Let's ROCK! What type of rock do you have in your reef tank and do you love it?

[ultraArcite]

1. What type of rock do you have in your reef tank?​

I use CaribSea LifeRock

2. What do you like or dislike about it?​

I like that it comes pest-free and is painted to look like it has coraline algae on it. I also like that it has no impact on the world's reefs. It's also much cheaper than Real Reef Rock.

 

[jeffp1]

Fiji rock that have been running since 1996. Do have some old Tampa Bay rock in storage.

 

[FrontRangeReefer]

1. What type of rock do you have in your reef tank?​

I started my tank with CaribSea LifeRock, specifically the Waterbox Bundle for my Marine X 60.2.

2. What do you like or dislike about it?​

The Caribsea LifeRock was nice for a newer reefer like me for a few reasons: 1. The package came with lots of cool shapes (arches, caves, islands) so as to easily design a nice aquascape, 2. No worrying about hitchhikers and/or parasites, 3. I believe that the bacterial spores painted on it helped me cycle my tank quicker. This last one is anecdotal, but my tank is only a few months old and I already have a significant amount of real coralline growing on the rocks. No real cons that I can think of in my situation.

 

[Rogueaquariums]

Let's rock and roll!

No really, let's talk about ROCK! More specifically the rock we have in our saltwater reef aquariums that make up our beautiful aquascapes!

1. What type of rock do you have in your reef tank?

2. What do you like or dislike about it? (NOT YOUR AQUASCAPE but the actual rock)


You get a BIG THUMBS UP for sharing a photo of your ROCK!

I have Caribsea life rock as well as eight 24” pieces of the mega arch rock. I like how you can stack it and create several caves and hidey holes for the fish. Structurally it’s sound.

 

[mbuch21]

Lots of Tonga and a smattering of Fiji. All collected and purchased piece by piece second hand from folks taking down their aquariums. The hunt was half the fun. Think I spent more on the rocks than the fish.

 

[kenchilada]

Tampa Bay Saltwater. My tanks been up since February and I’ve already got coralline and pods going wild on the glass.

NO UGLY PHASE! You kids and your dry rock... have fun with that.

 

[N3mo]

1. What type of rock do you have in your reef tank?

Locally made rock In South Africa.

2. What do you like or dislike about it?

Like how easy it was to work with, hard to break but easy to make a good scape with the various shapes and sizes you get.

Current scape still a work in progress, making some smaller Ledges that can click onto the scape when needed for more real estate..

 

[Dempsey941]

Caribsea life rock combination of shapes and the regular rock. 40 breeder probably around 30-40 lbs.

I like the instant purple and preformed shapes it has, I dislike the lack of pores in the rock itself so you really have to make caves manually with your aquascape.

I did look at the branch rock that caribsea has ...was unimpressed.

8/10 would use again with something else.

 

[Ed olson]

Currently all I use is dry rock for me to seed. I don't like the Florida version of live rock. But, in my previous tanks, I used all Walt Smith Fiji Live Rock. Now that was LIVE ROCK! Pics from 2005.

Those were the days...

 

[GrumpyAlison]

I use dry rock most of the time purely because it's cheaper and I don't mind waiting for the ugly brown to be over. I do think live rock is interesting with the hitchhikers that can come in and I've used it before. The thing I really like about dry is it's easier to store and you can do NSA aquascapes with it that don't need to be misted every 20 minutes to keep the bacteria alive

Picture of my rock/aquascape for fun. I've actually had some of these rocks in a tank for like 2 years and for some reason I don't get a huge amount of coraline growth. It's a mix of reefsaver rocks and some formerly live rock that sat outside for a while and is naturally purple but not actually live anymore. Assembled with the marco mortar

 

[vlangel]

Most of my live rock is 20 years old. I got a lot of it from broken down tanks from folks who were tired of their aquariums. That has no doubt help with diversity of bio life in my tank and is probably a big reason that my own aquarium system is very stable.

