How’s my logic? - adding biodiversity to promote stability to a new tank start with dead rock.

[Zagreus]

How’s my logic? - adding biodiversity to promote stability to a new tank start with deadrock.

I am coming back off a 2 year hiatus from the hobby and am starting up a brand new tank with Marco dry rock with no live rock to try and avoid the kind of hitchhikers I do not want. I plan to do at least a 4 month cycle before adding coral.

I convinced a top 3 coral aquafarm that most of us buy and or have corals from and have the utmost respect for their operation and display tanks, to sell me 3 Brightwell bio-plates that will spend 1- 2 months sitting in the sump of one of their established display reef tanks that will then be transferred alive to my tank sump. I did this because I thought it would add more biodiversity and stability to my tank. Especially because I plan to buy SPS and LPS corals from them. I am not really worried about negative hitchhikers from their tank because they are in the best of the best category. I do not want to name them as this is a little bit of a favor. Is my logic sound?

• Will this in fact add the bio-diversity and have a meaningful impact?
• If so, doesn’t this seem like an easy untapped market?

Zag

 

[Doctorgori]

not a direct answer but biodiversity via off the shelf bacterial products isn’t the same as random bugs off real rock. In fact IME the stuff you want can’t be purchased directly and that’s the stuff under 1” but over 1mm ... sponges, dusters, tunicates, et ... stuff that lives UNDER the rock
IME it’s those organisms that support filtration via intercepting material before the bio filter...
get some good wild pest free rock, it will have the most impact

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'm sure some folks will buy into the idea, but I do not think there is any evidence that it is "useful" to do in any context other than biodiversity.

 

[Zagreus]

IME the stuff you want can’t be purchased directly and that’s the stuff under 1” but over 1mm ... sponges, dusters, tunicates, et ... stuff that lives UNDER the rock
IME it’s those organisms that support filtration via intercepting material before the bio filter...
get some good wild pest free rock, it will have the most impact

Thank you Doctorgori. I am not trying to be smart here. How can i get some good pest free rock per your quote above please? What do you suggest please?

 

[Doctorgori]

good luck on that ...last check my LFS wanted $50/lb for real branch rock ... keep bumping this or created a new post wtb real tonga branch or sumthin
but yeah you really want micro brittle stars, tunicates, pineapple sponges, macro sponges, micro feather dusters, et ...those things do a lot for a established tank ...I mean a lot

 

[Zagreus]

I'm sure some folks will buy into the idea, but I do not think there is any evidence that it is "useful" to do in any context other than biodiversity.

Thank you Randy. In addition i will add bottled bacteria and a coraline, cheato, pods kit from Algea barn. I have no source on pest free live rock. I am curious, how you would start a new tank that will be mixed reef with SPS? What else would you add that you could not pull from your own tanks?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thank you Randy. In addition i will add bottled bacteria and a coraline, cheato, pods kit from Algea barn. I have no source on pest free live rock. I am curious, how you would start a new tank that will be mixed reef with SPS? What else would you add that you could not pull from your own tanks?

That's an interesting question that I have not pondered lately. I used real wild Florida live rock from TBS way back when, and added some large tonga rock over the years. I was thrilled with the Florida rock and all the creatures on it. I might do the TBS farmed rock now, but I know it wouldn't be the same as what I initially got.

 

[Zagreus]

That's an interesting question that I have not pondered lately. I used real wild Florida live rock from TBS way back when, and added some large tonga rock over the years. I was thrilled with the Florida rock and all the creatures on it. I might do the TBS farmed rock now, but I know it wouldn't be the same as what I initially got.

Thank you Randy for your thoughts! I am actually going to the Keys this weekend. Maybe i will bring a piece of live rock of two from Sea Camp on Big Pine Key after I research the law for legality and give it a good look over for aptasia, fire coral and any other unwelcome guests. Thank you as always for helping people like me and your incredible contribution over the years to this field!

 

[HuduVudu]

In my build thread I have documented what I recieved from Live Rock and Reef ... which is Florida mariculture. This is the pretty much the same rock that you would get from TBS. To date I have had 5 majanos (aptasia). What I got off of it is awesome and I love doing this because it makes getting started in reef keeping really easy.

 

[92Miata]

I'm sure some folks will buy into the idea, but I do not think there is any evidence that it is "useful" to do in any context other than biodiversity.

