Dry Macro rock - does it leach phosphate or silicate?

[twentyleagues]

I have life rock and it was all white inside.

I ordered a 4 piece box 3 of 4 arches were broken and they were as I described. This was at most 2 years ago. How old are yours? Maybe they changed up? Its not dark grey its more of an off white/ light grey not the same color as Marco and doesnt look like it was formed as a solid piece. From my understanding the Marco rock and other mined rocks like it are pretty much the same composition and very few places actually mine the rock.

 

[ReefED!]

I ordered a 4 piece box 3 of 4 arches were broken and they were as I described. This was at most 2 years ago. How old are yours? Maybe they changed up? Its not dark grey its more of an off white/ light grey not the same color as Marco and doesnt look like it was formed as a solid piece. From my understanding the Marco rock and other mined rocks like it are pretty much the same composition and very few places actually mine the rock.

It's definitely a mix

You can find some artificial rubble and whatnot in the liferock pieces, along with large chunks of pure calcium carbonate

You make a good argument to go with marco rocks over liferock though, just for that reason.

 

[twentyleagues]

I’m


Yep different rock and very difficult to get going for sure.

Thats weird to me. I have added Marco rock to tanks in the past with no issues they were running though. I was out of the hobby for 12 years. I did my first dry rock start up in January been going well for the last 8 months getting coralline growth on the rocks no weird/ugly stage.

 

[Johnd651]

I ordered a 4 piece box 3 of 4 arches were broken and they were as I described. This was at most 2 years ago. How old are yours? Maybe they changed up? Its not dark grey its more of an off white/ light grey not the same color as Marco and doesnt look like it was formed as a solid piece. From my understanding the Marco rock and other mined rocks like it are pretty much the same composition and very few places actually mine the rock.

About 3 months ago. That's probably the only picture I have dry, but you can see the white on the few spots it was chipped.

 

[Reefahholic]

Liferock is not actually 100% limestone its man made agracrete. Does it contain pieces of limestone/quarried calcium carbonate rock probably but the majority is concrete. Break a piece of Marco rock whats inside? More white rock. Order a box of liferock and open it up, take out one of the many broken arches. Whats inside? Grey concrete and bits and pieces of calcium carbonate.

I believe Caribsea did make some man-made rock also. However a lot of it was mined out of Australia or the Dominican Republic if I remember correctly, and is real natural rock. More likely Australia. They were fusing some of it with bacteria.

Either way it’s not the Florida quarried rock. If I had to pick, I would go with the caribsea for sure if you want the least amount of problems. If you want to Aquascape very easily then go with Marco, but just be ready for potential headaches for the first year at least.

I have two different Marco aquascapes. One is sitting in a cow pasture right now. The other one is in the bottom of a river down the road. I’m currently about to do a scape with Pukani, Haitian, Tonga, and Marshall Islands, but will incorporate some premium Marco shelf as nothing else has that look. I personally hate Marco, but it’s hard to find premium shelf rock that thin. Otherwise, I would never use it again.

 

[twentyleagues]

It's definitely a mix

You can find some artificial rubble and whatnot in the liferock pieces, along with large chunks of pure calcium carbonate

You make a good argument to go with marco rocks over liferock though, just for that reason.

I have made agracrete in the past Liferock looks just like it. I used white portland cement, crushed oyster shell, a little crushed coral and some little pieces of marco. It worked well, but the curing process took months. Weekly water changes in the curing totes GH/KH would spike to 15+ ph started around 12 and phosphates would show up on the api phosphate test in excess of 2 if I remember it correctly. Pretty sure I went through near 1000g of rodi water. I really dont see a large company that is kicking out 1000s of these doing that. I have heard you can use muratic acid to cut down the cure time. I made an arch that was 3' long and about 5" wide about 2" thick, A "tower" that was about the size of a softball around and 18" tall and some flat panels with shelves for the back of the tank those were 18"tall and all 3 measured 48" long. So agracrete is viable it was in my tank for years no issues that I could tell came directly from it. I have just wondered about their curing process after seeing quite a few really bad ugly stage tanks using their product. I should figure out where I stuck that box and run some tests.

 

[Reefahholic]

Thats weird to me. I have added Marco rock to tanks in the past with no issues they were running though. I was out of the hobby for 12 years. I did my first dry rock start up in January been going well for the last 8 months getting coralline growth on the rocks no weird/ugly stage.

Sometimes you just get lucky man.

Check out this live stream with Craig Bingman and Mike Paletta.

Go to 7:17 and then go back to 2:20:

 

[twentyleagues]

About 3 months ago. That's probably the only picture I have dry, but you can see the white on the few spots it was chipped.

Mine were way worse than that. They do use actual rock pieces in it though but the main body of mine was not solid rock. Maybe like @Reefahholic said you actually may have gotten a batch of mined rock.

 

[Anonymous'Reefer90]

Pedí una caja de 4 piezas, 3 de los 4 arcos estaban rotos y eran como los describí. Esto fue hace como máximo 2 años. ¿Qué antigüedad tienen los tuyos? ¿Quizás hayan cambiado? No es gris oscuro, es más bien un blanco roto/gris claro, no es el mismo color que Marco y no parece que se haya formado como una pieza sólida. Según tengo entendido, la roca Marco y otras rocas extraídas como esta tienen prácticamente la misma composición y muy pocos lugares realmente extraen la roca.