My mature rock allows me to have a large density of fish so that they feel safe. Also the tank gets adequate filtration without the additions of skimmer, socks or other equipment and allows me to run a simple system without much maintenance.

0 new items by Dawn Gilson

photos.app.goo.gl

 

[MSarro27]

40lbs. mixed Addictive Reef Keeping Hawaiian PURPLE Dry Reef Rock / shelf rock

 

[Mickeyt1reef]

All dry. Cycled for 4 months

 

[Shadowfax]

I currently have caribsea liferock and caribsea special grade sand in my 120 and live ocean rock and live sand in my 55. I love the aqua scape but I hate the rock. When I set up the 55, I really enjoyed watching all the new things appearing on a regular basis. It was just a great experience. I didn't experience any ugly phase. When I set up my 120, I took time building my aqua scape and really enjoyed that part. Once I had the tank cycled though, it became a very boring and stressful journey. A few weeks after turning on the lights the ugly stage started and I've been fighting it ever since. I seriously considered pulling out the rock and starting over several times. I'm hoping that this is my forever tank but if I ever do setup another tank it will definitely be with live rock and live sand. The pics are of both tanks at around 6-8 months. Big difference.

I did the same as you with the sand and rock but added Marinepure Biomedia Plate.

 

[robert teseo]

tbs live rock all the way. been using it for years, would not change anything.

 

[tritonpower]

I started with 3 "live rocks" from my LFS and the rest marcos rock and a bunch of amazon rocks.
The live rock with the purple monti on it brought coralline algae and bubble algae which I control with emerald crabs.
The upside down Y rock on the left brought coralline algae, aiptasia, and vermetid snails. LOTs of vermetid snails. Aiptasia is gone so far with 2 aiptasiaX treatments. Vermetid I somewhat control with bumblebees and the emerald crabs.
Are the live rocks worth the trouble they have brought? I think so, but if aiptasia were a bigger issue perhaps not. The vermetids and bubble algae have been a headache but also a fun challenge to find natural ways to control them.
If I were to do it over I would probably do it the same way. Just hope I never have to!

 

[Klyle]

I started my tank with dry rocks...Marco rock. Much patience needed but definitely worth it in the end! No pest organisms is the greatest benefit. A far cry from the live rock we used in the 90s. In my opinion, one of the coolest (and scariest) part of reefing in the 90s was all the crazy critters that would magically appear shortly after setting up a new tank! I was a 90s reefer, retired, now I am a 2020s reefer. It was mind blowing getting back into reefing after 20 years and starting with dry rock was the craziest idea to me. Now I can say I'm glad I did!

 

[M Stein]

Rock type
Reefsaver https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/brs-reef-saver-dry-aquarium-live-rock.html

Pros
1) Its incredibly cheap
2) No pests
3) Mine are already covered in coralline algea after only a couple of months (I don't know if it's the rock or the system but my coralline grows fast. I didn't even need to add bottled coralline/ it just spread from my frags)
4) You need less pound per gallon. (according to the product description) That means a very porous structure that is great for hosting p

Cons
Harder to aquascape (that might just be because I'm not very good at it. I didn't bother shaping the rock)

Here's a picture of the tank with the lights on.

Here's a picture with them off so you can see the coralline (sorry about the glare).
All that coralline is natural. No painted rock.

 

[weamdog]

I run a combination. 220 is all Marco. 29g has live rock from the ocean and the rest are real reef fake rock.

for some reason, my Marco lost it's nice purple coralline, decide to grow in my glass instead. Nice thing about the Marco is the flexibility. Each Tang has their own little house.

As a matter of fact, just ordered some new Marco for my 125g which is getting restarted over the next two weeks because the 7 fish I brought home from thatfishplace two weeks ago all died (not taking any chances).

 

[NashobaTek]

I prefer to use coral skeletons and I will be adding some real out of the ocean live rock from a lfs several hours away from me. I do have some base rock in the tank, but I'm disappointed with it. It's as white a year and a half in as it was day one. So after adding stuff from Indo Pacific out of Hawaii, I'm going with live rock out of the ocean.