Agree.


I've started tanks recently with a mix of real live rock, and dry rock, and the dry rock is still a mess - waves of hair algae on the dry rock when the real live rock is clean and purple (in the same tank). The issue with dry rock tanks isn't lack of biodiversity - its lack of surface competitors on the dry rock.

 

[ScottB]

This is just opinion, worth exactly what you have paid for it so...

This burning desire to go "pest free" carries with it real downsides, some more long lasting than others. The cycle is the easy part that really cannot go wrong. But after that, the uglies can extend for many months. Still, those phases will pass, it just takes twice as long versus a majority live rock start.

While there will always be exceptions (and exceptional reefers who often defy the odds), dead rock starts really struggle to keep acropora even at 18-24 months.

Lastly, 90% of the folks in the mega dinoflagellate thread ("Are you tired..") started with dead rock, counting on bottled bacteria for "diversity". Creating a natural biome without any real Mother Nature just intuitively does not make sense to me. Especially in the beginning. Dinoflagellates were not really "a thing" back when live rock starts were the norm. 9,909 posts over almost 500 pages. It is the first thing I ask and the answer is almost always the same: dead rock.

I get your logic about colonizing some bricks in another system. It is a compromise with some probable value, just not sure how much. Bacterial film is good; it is just not everything you could do to start your biome.

 

[KrisReef]

How’s my logic? - adding biodiversity to promote stability to a new tank start with deadrock.

avoid the kind of hitchhikers I do not want.

Deadrock takes a lot more time than three days of the resurrection How long to cure and cultivate liverock in a tank is an unknown, but "spontaneous generation" is long disproven so your question becomes how can you get a lot of biodiversity by adding only a few strains of bacteria from a bottle?
The answer you already have. Grab a small clean rock from FLA for Xmas, I am authorizing this collection tell them Santa sent you.

I plan to do at least a 4 month cycle before adding coral.

top 3 coral aquafarm display tanks; 3 Brightwell bio-plates that will spend 1- 2 months sitting in the sump

These plates are a good start but I suspect that the good hitchhikers you will get may not include many of the species that would come from a more complex chunk of rock extracted from the ocean. Sure ocean rocks have pests that you want to avoid but there are going to be a lot more beneficial species available on the rock vs the plate.

Is my logic sound?

• Will this in fact add the bio-diversity and have a meaningful impact?
• If so, doesn’t this seem like an easy untapped market?

Zag

There may be a market here.

Grab that chunk of liverock and toss it into a dark barrel with your dry rock and start cooking! Get a quart of algae from Algae Barn and feed the barrel (Get a doser!) to promote the growth of sponge and bacteria, and everything else that hitchhikes in on the live rock so that life spreads out and inhabits the dry rock. Three months of darkness, then turn on the lights.

And if you want premium Ressurection rock, use lanthanum chloride to drop Phosphates and flatworms to zero in week one. Change water and if P remains at zero then does that back up to low detection. Keep nutrients low and maintain Calcium and alkalinity to keep coralline algae spores alive.

 

[Biokabe]

I'm someone who bought into the trend of starting the tank with dry rock + seeded biodiversity.

Having done that once, I don't think think I'll ever do it again. The problems that it has brought are not worth the benefits of starting 'without pests'. Because long-term... pests still get in. They come in on frag plugs, on coral colonies, in tank water, attached to fish bodies, in the food we feed them, in the air... sometimes I'm not sure how they manage to make it in, but what we call 'pests', Mother Nature calls, "Fantastically well-adapted creatures that find their way into every available niche."

So you don't really solve the problem of pests, but you don't get the benefit of all the microfauna that come with oceanic live rock. No copepod colonies, no sponges, no micro-stars, no amphipods, no worms... and those are the really beneficial and often overlooked members of your CUC. Those are what intercept the smallest and most difficult morsels of food and transform that food into more CUC bodies instead of free ammonia.

In short - starting with only dry rock doesn't give you the solution you're looking for, and it instead gives you a whole new raft of problems, and those new problems are more difficult to solve. Use real live rock, and if you're worried about pests, just use any of the known methods (curing, freshwater dips, hypersalinity, etc.) to reduce their incidence.

