reef building the fundamentals
 

If you where to build your system all over what would you chose for rocks.
For sharing Please specify your findings as to what and why would you do it any different...

1)I would get any(man made,natural calcium base rock) dry rocks and seed it with any live rock from LFS
2)I would get natural dry rock and seed it with live rock from LFS
3)I would get natural dry rock and seed it with aquacultured live rock from LFS


explanation of above words.
.Any live rock meaning what is available at your nearest LFS for live rock.
.Natural rock meaning dead reefs dry rock
.Aquacultured rock meaning natural rock that been cycled and seeded ready for a system without any of the pests.
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I would get specifically only live rock, not man made.

Me too.

Me three :mrgreen:

Me four

Hello

Yes live rock only here.


Titus

Given the various issues good and not good that I had with starting with all live rock I think I would go with a mix of small cured and uncured and use large dry rock for the bulk. If I could get aqua-cultured rock I would use that in preference to uncured.

Charles

Too soon to judge as my system is only 7 months old. So far all is well with Marco seeded with live rock from lfs and fellow reefer. I did pick up some new shelf dry rock from Concept yesterday...;)

This

Hello

Yes I think that's equally valid. We all have different needs and capacity to deal with all live uncured rocks or partially cured or mixture with dry ones.



Titus

I would or I will on my next setup go with 90% dry real reef rock specific types and seed it with some live rock (aquaculture if its full of life or wild live rock but have to detail inspect the rock)

Reason being
I have in the past tried full system loaded with only wild live rock with the issues of all types of unwanted critters weather fish killers or coral destroyers,...

After that I tried many types of dry rock
Tufa rock,very light land rock but its boulder shape and release of God knows what killing my corals slowly,...
Lava rock,Same issues as Tufa rock with its dark reddish coloration,..
Florida,Lace,Texas holy,etc...so many more types and or named rocks as they all are dense(no bacteria growth space) heavy and unnatural look,...
4 years ago I found Marco rock tried it and seem to somewhat enjoy the rock,seed it with some live rock and voila but as time passed I started missing my old natural look for real live rock and Marco rock started getting heavier and heavier as fast as each shipment arrives to my doors for resale,...didn't like the idea for selling as in the past heavier rock for the hobby so I decided to give up,....Did some more research visited some weird countries and made some new friends to find a decent $ on usable rock for my system.

Live rock comes in from all corners of the world get on a plane or a boat to make the long trip to our LFS,...unfortunately over 80% of the rock life dies during packing and shipping and thought why pay the extras for all that water weight,what if there is a way to do things a little different,maybe we are viewing things through a tunnel maybe there are more ways to see things,...

I remember live rock over 20 years ago use to come in unwashed and full of all types of coraline and dead what was ounce living critters,snails,eels,fish,..etc
Now rocks come in with only few sponges a little to no coraline and some bacteria with few bad hitchhikers,..

Maybe if we find a product that could eliminate some of the unwanted issues with our live rock we could have a better system start-up shaped the way we see reefs are built;from a small piece of calcium ions mixed through thousands of years with corals, fish and other living things to get the shapes we love to place in our systems.

:biggrin:as you could see I love my reef system and love to enjoy it front view not in the back,over or under the canopy:biggrin:

That said I voted #3

Same here

May I ask why? Im tired of other peoples pest crap and algae and so on. I added some of the real porous Pukini when I moved here to the reef rock I brought with me. Now its infested with small bubble algae inside all the cavities. Of course that came from another aquarist to my regular fiji rock. Never mind pest anenomes and carpet freakin algae...........................Whats wrong with all dry rock?

Do I not just need it biologically active after cycling?

Not going with quarried rock again. DIY worked well but too much work. Live (preferred) or dried (clean) from the ocean next time.

Doug, I've read too many stories of huge algae issues during the early stages. And for me, the LIVE rock is live, having all the bacteria and microorganisms I want in my tank. I've used real rock from the real ocean on 5 separate builds, and only once got any real pests, which took me about 20 minutes to deal with and was kinda fun!
This is where the worms and the pods and the weird little critters come from. And really, the mainstream pests, aptaisia, algae, etc, will eventually get in anyway on frags or as spores in water.
My current tank is in it's 4th year, no pests, no algae, no problems whatsoever. Yes, I have a crab in the tank. So what? He's been there the whole time and I've seen it twice. No damage to anything.
The only real reason that I can see in using pretend live rock is price. It's cheaper, and that is important to some people.

Thanks for the answer Brad. I did have bad algae growth on mine but it was mixed, as mentioned. Was going to do the same again after scrubbing the crap outta my rock but thought unless a downside, giving this a try.

Actually I have never had any pests like crabs, etc. Just stuff from others, like red turf and bubble algae. My pukani is so infested inside, its impossible to clean without killing the rock completely. Thats sad to as I have a huge green monti on one

Well for the first time since I can remember I have a tank with no bubble algae finally!!!!!!!!
Along with I have no red turf algae OMG. I don't know what the heck happened my rock is changing all purple after 11 years of reefing its all turning purple.

Can you elaborate on that statement?What did you do or change?

