Seeding Dry Rock - Avoiding Pests

[midatlanticdm]

I am going to be moving early next year and I was going to start curing and seeding some dry rock to start a new display once we’re in the new house.

I was curious if anyone has any input on ways to best seed the new rock without allowing any pests to transfer over. The two ive only had issues with in my tanks are vermetid snails and mantis shrimp.

Current plan was to use a stock tank I have from my last transfer. I would have the live rock below with the cured rock above in an old drilled tank I have. This should work on the mantis shrimp but looking for others experience to try and avoid vermetid transferring as much as I can.

 

[Subsea]

“Vermetid snail reproduction involves
sexual reproduction, where males release sperm packets (spermatophores) caught by females in mucous nets, followed by internal fertilization and the development of brooded embryos within the female's tube until they metamorphose and settle as free-swimming larvae, eventually attaching to a substrate to begin their sessile life.”

If spores are in the water and the two tanks are connected, “Houston, we have a problem”.

 

[midatlanticdm]

“Vermetid snail reproduction involves
sexual reproduction, where males release sperm packets (spermatophores) caught by females in mucous nets, followed by internal fertilization and the development of brooded embryos within the female's tube until they metamorphose and settle as free-swimming larvae, eventually attaching to a substrate to begin their sessile life.”

If spores are in the water and the two tanks are connected, “Houston, we have a problem”.

Yeah that was my worry. Wonder if it’s less likely with seeded sand than rocks that obviously have vermetid snails on them?

 

[Subsea]

Yeah that was my worry. Wonder if it’s less likely with seeded sand than rocks that obviously have vermetid snails on them?

What are you seeding sand with? I assume bacteria in a bottle, which means nitrogen fixation bacteria only.

In 55 years of reefing, I have not experienced vermetid snails, so I am not your best source for dealing with that. However, I am a big believer in diversity, multiple food webs and recycling nutrients into the microbial food web to feed diverse invertebrate. For those purposes, I use diver collected live rock & live sand from Florida’s GulfCoast. Consider setting up sumpless tank using ammonia to establish nitrogen fixation bacteria in dry sand & dry rock, then bring in diver collected live sand & live rock.

 

[midatlanticdm]

What are you seeding sand with? I assume bacteria in a bottle, which means nitrogen fixation bacteria only.

In 55 years of reefing, I have not experienced vermetid snails, so I am not your best source for dealing with that. However, I am a big believer in diversity, multiple food webs and recycling nutrients into the microbial food web to feed diverse invertebrate. For those purposes, I use diver collected live rock & live sand from Florida’s GulfCoast. Consider setting up sumpless tank using ammonia to establish nitrogen fixation bacteria in dry sand & dry rock, then bring in diver collected live sand & live rock.

Thanks for your input. The options were either diver collected from TBS or aquabiomics, or put some in my sump for a month or two while the dry rock is curing.

This is the process I took on my current 210, but still ended up with vermetids, but I don’t know if they came in on the live rock or possibly some corals. I was pretty thorough with QT and cleaning exposed skeletons before moving into the display but still had issues.

 

[LiverockRocks]

Thanks for your input. The options were either diver collected from TBS or aquabiomics, or put some in my sump for a month or two while the dry rock is curing.

This is the process I took on my current 210, but still ended up with vermetids, but I don’t know if they came in on the live rock or possibly some corals. I was pretty thorough with QT and cleaning exposed skeletons before moving into the display but still had issues.

Thanks for considering TBS products. If you are worried about mantis, the sump is a great place to add diver collected rock. Depending upon you set up; overflow or media chambers in AIOs are another place you can add rock.

-for your knowledge vermetids do not live on the TBS farm