live rock

randy · 09-09-2006, 03:42 PM

i am new to saltwater and have had many freshwater tank. i have a 46 gallon tank with live sand and a canister filter and a protien skimmer and has been runing for 6 days and is clear as a bell and all the test are good.i am starting a reef tank and i have been looking in to live rock for my cycle process and having trouble of wich kind to get . is one better then the other? do some look better or is better for reef tanks? can you mix diffrent live rocks togeather. does any online place that you know sell live rock in good quilty. any opinion would be appreciated

THIS IS A PICTURE OF WHAT I SET UP

ahill3780 · 09-09-2006, 04:25 PM

Welcome to FishTankForums!

Setup looks nice!

LR is mostly up to your personal preference. So people like to recreate a certain environment in their tank and will use only rock, sand, and fish from a specific region - ie. Fiji.

As far as the tank itself goes, its perfectly fine to mix and match whatever pieces you want to achieve the look you are aiming for.

No one LR is any 'better' than the next. They all perform the same job in the same way. Fiji rock tends to be more rocklike in appearance, while Tonga rock tends to look like branches from a tree. There are a couple more but I have not made it a point to learn all of the different characteristics at this point.

Quality in LR is measured in how well it has been cured and if it comes with anything attached. Online vendors are usually much cheaper when it comes to LR but the quality that it arrives in is poor. This is because of the time it takes to send the rock to you. Vendors will not ship LR in water because of weight issues, so you are going to have almost complete die-off of all the living organisms in the rock by the time it gets to you, no matter how well cured it was when it left the vendor.

ALL new LR should be cured before being introduced into the presence of fish, invertebrates, or corals. In your case its fine to go ahead and drop it into the tank if you want. The cycle is going to take longer to complete which will mean you can't put any fish or anything in for a while, but your only other choice is to cure the rock in a seperate container with saltwater (doing regular water changes) until it is completely clean before putting it into the tank.

Good cured LR that will make it to your tank with little die-off can only be found locally from someone who knows what they are doing, and it is always more expensive. But for the time it saves you its worth it - just not in bulk. If you have to buy more than a few pounds then its best to get it cheaper online and cure it yourself.

My plan is to start my business from home with selling pre-cured LR locally. I have to wait until I get my big tank and can use my 55 gallon for the final curing process, so this is not going to happen soon. My overall plan is to sell only rock that has been fully cured. I will refuse to sell any rock that has not been cured properly - there are too many other places around where you can get this type already.

Loman · 09-09-2006, 06:44 PM

Aaron

With live rock I hear what you are saying about anything that starts out as live rock, can be cured. I also read on Ebay how a guy will sell you info on building live rock for $25 lb. I have also used lace rock and reef rock that I assume was once live but was not when I bought it. So i Have 3 questions.
1- What can be the base for live rock (setting aside aesthetics etc.)
2- How long does it take to cure a piece that has no life at all when it starts.
3- To cure (restore) the live rock what all do you need to do - If I throw it in a tank with live sand will the critters multiply and get in the rock?

ahill3780 · 09-10-2006, 04:48 PM

Dead rock (a.k.a. Base Rock) is rock devoid of any bacteria or microlife. Any rock from a marine environment is suitable as a base rock for your tank. Building your own rock is not very difficult from what I hear. I plan to make my own rock in the future as part of my business plan, but I have a ways to go before I can offer any real advice on how to do this. Fake rock can be made for your tank using Portland Cement, and you can find instructions on how to do this for free over the internet.

Any rock suitable for the marine environment can be made into LR. All it takes is the colonization of bacteria and microlifeforms. All you have to do is place the rock in a tank containing either Live Sand, as you mentioned, or with some already cured and cultured live rock from an existing setup.

You would want to first cure any base rock to remove any harmful nutrients and rid it of any unwanted pests. Once cured you can move the rock into a refugium, established display system, or into a culturing tank set up specifically for "growing" live rock. These culturing tanks should contain an established LS bed with a few pieces of LR that are never removed from the tank. These permanent rocks are used as the seeds for the new rocks that are comming in. Good seed rock should have everything that you want to spread over onto the new rocks. Such as copepods, amphipods, coralline algae, etc.

How long curing new dead rock to fully live rock is variable and depends on the condition the new rock is in when you get it, and your methods for curing. As a rough generalization I would say anywhere from 3 weeks to 4 months, or more if you made your own rock from cement.

shaydizzle · 09-14-2006, 06:17 PM

hey nice tank

randy · 09-20-2006, 09:58 PM

finnaly got my live rock in the tank and my new light. how does it look

ahill3780 · 09-21-2006, 10:54 PM

Nice!

Lookin good. Start watching the rock to see what comes out, you'll notice more critters comming out at night soon, if not now. Keep 'em commin'!

Aaron

Striped Bass · 09-22-2006, 01:01 AM

If you dont mind, I would like to say add more sand. It looks a little low. Other then that, Your tank is coming along very nicely. Good luck with it.
Stripedbass

randy · 09-24-2006, 08:55 AM

better picture

Tommy Gun · 09-24-2006, 01:09 PM

The only thing that I didnt see added about live rock (and if I missed it, sorry) is that when you buy live rock, it is going to take longer to cure rock that is shipped to you than the stuff you can buy right out of a LFS's tank.

My first live rock was shipped to my LFS and I picked it up. It was packed in wet newspaper and smelled good (live rock should smell 'earthy' rather than like sulfer or rotten eggs, which is a sure sign it died alot), but it spiked my nitrites within a day from all the die off. I then bought the rest of the live rock i needed straight out of a LFS's tank and it was out of water for only 32 minutes. This rock cleared up the nitrites in less than a day!

My main concern was trying to 'jump start' my live sand, which looked much like yours, nice and white and clean. I wanted to get some growth spreading down there because I had 'almost live' or base rock buried underneath it to support my visable rock structures. Now, as every day passes, my base rock and the first live rock that died off are changing colors and getting closer to a nice dark purple. The tank is starting to look great.

I also got lots of little critters, including an emerald crab, which are 15 dollars a peice in my area. I also have some sort of small filter feeding type animal on one rock that looks alot like those white dandelion things that float around outside (I cannot think of anything better to describe it, sorry). It is actually growing pretty quickly, but it is inside a nook of a rock and I cannot get a good picture of it.