En las rocas como en el equipo hay gamas, tengo arcos y rocas de carib sea y efectivamente los arcos son de roca real con piedra fija o similar para darle forma a los arcos y las rocas son rocas naturales carib sea dice que es su gama premium de rocas naturales del mar

 

[twentyleagues]

In the rocks as in the equipment there are ranges, I have arches and rocks of carib sea and indeed the arches are real rock with fixed stone or similar to give shape to the arches and the rocks are natural rocks carib sea says that it is their premium range of natural rocks of the sea

As I said most of mine were broken and I could see the structure inside their paint job. It most definitely was not 100% natural rock I would say more like 30% rock and 70% cement at most. Thats not necessarily a bad thing. As long as they cured the cement properly there should be no issues.

 

[Anonymous'Reefer90]

Como dije, la mayoría de las mías estaban rotas y podía ver la estructura dentro de la pintura. Definitivamente no era 100 % roca natural, diría más bien un 30 % roca y un 70 % cemento como máximo. Eso no es necesariamente algo malo. Mientras hayan curado el cemento correctamente, no debería haber problemas.

Disculpen mi inglés, el traductor es muy malo. Sí, recibí arcos rotos y como dados, unas cuantas rocas y cemento se ven exactamente así, pero es en las rocas o en los tipos donut y cueva, porque también tengo rocas naturales del mar Caribe y prueba de esto, como dicen, es que algunas llegaron rotas y efectivamente eran rocas naturales, tuve que pegar algunas con cianocrilato. Pero si tienen todo del mar Caribe y lo dicen en las cajas que compran, yo diría que es 60% rocas naturales con 40% rocas con cemento.

Los marcados en rojo son de los naturales que te mencione, yo también tengo un arco y entonces, en las rocas nunca tuve problema de algas ni nada, más bien en mi aragonito Carib de grado especial, pero ya se está solucionando y todo va bien, lo que sí me parece raro es que tengo aproximadamente un 8-10% de roca en la pantalla, y filtros cerámicos Maxspect y creo que los filtros cerámicos me están provocando más nitratos, tengo filtros cerámicos para 2500 litros aproximadamente y mi pecera es de 990 así que creo que ahí está el problema.

 

[ReefED!]

Just came back from RAP and checked out the Marco rocks booth

One thing I have to say is that Marco rocks is a lot lighter weight than Caribsea.

I have caribsea liferock right now and I really like it - but the stuff is very dense and heavy, I think I will try Marco rocks for my next build just for the more porous and lightweight nature of it, should be a little easier to build with.

 

[KrisReef]

A LFS I haunt has "live rocks" for sale in three ~150 gallon tanks. I have watched the inventory for many years as natural branch rock was scarce but now has completely vanished. Every once in awhile nice natural branches and shelves would appear and I would grab 20 lbs just to stock pile for a reef I might someday build, or to supply a good person who is trying to start with the old harvested real live rock from an ocean that had coral in it nearby.

I almost took a picture of the man made branches and clusters rock filled tanks last Saturday but I couldn't bring myself to record the destruction of the hobby with this new man made painted rock that looked somewhat like a broken up rotten barn that was carelessly painted horehaus purple-red. Does it look like a coraline covered rock under blues? It doesn'look like liverock.

22 years ago we were driving in Florida and I remember seeing roadway excavators installing utilities and the piles of removed "soil" were 100% crushed coral and ancient liverock petrified reefs. About that same era, these quarry rocks started appearing in natural golden grey for sale dry in some reef shops. Not too many years later, someone started adding "coraline colored" paint and marketing this stuff as an environmentally safe alternative to liverock. It is a crime against nature, imo.

Later on another vacation I visited Cayman Brac and on the windy side of the Island I saw miles of liverock that was tossed up on the beaches by wave action. I salvaged a bleached living coral stranded on the beach, put it in a baggy and brought it home damp in my suitcase and it lived for a long while until a tank crash turned living rock into live rock. I wept and kept reefing. That Island was looking for a dredge to dig out a harbor for small boats to bring Cruisers off the ships and onto the Island to spend money.

Live rock is everywhere in the ocean but it's difficult if not impossible to recycle dredged up live rock from most places around the world where shipping channels are being improved.

The quarry rock can contain significant phosphorus if natural accumulation of bird guano or field amendments have "contaminated" the petrified reefs that it is taken from. I will try and grab a water sample and test the phosphate levels in the painted ladies tanks next time I'm up that way.
I have tested dry rock a few years back but I forget what it was releasing? I don't think it was crazy high but it wasn't zero either.

Painted rock is real.

 

[Nami]

I have always like the look of marco rocks even though I do not own/need them yet until the next upgrade. But I'm also worried it will go through a bad case of uglies compared to live rock.

 

[ReefED!]

You can avoid that by having some seed from another tank

For my upgrade I'll be using my cycled "live rock" sump rocks once again in the sump