SPS not thriving in Dead Rock system vs Live Rock system .

[Piranhapat]

I just started my new tank. I decided to try something different. I used all dry dead rock. I wanted no pest good or bad. Tanked cycled started adding fish. Water pars excellent. Alk 8 -cal 420-nitrates 5 ppm- phos- 02 , Mag- 1350. Salinity 35- Very stable. But for some reason the SPS frags just stood the same no growth. Plenty of flow and plenty of lighting. Exactly had to lower white led lights. Did better with more blues. But never gotten the SPS to encrusted. My question is the system to new and not mature or too clean. Is it a bacteria thing that we fully don't understand . I hear a few people say the same thing when they started from a new tank. Once they added live Rock SPS started to thrive.

 

[tdileo]

It is probably because the system is not mature. Even when parameters seem to be perfect and stable there is still an issue of the system not being mature, and I’m not sure why. I would suggest you just give it time and it should begin to grow.

 

[Bpb]

+1. While there are exceptions to every rule, generally speaking, acropora tend to just do better in more mature systems. They pick up on more than just the basic 5 parameters most of us test for. Heavy sponge growth, lots of bacteria, nutrient rich but not dirty water, lots of microfauna...all of that equals happier acros and faster growth. New dry rock tanks may look great on paper but they’re pretty desolate biologically. Not much going on and the acros don’t typically appreciate that too much.

 

[Scorpius]

Mike Paletta and Sanjay and those in Europe have found that dry rock systems take anywhere from 18-24 months to be able to handle sps especially Acropora

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

I started with dry BRS reefsaver rock, it took around 8 months or so for me to have great success with stable parameters and good coral growth, now my tank is almost 2 years old and my rock looks more live-rock-like than the maricultured stuff my LFS gets. It takes longer to mature as others have said. I didn't try acropora until I think April or May of this year which would put my tank at 16-17 months old.

 

[tankstudy]

Might be due to the massive biodiversity on the rock.

Compared to having to put in everything individually when using dry rock, a majority of the biodiversity comes in a single package.

For example, in my 20 nuvo with all dry rock, I had to introduce pods, bristles and all sorts of other organisms individually over a period of many months. Each introduction changed the system and it took time for balance to occur.

 

[landlubber]

i've had the exact same experience and was also puzzled not to mention having to deal with dino's and algae even when phosphates and nitrates are controlled meticulously.
american reef channel covered this exact topic this week on their channel and interestingly Mike Paletta who is about as experienced as anyone out there found the same results from dry rock as well.
it seems like you either roll the dice with live rock from another tank, settle for a tank full of soft corals until things mature or throw your wallet into the fire trying to find acropora that will hang on.

 

[Scorpius]

Or you buy dry rock and cycle it for longer then we're normally used to. Like 6+ months, but who wants to do that.

 

[Piranhapat]

i've had the exact same experience and was also puzzled not to mention having to deal with dino's and algae even when phosphates and nitrates are controlled meticulously.
american reef channel covered this exact topic this week on their channel and interestingly Mike Paletta who is about as experienced as anyone out there found the same results from dry rock as well.
it seems like you either roll the dice with live rock from another tank, settle for a tank full of soft corals until things mature or throw your wallet into the fire trying to find acropora that will hang on.

Yes, I saw that episode. I just experimented on my frag tank. Which also is brand new and running. I only have bio cubes to hold the bacteria. Otherwise no rocks. I took out the frags from DT since they were not doing good. I came across Phyco pure. I add that to frag tank and I'm seeing color and growth in the frag tank. I'm wondering if this would boost the zooxanthellae in DT and would help speed up the maturity of the tank.

 

[jda]

There are some other theories that the mined terrestrial rock can also be releasing some sort of compound or metal that cannot be tested for that eventually leaves via water changes. There are some anecdotes that people that do lots of water changes can get the timeframe down.

I don't think that it is any secret that dry/dead rock tanks are set back anywhere from 6-18 months. People have been saying this for 5 years, but it is getting a lot of run in the last twelve months. Even rock that gets boated to LA from Fiji will be ready to contribute bacterially immediately after the cure/cycle and is full of pods, sponges and coralline about 2-4 months, which is what people used to experience before dry/dead rock was available - this is about $2 a pound and worth every penny, IMO.

 

[Zagreus]

I did the same thing as you. I could not keep an acro's alive until close to 7-months in. Some will argue the dead rock time myth is not true and show you pictures of there system doing fine with dead rock as early as 7 months. I am not experienced enough to argue. I am simple sharing my personal experience . I am now more successful in keeping acros with some encrusting. But i can tell you i am no where close to the growth rates of people, even on this thread, that are growing acros with mature live rock systems.

 

[Abhishek]

Ok sorry to really sound like a rebel but my tank is around 11 months old and started acros around 8 months back .
Tank has all dead rocks and neither my nutrients are anywhere low as it takes to get bacteria enough to work like live rocks .
For the first 3 months , I did seed my tank with atleast 2 orders of 10000 pods from algaebarn and I grow and also buy phytos and dose them every single day .
Tank is infested with sponges although I never bought any specifically .
Also there are aiptasia which I don't mind as my CBB keeps them in check .
I might have been lucky but I never faced issue with dead rocks and acros . Ofcourse I have try my best to bring as much diversity as possible .
Will I again do dry rocks in future ? Probably not but I wanted to see how it works and I have no complaints .


Regards,
Abhishek

 

[Ibn]

^ started with dead rocks from BRS (reef saver) and then swapped it completely for another type of dead rocks (BRS Tonga simple branch). Would I do dead rocks in the future? Absolutely, since I love Tonga branch and don't want to spend a wad on live Tonga.

