is key too. Or not.

So. I disagree that live rock is the magic bullet.

 

[Copedog]

I would definitely say cure it in the house. The smell is not that bad. I keep all my aquariums in my spare bedroom and I noticed a bit more "fishy" odor the first day or two. After I did the 50% water change though, it smelled normal. It's just a very recognizable odor. It brought me back to the day when I received my first order of uncured rock from Live Aquaria almost 12 years ago.

As far as cleaning the rock before hand, no, I did no cleaning or scrubbing at all. I removed it from the bag, peeled off the newspaper, and put the rock in the tank. I'm using a heater and a single MJ1200 powerhead for flow, but that's it. No skimmer, no carbon, no nothing. I did a 50% water change the day after the rock went in the tank and occasionally use a turkey baster to blow out the nooks and crannies, but that's all I did. If you want to run carbon or a skimmer, you probably could. This would likely help keep the water a bit cleaner. I would definitely at least do flow and a heater though. You want to cure the rock in an environment like the tank in which it will originally go. I would cure it right in the tank if you can, that way all the pods make it in the tank.

I will say monitor the ammonia to know when it's done curing. I found by pure accident a huge dead brittle star in one of the holes in the rock. I extracted that manually on day #2. Had I not noticed that, I would undoubtedly still have crazy high levels of ammonia.

Thanks for the reply Chip.

I was hoping you would recommend curing in the tank, that will be the easiest to control lighting and temp. I have read up a lot on using uncured rock and it seems there are many methods people employ to get it ready to go. Being that there are several delivery options (in water, overnight, 3 day), I'm glad to get a first hand description using KPA's rock.

I will definitely use testing to determine when the cycle is done. Too many variables to do anything else. I have started a journal on NR, but will probably add one here as well after I actually get something other than RODI in the tank.

 

[hart24601]

I want to add that while I never ordered rock from KP I have placed other orders with them and they were amazing! Top notch place.

 

[Instigate]

I'm sure this happens, but the opposite is also true. Mike Paletta had nothing but failure for 12 months straight with a tank he set up with dry rock. Triton water tests showed no anomalies in any of the parameters tested. Yet, when he put some live rock in from an established system, magically dinos and cyano went away, and three months after that point his tank was full of healthy and growing SPS. Mike Paletta is no noobie to reefkeeping, nor is he the only case of someone adding live rock to a dry rock system and seeing a massive improvement in the aquarium almost overnight. As I said in my first post, some people don't have problems with live rock. However, some people do. It's not fair to put all the blame on aquarist skill.

I think another factor in this is how well reefers quarantine. My QT procedure is almost militant, and it mirrors the AZA-accredited procedures we use at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, where I work part-time. Nothing wet gets in my tank without at least a 1 month QT. My last batch of corals were in QT over 3 months and were dipped heavily before being put in QT. There's no way any extra life makes it into my tank. If you don't introduce life on the rock and you don't introduce it via the livestock, then you're not going to have much life. Which I think is the problem at the end of the day.

I've been reefing for about 12 years now. This is by far the hardest tank I've ever kept. It's also the only one in which I did not use a quality live rock from the get-go. There's more at work here than just an aquarist's skill.

But he didn't replace all his rock right? Just added some LR? I started my tank up with dry pukani about 9 months ago and have been having cyano issues that past 6 months or so. I've reduced my peak intensity lighting to only 6 hours, made sure to not over feed and manually remove as much cyano as possible on a regular basis. My No3 is 1ppm and Po4 is .03ppm. Been thinking about ordering some LR and putting it in a QT for 45 days and set traps for crabs and shrimp. Then add it to the DT. See if it sorts things out.

 

[rtparty]

But he didn't replace all his rock right? Just added some LR? I started my tank up with dry pukani about 9 months ago and have been having cyano issues that past 6 months or so. I've reduced my peak intensity lighting to only 6 hours, made sure to not over feed and manually remove as much cyano as possible on a regular basis. My No3 is 1ppm and Po4 is .03ppm. Been thinking about ordering some LR and putting it in a QT for 45 days and set traps for crabs and shrimp. Then add it to the DT. See if it sorts things out.

If I heard him right, he says he put in 50% new live rock and 50% of old live rock from one of his other systems. He also added miracle mud, caulerpa and a bunch of bottled bacteria.

 

[Instigate]

If I heard him right, he says he put in 50% new live rock and 50% of old live rock from one of his other systems. He also added miracle mud, caulerpa and a bunch of bottled bacteria.

I just watched that video, he just says "a lot" so who knows what that actually means. But ya, hopefully just adding a few pounds will introduce the bio-diversity I'm missing.

