chipmunkofdoom2
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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.