Quote:
Originally Posted by fishytime
I would agree with almost everything said, except for the dry rock....I hate dry rock....it will cause you nothing but trouble and I will bet my life that Marko rock is not lighter than good live rock....it is basically petrified live rock, so I seriously doubt it will ever have the capacity to be as good as live rock.....dry rock could take anywhere from a couple monthes to a year (or more) before you will be able to count it as part of your biological filtration.....for the 25-30 pounds that you will need for that size tank, I would bite the bullet and get all live rock.....start a tank with 100% live rock and you need to be patient, start a tank with dry rock and you will have to be REALLY patient....I know others will chime in and say that they never had any issues with using dry rock, but I work at a LFS and see and hear about the problems on almost a daily basis...
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+1!
I am a firm believer that true liverock is the lifeblood of your system. Personally, I like using really fresh liverock when cycling a new aquarium. Usually the liverock will kick in the cycle for you. You may get a few bad crabs, the odd shrimp but I really think the good (different shades of coraline, nice macro algaes, good critters) outweighs the bad. I usually leave the sand out for a weeks if I go this route. This way you can easily siphon out any "crap" that falls off the rocks while its curing. Get in there and give them a shake or hit them with a powerhead/turkey baster to flush out as much die off as possible.
Liverock is def a tricky subject.... gonna get a lot of opinions on this one. Either way you go take your time, sounds like your on the right track