 

[jda]

It takes some work and money either way. Some crabs, some algae, maybe an aiptasia and a shrimp from some real live rock takes some time and some resources to sort out - time here is usually a week or two. Dinos, diatoms, cyano, relentless hair algae, removing terrestrial phosphate from dry rock all takes time and resources too - this can take years. Costs can vary. Nothing is free or easy in this hobby.

...and anything can come in on your first frag plug if you don't have a true coral QT, which most do not. This throws a monkey wrench into any plan, so give me the diversity.

Nobody has mentioned this yet, but how well does anybody think that ich tomonts/tomite/whatever fare in tanks with hungry biodiverse ecosystem. WWM used to talk about this a lot, which is long forgotten, but this is why established tanks nearly always fared better with fish once the stuff got established and spread out. While not disease eradication, it works well to keep fish healthy.

Just a reminder, that most of the diverse stuff on real live rock is sensitive to higher levels of building blocks (N&P), chemicals and treatments. Be careful. The stuff can live perpetually in good conditions, but it takes work too.

 

[kartrsu]

I might be an odd one out, but I have had bad effects from adding biodiversity to fight dinos. Was battling amphi dinos for awhile. They were resilient and kept coming back after removal. I thought I’d add some live sand and mud from IPSF, which solved my dino and algae problems, but my corals took a nose dive. I could not pinpoint what it was, parameters all good and stable, ICP test came back all good. I ended up moving my corals to a new tank to save them and tore down my display. Wish I had done a biome test, but feel like I definitely introduced something bad.

 

[ReefEco]

I used real fiji live rock 20 years ago, then maricultured Live Rock (I think TBS) way back when and it was all pretty cool stuff - lots of life on it, but it did have some pests (I had a pistol shrimp eat a goby in one case). I guess there are arguments on both sides, depending on what your style is and patience level. I will be starting my new tank with dry rock to be pest free and also for more aquascape flexibility, and then adding biodiversity in the form of some of the critters mentioned above that some think you can't get without live rock, from IPSF.com (Indo Pacific Sea Farms.) They have a $99 special and a bunch of add on kits, from pods and snails, to bristle worms, spaghetti worms, mini-brittle stars, etc. as well as live sand "mud" chock full of life. Almost all of it is aquacultured too. I wouldn't necessarily say that adding the mud (Live San Activator) is pest-free, I'm sure there are some nasties in it, but I usually add it all right after the cycle and don't add anything for like 2 months to let it run its course.

But I feel good going this route over using live rock, since to me it is the best of both worlds - less risk of most of the pests we don't want, and at least some of the biodiversity we do want. Sponges seem to appear no matter what, and it is just about the only thing I can't get from IPSF. I'm a manic quarantine person, so I don't really buy into the idea that pests are going to get into the tank no matter what. (Seriously, I quarantine my snails before I add them...) I might be in the minority though. I think it totally is true that starting with dry rock takes longer, for sure, but that is fine with me. I kind of like the idea of "farming" my biodiversity by adding what I want in a controlled way - building the ecosystem from the bottom up. I will say though, that discovering a new critter pop out of the live rock you'd never seen before is definitely something I miss.

 

[Tired]

The problem with trying to build an ecosystem yourself, aside from availability of critters, is that we don't know what's in a good reef ecosystem. There's an incredible density of species. A cubic meter of reef can be relied upon to have dozens, if not hundreds, of different species of multicellular organisms in it. That's not getting into algae, or bacteria. We don't know what of that is needed for a healthy reef. Until someone comes out with a definitive list of what all comes in on live rock, and exactly what of it is and isn't beneficial, there's no way to know what would be good to add to the reef.

As for pests, the worst ones are almost all things that come in as tiny spores. Dinos come to mind. The only way to never have any dinos in your tank would be to never add anything to it, and even then some might find their way in. Quarantine does nothing for them. The thing that DOES keep them at bay, is all the stuff that can come in on some really nice, established rock. Some of which is all the different varieties of algae, which you can't really buy to add on purpose in any other form.
What other big pests do people worry about? From what I've seen, the things that really cause problems in tanks are different algaes. Which, again, spores. They could be on a coral frag, or even the coral skeleton itself, and pass through quarantine unnoticed. They could sit for years before conditions swing in a way that lets them pop up. Aiptasia are one that I know people are scared of, but Aiptasia-X will handle a few easily, and berghia will eradicate them from a tank if it comes down to it. Bobbit worms are very rare, as are parasitic isopods. Crabs are more common but are pretty easy to trap out, and honestly aren't that bad when they're small anyway. Mantises, rarer, and again can be trapped out. Bristleworms are beneficial, fireworms really rare. Vermatids are bad for some people, but given how many of those people also have dry rock, and how many tanks have a few vermatids but no problems, I wonder if the problem with vermatids is lack of competition.