 

[Rython]

There's simply not sufficient evidence to conclude everyone's problems are because of dry rock. The most obvious problem with that conclusion is that there are plenty of people having success with it.

The problem is that getting information from forums leads to confirmation bias. Most people only post when something is wrong, and most people buy dry rock these days for all the reasons you mentioned. But that correlation does not imply causation. You might also reasonably conclude just as many people have success and therefore don't post about dinos.

Ancedotally, I used all mined dry rock. After 2 months i had dinos. Eventually, I concluded i needed more biodiversity so I bought a bunch of snails, two different bottles of bacteria, 5 kinds of macro algae from 3 sources, a bottle of pods and live photo from 2 sources and several corals from multiple sources. I didn't dip any of it.

My dinos went away a few weeks later.

A couple of months later I bought 3 acros and 2 montis and they all died.

You might conclude that this, like my dino problem was because of dry rock and lack of biodiversity.

In hindsight I can't conclude dry rock caused any of this. I turned down my leds, things stopped dieing. I also started dosing nitrates. My nitrates had been undetectable on Red Sea Pro kit since month 2. Things started growing. I removed my marine pure block. Now I'm growing acros and montis fine.

I think it's just as likely that other correlations are causal, like how much easier it has gotten to drive nitrate to 0, or to overlight a reef. And it's even more likely that it's a confluence of factors, like acros bleach and die in higher par when nitrate is too low. Or dinos are more likely to flourish when nitrate is 0 but phosphate isn't, and the system lacks sufficient predation.

Just some counter points to remind everyone that the dry rock bashing may be premature. Be mindful of your confirmation bias.

 

[siggy]

From what I have read of others difficulties using dead rock is that some are seeing continued leaching of organics after a year using this. I have to think that Rock that GREW in the ocean is not a solid Inert core but derived from layer after layer of living organic material then harvested and dried. Recently I did cure some dry rock along with LR from my display that bubble & regular algae had taken hold of, I acid washed and was surprised by how porous it actually was. What was living mater encrusting the LR was removed to reveal a sponge like network also the dead rock had the pores but were filled with dust, dirt ( harvest/handling ) and dried out dead matter. The acid soaked threw this reacting with the carbonate base to push this detritus out revealing this structure. I would also have to think the interior of the rock has this and is not as easily removed and will continue to release and even Belch large quantities of organics over time. Now back to the OP I believe Living Rock is the only way to have a REAL REEF and not a sterile aquaculture glass box exhibit and BTW are truly stunning by those that can!

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

I never said diversity wasn't potentially important however there can be alternatives to just using liverock solely for the display. Some sand from another person's tank, perhaps bottled additives, some garf grunge in the sump, heck maybe even water from another tank. Adding pods, or algae like chaeto from another system is perhaps a good choice.

However I wouldn't state that was Mike's problem because I didn't live with his system everyday and I am not going to speculate. That's the conclusion he came to, however adding diversity statement is pretty open to interpretation. What divirsity exactly? How did the overall populations of microorganisms change? No one knows. At this point microbial populations are not something average hobbyists can determine - I have done microbial environmental community profiling for work and it's very expensive still.

It's very possible adding diversity is the key, it's also possible it's not. I have dinos in a system right now that has all old live rock from the ocean, plus sand from another couple older systems locally. It might be adding or having the right kind of diversity is key too. Or not.

So. I disagree that live rock is the magic bullet.

All good points, some of which I have made in part before myself. If you can find anywhere that I stated that live rock is a magic bullet, please point it out and I will go back and correct it. I never meant to say that live rock was a magic bullet if you're having problems in your tank, nor did I mean to imply anything like that. My interest is in tanks started with dry rock only that have very long periods (1 - 2 years or more) of problems, like the ones that Mike faced (dinos, cyano, SPS not growing or dying, etc).

As I have said from the beginning of this thread, some systems seem to work just fine with dry dead rock. Others don't. In those cases where there are problems, additional biodiversity seems to help.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

There's simply not sufficient evidence to conclude everyone's problems are because of dry rock. The most obvious problem with that conclusion is that there are plenty of people having success with it.

Just some counter points to remind everyone that the dry rock bashing may be premature. Be mindful of your confirmation bias.

There is no dry rock bashing here. We're discussing something that many reefers have been observing, that in some cases, dry rock systems take a very long time to mature, sometimes up to 2 years or longer. And in at least some of these cases, adding live rock appears to add the necessary diversity to support a captive reef aquarium almost over night. I've said from the beginning of this thread that some people have no problem with dry rock. But, others do. And adding live rock seems to solve the problem. There's nothing that's proven for certain in this hobby. People do what works, and we form loose theories as to why it works. Had I been on your side of the fence, I'd be with you. I'd be replying and saying that dry rock worked just fine for me. But I'm not, and many other people are like me and have had nothing but problems with dry rock. I'm not out to prove anything or end the practice of using dry rock. I want to start a discussion about what may cause people to have success with dry rock and what might cause others to fail with it.

