Live rock? Is it worth the risk?
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Belgian Anthias
Valuable Member
Marine diversity is essential for a reefaquarium as marine bacteria and nitrifiers are not the same as fresh water bacteria and cultured bacteria used in waste water plants. It is still not clear what strains of bacteria are delivered in a bottle, exactly.
Essential bacteria can be introduced using a small piece of uncleaned natural live rock or marine cultured rock delivered within 24h, but better is to leave the rock and just collect a bit of seagrass and corraline algae from natural rock, send asap by express delivery 24h.
By introducing healthy corals part of the natural coral holobiont is introduced wich includes most valuable marine bacteria and diversity.
There is no need for transporting stones from one side of the globe to the other side, certainly not for biological filtration purposes as the filtration capacity is very limited and comparable to base rock in the same circumstances.
Real "Live rock" may introduce a lot of diversity, wanted and unwanted.
Try to get some corraline algae, bottom sand, and or filtermedia, from a friend.
Patience is our best friend.
Essential bacteria can be introduced using a small piece of uncleaned natural live rock or marine cultured rock delivered within 24h, but better is to leave the rock and just collect a bit of seagrass and corraline algae from natural rock, send asap by express delivery 24h.
By introducing healthy corals part of the natural coral holobiont is introduced wich includes most valuable marine bacteria and diversity.
There is no need for transporting stones from one side of the globe to the other side, certainly not for biological filtration purposes as the filtration capacity is very limited and comparable to base rock in the same circumstances.
Real "Live rock" may introduce a lot of diversity, wanted and unwanted.
Try to get some corraline algae, bottom sand, and or filtermedia, from a friend.
Patience is our best friend.
Belgian Anthias
Valuable Member
Add some F2 media from time to time.!?
stevieduk
Active Member
i stand by untouched natural living rock. I still have and am using rock that I got in the early seventies, yes a few pests came with it but a sharp pointy stick got rid of them eventually , its still full of mini clams and tube worms and i see new things from it even now after all these years.
Could not bear to have a tank with clean white rock in it. My tank is a little slice of the ocean for my pleasure, not a showpiece to impress visitors.
Could not bear to have a tank with clean white rock in it. My tank is a little slice of the ocean for my pleasure, not a showpiece to impress visitors.
ou12004
Active Member
I just added new live rock to my 5 year old tank and paid a small fortune for it. It was covered in sponges, macro algae, corals, tunicates and all sorts of other life that would be very difficult to add individually. Both ways can be successful and both ways can fail. As far as bad algae goes I really believe that you are less likely to get bad algae if your rock is covered in beneficial stuff already
Todd1white
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I started mine with real live rock flown in from the FLA Atlantic coast. After dealing with all the uglies of a new tank, aiptasia took over and now I'm having to reboot the entire system. Going with AquaRocks structure and no live sand either. Will be going super slow on the new startup, but I would never recommend live rock to another newbie.
Tankandspank
Community Member
I know this is an old thread, but new member here curious about the live vs. dry discussion. In this thread, "live" rock seems to be referring to rock from an established system with tons of bacteria and other life forms including possible hitchikers, etc. while "dry" rock is rock that has not been in an aquarium with no life whatsoever.
Why then when I am looking at various online fish stores, do they refer to all rock as "live" and then subcategorize as "wet" and "dry"? From what I gathered from this thread, "dry live rock" is an oxymoron. Why does bulkreefsupply.com only sell "dry live rock"? Are the marcorocks products that they sell actually clean, dry rocks without any life on them and no risk for pests?
Why then when I am looking at various online fish stores, do they refer to all rock as "live" and then subcategorize as "wet" and "dry"? From what I gathered from this thread, "dry live rock" is an oxymoron. Why does bulkreefsupply.com only sell "dry live rock"? Are the marcorocks products that they sell actually clean, dry rocks without any life on them and no risk for pests?
Wicky48
Active Member
Just a question but the rock that comes from Coralife, does this not have bacteria encapsulated in it to cycle your tank faster? There is Live ocean rock, live cultured, dry rock and then the stuff they sell.
Dry live rock is meaningless. There is live rock and there is dry rock. Macrorocks are dry rock and they are devoid of life and pests. Some other dry rock products that used to be more common were live rock that was cleaned by power washing or chemical methods. This dry rock didn't have pests or hitchhikers but it did have dead organic material which caused lots of nutrients to leech out and cause algae blooms for months or even years.