IMO, every non-quarantine reef tank should be started with at least one piece of nice live rock. More is better, but at least have something. Even a few pieces will at least bring in multiple algae and bacteria strains, and hopefully some good scavengers. I get that some people like to have the really wild aquascapes that you need dry rock in specific shapes to properly put together and cure the epoxy on, but even those would benefit from some live rock hidden somewhere.

OP, I would say that adding materials from a known disease-free tank is generally a good idea. If nothing else, you'll get more bacteria strains than you had already. See if you can get them to sell you a few big handfuls of sand, too.
And live rock is a BIG no-no. The only people who are allowed to do it are people who previously put that stuff out there as dry rock, and have all sorts of licensing. I read up on Florida harvesting regulations for marine life, and you cannot take the rock. Even if you're collecting a legal coral, like zoas, you have to leave the rock behind. I think you're allowed to take a very small amount of rock attached to the base of a gorgonian? Not sure about that. You definitely aren't allowed to just go grab some live rock to take home.

 

[ReefEco]

@Tired - Hmm... If we extend your logic of not knowing what goes into a real reef ecosystem and therefore we shouldn't do it, then we shouldn't have reef tanks at all I guess - since adding certain corals and fish is also just selective additions based on availability of organisms? Like I said, I think there are merits on both sides - starting with dry rock and live rock, but certainly adding more "non-pest" critters rather than less, and attempting to add biodiversity - even if those critters may battle it out and reach some kind of artificial equilibrium - is better than not adding any microfauna at all? Pods, snails, sponges, hermits, some non-predatory scavenger worms - are all relatively safe critters to add with at least mostly known benefits and "jobs" in our tanks, which is why we add them. Even those that start tanks with live rock often boost pod populations periodically, and replenish other clean up crew. Should we not do that either? Of course we are always building incomplete, artificial approximations of real reef biodiversity and can't possibly expect to have the full range of organisms that are present, that balance each other, and reproduce on real reefs - even when using live rock. Without the intricate food webs present on real reefs, everything from pods to bacteria in our tanks, using live rock or critter kits, will likely succumb over time to a trend toward mono-culture and single species domination. But, adding some critters that are relatively known quantities in reasonable proportions, especially if they are aquacultured, I think can only be helpful and brings us that much closer to the "natural" systems some of us are trying to approximate. Or fooling ourselves we are approximating : ) Many ways to skin the cat - I don't think any particular way is wrong, just different costs, investments of time, and according to your particular reefing style.

 

[Sarlindescent]

For the first time setting up my frag tank, I bought a gallon of established/cultured sponge rock. Needless to say, my prior tank crashed hard from what I think was a bad batch of salt. I added that rock and some bottled bacteria and moved a lot of coral over day one. Most of them survived and some thrived.

I did have some dino issues and a small ugly phase, but it was far smoother than my other attempts. I will add that this time I had a CaRx, so that's kind of cheater mode, but yeah, overall a success. I feel more biodiversity would help, but it was a major boost. Honestly, I would pay $100/lb for some really good rock as the savings on dead coral would far outweigh it.

 

[Deep]

And live rock is a BIG no-no. The only people who are allowed to do it are people who previously put that stuff out there as dry rock, and have all sorts of licensing. I read up on Florida harvesting regulations for marine life, and you cannot take the rock. Even if you're collecting a legal coral, like zoas, you have to leave the rock behind. I think you're allowed to take a very small amount of rock attached to the base of a gorgonian? Not sure about that. You definitely aren't allowed to just go grab some live rock to take home.

Sourcing live rock is getting harder. And I am assuming it will only get more so in future to the point that it may even be rare. So do folks really have a choice. I see a lot of posts saying live rock is better, but even if it is do we really have a choice ? Or we do we have to transition to using dry rock and learn to successfully setup a reef with that ?