What's your view on Live Rock in 2022? What's changed or hasn't changed?

[happyhourhero]

Ordering a box of Kaelini from Premium Aquatics to start my first tank back in the day was so incredibly cool. I loved looking at what popped up each day and watching the ocean come to life in my tank. In my current tank, I made a scape out of dry rock which was also a fun time but I still think the way it was was better. I fully understand it wasn’t sustainable though.

 

[fishguy242]

Dry rock is for landscaping. 32 yrs in, would never use it.

 

[Hoodstream]

I’ve only ever used dry rock. I don’t like the potentially negative hitchhikers that could come. Like to have as clean of a tank as possible, but still things slip through lol.

 

[Miami Reef]

Dry rock is for landscaping. 32 yrs in, would never use it.

Also for aquascaping hehe

 

[Sump Crab]

Only real live rock for me. I truly miss the good old days when we had rock from the South Pacific but the Florida keys and gulf rock has proven to be good IME.

Dry rock has taken a stranglehold on the hobby but recently I have noticed a trend back towards the real stuff.

My build focuses on this topic if anyone is interested

 

[Ratherbeflyen]

It's been said countless times that lava rock is not safe for a reef tank. All I have in my tank is black lava rocks for over 4 years now.

I'm still waiting for someone, anyone to share their personal bad experience caused by lava rocks in a reef tank.

 

[Arego]

I try to get my hands on as much of it as I can. If I'm at a store I don't normally frequent I'll buy rubble from their display tanks.. The same principle with other hobbyists, frag swaps anywhere.

The goal is as much diversity as possible, literally. I have hundreds of rubble pieces from countlessss tanks. I take glue and epoxy them together to make bigger usable pieces to glue colonies or frags down vs. having them lay in the sump or display..

While I do not have alot of rock I do have a ton of surface area and I am still collecting anything I can. Obviously I don't want rock from just any tank, that being said, it's pretty easy to tell which tanks you would want rubble from.. I started this 250g with that in mind and I could not be happier with what's come from it.

 

[Koty]

I voted no!
I started with Aquaforest artificial rocks, which ended up looking very natural. And with the corals came all the good and bad critters: sponges of all sorts, snails, Asterina stars, algae, feather dusters, glass worms, amphipods, copepods and whatnot. Solid bases are a limiting factor in the sea for the development of life. IMHO taking rocks out of the sea is a critical unnecessary irreversible damage.

 

[LeBon]

Dry rock is for landscaping. 32 yrs in, would never use it.

reef scaping kinda is landscaping too ***

 

[Dburr1014]

Things have changed.

New rock can be fake or aquacultured.
Old school was from the ocean or manmade diy and it was never purple sitting on a shelf.
It used to be x amout per gallon and build a wall. Now it's minimalist rock structures in the tank. (I have a lot of rock in my sump)

 

[AlexG]

My opinion has only slightly changed over the years with live rock. I have always been and continue to be an advocate of using live rock in reef aquarium systems. The quantity required though is something that I have changed my opinion on along with its placement in the system. Originally I would setup a tank with a bunch of live rock but this limits how an aquarium can be aquascaped. This led me down the road of using less live rock to get a system jumpstarted with beneficial life. I seeded my previous 1600 gallon aquarium system with ~60lbs of live rock added to the refugium tank and 60lbs of live sand added to the reef tank. This was more than enough to seed the system with all the beneficial life from the live rock. Also adding the rock to the refugium tank contained the few unwanted critters that came in on the rock. After a few months the entire system was teaming with life from the live rock. With my new build I have already purchased 15lbs of Australian live rock in a sperate holding tank and will likely get more live rock and live sand once the new display goes online to further seed the system.

 

[Aquarist76]

Live rock is 100% necessary and I love it. Today though I buy dry rock and culture it myself to make my live rock instead of ocean-originating rock. I like not having random pests in my system and I really like the look of manufactured rock; especially the Marco rock.

 

[JaimeAdams]

When I started It was 1 and a half pounds per gallon and the rock was light and porous. That ended with basically a mountain wall of rock. These days the trend and I feel rightfully so is less rock and much greater water flow around the rock. Our current mythos is stacking as much liverock as we can in the sump area though. Sometimes that is more possible than other times.

I'm not really a fan of man made rock. Some of the newer stuff can have some very natural looking designs, but what I am after is the internal pore structure for nitrifying bacteria that these manmade aggregates or ceramics/porcelains lack.

 

[AcroNem]

I voted no!
I started with Aquaforest artificial rocks, which ended up looking very natural. And with the corals came all the good and bad critters: sponges of all sorts, snails, Asterina stars, algae, feather dusters, glass worms, amphipods, copepods and whatnot. Solid bases are a limiting factor in the sea for the development of life. IMHO taking rocks out of the sea is a critical unnecessary irreversible damage.