 

[ikolbaba06]

I started with dry brs pukani. While I love how porous it is. I would likely not buy it again as my only rock. I would buy it again if I had it mixed with regular live rock. It’s much cheaper and you do get less hitchhikers but risk having a barren tank for at least 5 months. I would add my opinion that the boom in cyano and dinos all over the forums is also correlated with dry rock systems and a tank biological maturity issue. I started my 120 originally with live rock back in 2009. I never had any issues with cyano and dinos. I set the tank up again about a year and a half ago with dry rock and had many more issues. A compounding factor is the use of nopox and I see that ulns systems started with dry rock are ticking time bombs. Just read the manual for zeovit and their recommendation for using real live rock.

 

[ReefBum]

For the first time a couple of years ago I started a tank with 100% dry rock versus using live rock. I had many issues with the tank, including dinos, and just could not grow SPS like I had in the past in tanks I started with live rock. Agree with the opinion that a tank started with 100% dry rock lacks the necessary biodiversity, at the beginning, beneficial to SPS. Re-started the tank with live rock and will not be going the dry rock only route again for a new tank.

 

[Newb73]

+1 It takes about 2 years to cycle a tank into sps mode using the stuff i started with which was also dry.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I've got a 14g that's growing acros well at 6 months. I used wet live rock in it. It still took 6 months to just click. I've got a 35 cube I just put up with dry pukani, I've moved some of the old rock from the 14 over to the sump, and I'll move It all over eventually. It takes time to build all the micro fauna that acros really thrive on. All the microscopic organisms in the water they feed on takes time to build up, even with wet rock.

 

[Punchanello]

I wish that more people distinguished between harvested live rock, harvested and treated dry rock and manufactured rock when they have these discussions. It's very confusing when all non-live rock is referred to dry rock and lots of blanket statements about their capacity to house denitrifying bacteria, leach unknown substances and support biodiversity are made.

Clearly they have very different characteristics and methods of production.

 

[Bouncingsoul39]

I'm glad to see this discussion going. I really wish there was some more experimenting done by some of the experts on real ocean live rock vs. artificial rock, terrestrial rock, or dead dry rock and it's relationship to a reef tank maturing and being able to support the more difficult corals. I've been toying with the idea of writing an article on my own but with work and school I'm super busy. The other issue is that I cannot find any legit data or experiments to put a solid science angle on it which I would need. I want to show the true pros and cons of it and let people make their own decisions.
The old idea was that the use of real ocean live rock was the key to keeping SPS successfully after years of failure. Then there was a big marketing push by vendors of artificial and dead rock and it became the trend to run it, so that's what people asked for and that's what was sold. I'm hoping that the trend in the hobby swings back to real live ocean rock. I'm talking about "boat rock" from Walt Smith specifically. He uses some natural preservative on it, in refrigerated containers that preserve a decent amount of the life within the rock. He still has the rock and can send it to the US again. But when people like Ryan at BRS dislike it strongly and refuse to use it, it becomes a really tough sale because BRS, Marine Depot, and other Youtubers/Bloggers are literally creating and changing markets and demand with their videos. Watch the video by BRS did on live rock and listen to him hammer on about pests and stuff, the same way he hammered on about that China BB power supply. The message in the video is clear: live rock bad, dead rock good. Literally hundreds of thousand of people watch those videos and their impact on the hobby cannot be understated.
I don't want to sound too dramatic, but I really hate the dead rock tank I have right now. It is not a thriving ecosystem. It's just dead. The fish are there but otherwise the tank is devoid of life and it's not what I am used to. After running for 3 months I tried adding some Acro frags and lost all of them over a few weeks. They didn't grow, bleached out and STN'd. The LPS I have are growing and doing great. The one SPS I have that has hung in there is a Bubble Gum Digi which lost it's color and is finally bouncing back now. I am religious about good husbandry practices and the water quality was perfect. At the LFS I used to manage we used to bring in this gorgeous rock from Venuatu that had lots of purple coralline, was very porous and light weight with lots of yellow tunicates on it. God I miss that stuff. I setup a Red Sea Max with it as a bare bottom and had Acros growing great and fully colored up within a few months. Very far from what I have today.

 

[illumnae]

I am using 100% man made dry rock in my tank. I started up the tank once in January this year and ended up tearing it down in April due to an uncontrollable infestation of dinos. In that tank, SPS were not dying (until much later on when they got smothered by the dinos) and exhibited good colouration and polyp extension, but I experienced the same issue that they were simply not encrusting.

After bleaching the entire system to get rid of dinos, I restarted the tank again in May and started to stock SPS at the end of May/start of June. By August, all my SPS had shown obvious encrustation and they were all doing well. 80% of my SPS were wild colonies, 20% were frags purchased from a local reefer. I did lose a few wild colonies, as is usual, but not a significant amount (and a large majority of those I lost were those purchased from an importer with a track record of most of his shipments ending up dead - his holding tanks are bad). The tank is now slightly over 5 months old and the SPS are thriving.

The differences between the 2 attempts this year:
1. Massive bottled bacteria dosing during the start up of the 2nd successful attempt, well beyond the recommended amounts on the bottles
2. Purchased the 44,000+ order of mixed copepods from Algaebarn and dosed them in early in the 2nd successful attempt
3. Added a refugium in the sump for the 2nd successful attempt - obtained macroalgae from established reefers
4. Switched dosing systems from Fauna Marin Zeolight system (1st attempt) to Tropic Marin Reef Actif system(2nd attempt), which includes weekly dosing of a product called "Reef Mud Vital" - which is supposed to be mud harvested from Fiji containing microbes and other organisms

I think that the proactive addition of various micro organisms from bacteria to copepods to whatever the reef mud includes made a difference in my case.