This isn't my first rodeo. I've been reefing for 12 years, and Mike Paletta has been keeping saltwater aquariums since before the 1990s. Issues with dry rock might be due in part to husbandry. But that's certainly not all cases.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

But he didn't replace all his rock right? Just added some LR? I started my tank up with dry pukani about 9 months ago and have been having cyano issues that past 6 months or so. I've reduced my peak intensity lighting to only 6 hours, made sure to not over feed and manually remove as much cyano as possible on a regular basis. My No3 is 1ppm and Po4 is .03ppm. Been thinking about ordering some LR and putting it in a QT for 45 days and set traps for crabs and shrimp. Then add it to the DT. See if it sorts things out.

Nope, I don't think he did add all live rock. He took some dry rock out and added some live rock. In the end that might have been enough. The other changes might have helped as well. It's hard to say what had the most impact, but Mike is not the only one who has seen this type of turn around by adding some live rock.

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

A lot of posters in this thread seem to be misinterpreting what I'm trying to say. I'm not saying that live rock is a magic bullet. I'm not saying that you'll have a thriving reef overnight if you use ocean rock. I'm not saying you should throw all your dry rock in the trash and fill your tank with live rock (although this is basically what I'm choosing to do). I'm not saying live rock is the answer if you have dinos. I'm not saying that live rock is the answer if you have cyano. I'm not saying that live rock is the answer if you have poor SPS growth or SPS just can't survive in your tank.

What I am saying is that some tanks have these problems for no apparent reason. These types of tanks were started with dry rock, are at least a year old, and have stable chemistry, good husbandry. Yet, they still have problems with dinos, other nuisance algae, and poor coral health. These tanks show no anomalies on ICP testing, and there's no apparent reason why the tank should have so many problems. Yet, the problems persist.

My one and only claim in this thread is that tanks like the one I just described are having such issues because they lack biodiversity. What I am suggesting is that adding diversity through some quality live rock may help with some of these problems. I am NOT suggesting that if you are having nuisance algae outbreaks on month 3 of your tank that it's the dry rock. I am NOT suggesting that if you can't keep SPS, it's because of the dry rock. I am NOT suggesting that we as a hobby should stop using dry rock and should go back to using ocean rock. I am suggesting that quality live rock could solve some of these problems in a very specific situation. That's it.

 

[rtparty]

Chip,

I think the "problem" with the whole live rock vs dead rock debate is each side takes their own experience and rarely gives any credit to the other side's experiences. You can see that clearly in this thread.

"My tank was fine. Therefore, I disagree."

While I am a firm believer that correlation doesn't mean causation, I find it very interesting just how much dead rock and the hundreds of dinos/cyano/SPS dying/tank not maturing threads seem to coexist. I understand that many new tanks are starting with dead rock (it's cheaper, more available, advertised at every turn) so it would reason that tank problem threads are more likely to contain dead rock as a common denominator.

However, my story is similar to yours. I started my first tank in April of 2006. I used live rock on that tank and every tank after until my current system. I did add dry rock to many of my tanks but they always had a good deal of live rock that was mature and full of life. I never battled dinos. Cyano was usually an easy fix. Hair algae came and went early on. It was predictable.

This tank...a complete mess and a year wasted IMO. I have learned some valuable lessons though. So it's a year wasted for my tank in my eyes.

I initially questioned Paletta and his experience from that video. My tank was cruising along and things looked fine. Then dinos showed up and everything went down the toilet. I employed every tool I could to fight chrysophytes, then cyano, then dinos, then hair algae and now whatever it is I have. Nothing eats it. It looks like and acts a lot like hair algae but has the stubbornness of bryopsis. Peroxide won't kill it either. I did start dosing Vibrant about two weeks ago and it seems to have stopped it in its tracks. Corals seem to be effected as well though. I've seen less extension and some lightening.

To combat the lack of biodiversity I've added chaeto and live rock from an established system. I've added bacteria in a bottle. I've added Fiji Mud. I added copepods from Algae Barn as well. I made sure the live rock added had sponges. Still I have issues that I can not figure out.

I add this novel to share my experience and how I've tried to combat the dead rock beginning. Maybe there is some ratio of dead rock to live rock we can figure out as a hobby. That could be a great compromise and meet most of the original goals you laid out to why we should use dead rock.