All of those things listed are not even bad things. They're part of an ecosystem and all play a part in a healthy reef.

 

[MaxTremors]

My opinion hasn’t changed so much as it’s been reinforced, in that the value and importance of quality, real live rock has become more and more apparent. IME, dry rock is not as good as live rock in every way (except perhaps in the ability to create more complex aquascapes). I think real live rock is the absolute best single thing you can do for your tank. I think the drawbacks of dry rock have become more and more apparent, and that the biodiversity both in terms of bacteria and microfauna provided by live rock is one of the fundamental building blocks of a successful reef in the long term. Having finally broken down and used dry rock in my most recent tank after having resisted for years, my concerns about dry rock were confirmed, and I will never use it again. Dry rock makes reefing more difficult, less stable, and less interesting.

I have said this before, and it rubbed some people the wrong way, but I stand by it, a dry rock tank is not a reef, a reef implies a complex ecosystem/food chain, without the biodiversity that live rock provides, it’s a fish tank or a coral display, but it’s not a reef. Obviously, with the addition of corals, dry rock gets some of that biodiversity over time, but it’s still not comparable to live rock, mostly because you’re not importing a balanced population of bacteria and microfauna from the same ecosystem, it’s disparate organisms from different sides of the globe. With live rock you’re importing organisms that are from the same ecosystem. That’s the reason why the ‘dry rock becomes live rock eventually’ argument falls a little flat for me.

All that said, obviously you can have a successful tank with dry rock, many people do, but again, it’s more difficult, less stable, and less interesting.

 

[jfoahs04]

If anything, I'm even more "pro" live rock in 2022 than I have been in the past. Neither approach is perfect, but I've found "bad" hitch hikers to be easier to deal with than the swings an all dry rock tank goes through. And I've also found that some of the more common hitch hikers (vermatids, aiptasia, etc.) often find their way into the system regardless of whether it is started with dry rock or live rock.

 

[minus9]

For me, it's unchanged in it's ability to create the biological stability that we desire in our artificial reefs. The only thing that has changed is the amount necessary to achieve this balance/stability, it's far less than what we previously thought. As far as concerns with hitchhikers goes, I think people are overthinking here. You would spend months, if not a year or more curing dry rock in order to seed it with enough beneficial bacteria to maintain your tank. But just in a couple months time you could cure live rock in hyper-salinity to rid it of any pests or hitchhikers and to check for any aiptasia that would pop up. And as far as aquascaping dry rock over live rock, I'll pass on those crazy art pieces called NSA, I'm trying to create a little slice of the reef, not a sculpture that will be covered up with coral and never be seen again. Seems like a lot of effort for nothing, but I guess I'm getting a little off-topic here...... The benefits of real ocean rock far outweigh any concerns of hitchhikers or pests that can be easily dealt with. Also, for those on a budget, use dry rock, but spend a little cash on a couple pieces of ocean rock to seed it with the good stuff that will never be found in a bottle. The only way to do a proper dry system, is to set it up in one day and fully stock it with coral from the start. This is where people go wrong with dry rock, especially new reefers, but their lack of experience will always prevent this from being a thing. Also, ocean rock isn't pulled from an active reef or destructive in the way some people think, there are rules in place to keep the reefs thriving. Pollution, climate change and over fishing (for food) is the biggest destructive force to the oceans. Real live ocean rock for the win, just not as much as we thought!

 

[blaxsun]

Live rock is (at least for me) more expensive. Like twice the price per lb. I also observe a daily batch of "ID this hitchhiker" threads, so as I sit here typing this - I'm very relaxed, no pests or anomalous sea creatures to be found and with a lot more fish, inverts and corals in my tank with the money saved on dry over live rock.

 

[saltyhog]

I'm not sure I am understanding the question correctly so I voted other.

Is come kind of rock for bacterial "home" necessary....maybe not with the advent of biomedia such as Xport NO3 and similar. However I wouldn't have a tank without out it....it wouldn't be a reef tank with out rock.

If the question is live rock vs dry rock I am firmly of the belief that REAL, from the ocean live rock is by far the best way to go. Is this an absolute? No but I firmly believe some of the most difficult problems we deal with now days (dinoflagellates say hi!) are in part caused by starting a tank completely with sterile dry rock and a bottle of bacteria. It works, I've done it but it can lead to a lack of biodiversity that can not just cause problems but stall the progression/maturing of the tank.

 

[design.maddie]

I like hitchhikers. I like eco friendly products. I want the most controllable elements when starting a reef.

This is done by Dry Rock. LifeRock to be exact. Hitchhikers though you ask. I will purchase from local reefers who have a well established reef tank. I grab a 1lb of rock rubble from their sump. Sump always seems to be teaming with life and less algae. I take that home, soak it in RO/DI for about 10 minutes scrub the living **** out of it and plop it into the sump after a few weeks of the LifeRock has been in the tank.