He gave it all to me...........:lol:

I agree on some things you said..
These answers are only coming from my experience within the past years in the hobby.
I have always believed in getting as live rock as possible But still needs cycling otherwise 1st and foremost algae takes over.
Dry rock is exactly the same as above for cycling.
Pest is and will be always on frags its up to every person as a buyer to be careful and diligent in picking the frags going in any system as I seen it many times over the years people asking me of solving pest problem coming from frags and letting it take over the system as sometimes well more often then not getting people out of the hobby or restarting all over again (a very unfortunate as money is wasted)
I believe if cycling,acclimation and being diligent on what's going in your system will reflect in the end for an amazing picture like aquarium.

Not trying to sound like I am selling my rock:wink: but few month ago I did some testing on dry rock (pukani,fiji,plate,...) for cycling periods and algae growth.
3 different bins.
1-dry rock in a heated 82 degree saltwater bin,couple power heads with lights over it and 10% water change every week,seeded with live rock from my system.
2-dry rock in a 82 degree saltwater bin and couple power head without any lights.seeded with live rock from my system.20% water change after 3 weeks.
3-dry rock in a 80 degree running in my sump(no lights) that houses 600glns and about 500 lbs of live rock throughout my tanks.

Some of the results

1-the rock cycled and took longer time and was full of algae that I hater and having a hard time cleaning it.
2-the rock cycled perfect full of bacteria, pods and all (from my original rock) with no issues for algae then slowly introduced lights and started feeding the rock...I love it with no issues now.
3-Best cycle ever lots of life besides nitrifying bacteria and soon will be doing an upgrade to my system using the rocks from test 2 and 3.

What I see lots of people using dry rock and having it cycle with full spectrum lights,fish and at that time I call it junk as it turns rock for a longer period of cycle.(simply people cannot wait for a good thing,...they simple want a reef and a reef done and ready yesterday better than today,...

I still every time I bring a coral shipment do the dip and inspect every coral going in my system or being sold.As my beliefs ..what I don't put in my system should never be sold...

Yes I will miss a crab or 2 :biggrin: as shown in the above photo...but I have no issues with any of my main system rockshttp://i726.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps1d122f11.jpg

I went probably 60% dry rock on my current tank. No problems at all. Spyd (Derek) went 95% dry rock and his tank is doing really really well. It probably takes a little longer to get established but it works.

I would go all dry man made rock in my DT an then put some LR in my sump.....I don't like the pest algae that can come in on LR.

But you added it to your sump, which in all likelihood is attached to your tank? So it's still there.

As an aside, I just found 3 mojano anemones in my tank after 4 years, so the pests will show up regardless of what rock you use :)

Agreed Brad. Especially mine. If it has, lets say, bubble algae as ones problem or a turf algae, then it would migrate to the new rock, IMO.
That then defeats the purpose of going all dead rock in the fist place?

Thanks for the call and great advice and discussion Eli. Top notch customer service as always.

Thank you,...it was my pleasure:biggrin:
Hope you like what I picked for you ...lots of photos:biggrin:
Cheers

All arrived. Yes, I like. Very good selection. Now have to assemble. Thanks

I feel like there should be a fourth option:

I would get natural dry rock and seed it with high quality live rock that is ordered directly from the distributor, and picked up before the box from the airplane is even opened. You couldn't pay me to put live rock that's been in a holding tank in my aquarium. Pests rarely come from the rock, they come from the holding tanks.

That is a good option but how many people would actually do buy live rock directly from the airplane landing,...i would sell rock that way but no one will follow through with the purchase...That's why I always say pick your live rock pieces carefully and from a trusted tank.:biggrin:

I did it that way when I set up my current tank, but it required making a special arrangement with (the now closed) Red Coral. Rather than having the rock ordered especially for me, I just asked to purchase an entire box worth from his next order, and the night it arrived I picked it up before it was unboxed. I can imagine that if you're ordering the rock just for that person it might be harder to arrange, but in that case he was ordering it anyway and if I had flaked off for some reason it still would have been sold.

I know not everyone can do that every time, but the beauty with dry rock is that you can cycle it perfectly fine without having anything to seed it with, the bacteria you need will proliferate eventually, so you can take your time tracking down the perfect pieces of live rock to 'seed' the critters and algaes you can't otherwise buy. In any case, I don't think I'd ever set up a tank without most of the rock being dry natural rock of some sort again.

I do agree with you that people could buy the whole box when landing and I am sure that most store front shouldn't have an issue with doing so...I just simply think not many folks will do so...or can you imagine a customer comes in for their box and only wanting to pick through all the rock when the store owner is unpacking 10 coral rock and fish boxes at 9 pm or midnight...:frusty:

Eli, do you think FijiCrete would stick to glass. I was wondering if I could do my front overflow glass with it, instead of rock.

Me too. No dry rock for me; man-made nor natural. Man-made rock looks terrible. Natural dried rock usually needs to be leeched of massive nutrient load, and it takes a long, long time for anaerobic bacteria to establish. These two issues tend to cause persistent cyano and hair algae growth in the first year or two of using dry rock.

I've had my fair share of "nasties" come in on a load of fresh live rock, but I haven't had any trouble eradicating those pests.

You're right those Eli (?), it can certainly be tough to find a consistent supplier of good quality, FRESH live rock. Too many LFS dump a crap load of fresh live rock into a vat and let it bathe in 3+ ppm ammonia for weeks. No wonder there is no life left on it.

Not too sure,I think if the glass is scuffed up a bit :biggrin: fijicrete should adhere...I will give it a try tomorrow and let you know