Removing Live Rock.

TreyC2010

But baby, the fish need it....
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I have a 150 gal tank that’s a little over a year old. I had about 130ish pounds of live rock and removed about 30 or so to change up the aquascape for more negative space. (It looks great.)

My question is: Is there anything special that I should do to help the tank recover from removing it?

I have a few marine pure plates in there. I can add another, or I can leave it alone. Thanks!
 

Spieg

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Are you seeing any change in water parameters? I wouldn't do anything unless there is a need.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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You do not need it, don't dose anything or replace its surface area, remove it if you want.

if you remove it without stirring up detritus elsewhere, no cycle will happen. you can remove half of your live rock and the rule still holds, I have threads where we do this for pages in rescaping work. half your current rock load is beyond the filtration surface area needs for your whole fish load and all tank waste generation. there wont be a shortage after thirty pounds is gone. relocate it if you want to, but its more areas that need cleaning / waste uptake space too its not providing any critical link in your system, its expendable surface area just like the sand is.

people who own seneye meters and do these changes, and report the logs uploaded to the system, are changing the rules on how we were all originally taught regarding surface area in the reef tank. back when every action generated a .5 total ammonia reading, the world was dependent on bottle bac and waaay to much surface area in reefing. enter the dawn of the negative aquascape approach. your whole fish load can be carried in a negative aquascape setup, a tenth of your current live rock.

if removing rocks, or adjusting the scape to access rocks to be removed kicks up clouding, that's bad and can harm the system or at minimum fuel small invasion outbreaks like gha or cyano, it needs cleaning if the system is this accumulated. removing the surface area isn't the risk locus
 
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