Macrorock doesn't have those issues since it is from ancient reefs.
Tankandspank
Community Member
Awesome. Thanks for the reply. Makes sense. Just weird naming from BRS.
Tankandspank
Community Member
Actually, one follow up. Why does the BRS page for the Reefsaver Macrorocks say this:
"We highly recommend curing all dry live rock before being introduced into an established aquarium. "
If this is dry rock, what am I curing?
Wyvern
Active Member
Seems like a mystery box, you might luck out and get awesome critters and bacteria to kick start your system into a beautiful reef- getting exactly what you want.
Or you can get gorilla crabs, mantis shrimp, parasitic copepods, fire worms and nasty aiptasia.
It's a risk I wasn't willing to take, so now I fight the uglies.
Or you can get gorilla crabs, mantis shrimp, parasitic copepods, fire worms and nasty aiptasia.
It's a risk I wasn't willing to take, so now I fight the uglies.
SFREEF3R
Active Member
I had the same species of Eunicid worm. Was a model citizen until it took a liking to one particular zoa. Fortunately it lived in a piece of rock that was easy to remove from my rock structure and was able to remove him
Would still do live rock again to start. But definitely more cognizant of the risk of pests now.
DanConnor
Valuable Member
Excess phosphates
Tankandspank
Community Member
Got it. What does the process of “curing” to remove phosphates look like?
Nowhere close to real LR. It will contain Trace Elements but little if any bacteria. You would have to add your bacteria by which ever method you decide.
My opinion is order the real deal. When you get it, wash the LR several times in buckets then to a small QT tank. Save the buckets of water. Pour most of the water out, then allow the water to settle. Look in the bucket/s at night with a flashlight. See what you find. Then repeat and wash the rocks again in new buckets of tank water (then your doing a WC on your QT)..Put LR back into QT. Examine buckets. If you do this for a month or so you have a high chance of not introducing any Bad hitchhikers with real LR
Belgian Anthias
Valuable Member
As it is mined ( ancient reefs) the rock does not contain organic material?
Belgian Anthias
Valuable Member
How we can do it.
A small piece of "real a live rock", fresh from the sea, not cleaned , is put in a refuge. The refuge is then connected to a tank with " dry" rock, self-made ore mined. This dry rock was cured, has been in boiling and acidic water, was sterilized. This to avoid competition between life already present on and in the "dry" rock and the "live rock" . The fresh " live rock " will release a lot of nutrients in the environment which then will be used for colonizing the sterile rock to become" alive"
In the refuge traps may be installed to catch hitch-hikers and make a selection between them. Corals can be placed on the rock to condition, this way making it easy for the coral for develop its holobiont as competition is limited .
Just one of many options.
A small piece of "real a live rock", fresh from the sea, not cleaned , is put in a refuge. The refuge is then connected to a tank with " dry" rock, self-made ore mined. This dry rock was cured, has been in boiling and acidic water, was sterilized. This to avoid competition between life already present on and in the "dry" rock and the "live rock" . The fresh " live rock " will release a lot of nutrients in the environment which then will be used for colonizing the sterile rock to become" alive"
In the refuge traps may be installed to catch hitch-hikers and make a selection between them. Corals can be placed on the rock to condition, this way making it easy for the coral for develop its holobiont as competition is limited .
Just one of many options.
Last edited:
Forty-Two
Well-Known Member
Except the problem with Marcorock is that it has no phosphates. In fact - it sucks all of the Phosphates in unless you are dosing at a high level; and if you dont - you get dino's as a result of having no phosphates.
The real story here is that there is no 'perfect path'. All methods have risk. Dry Rock is, IMO a bigger problem and more expensive in the long run than live rock. In fact Im starting to slowly come to the conclusion that the BRS 'methods' with dry rock are problematic at best, but perhaps at worst actually intended as customer engineering ( more problems to solve, more chemicals, more intervention, more $$$ spent).
I did 50/50. In hindsight I wished I had done 80/20 Live to Dry. 50/50 is good, but Ive still gone through a round of diatoms etc, and the leeching of phosphates Im getting from the Indonesian dry rock is a bit annoying (solvable but annoying).
I put marco rock in a bucket for 2-3 weeks with a pump and clean mixed salt water. Them tested the water with Hanna and got 0.00 PO4.
I guess I was a little surprised. I am very consistent Hanna user though.
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