farming live rock

F

fishguy86

New member
Wanted to see if any one has any ideas about growing live rock in vats using sun light supplemented with halides .. say about multiple 300 gallon vats holding a thousand lbs or so ??/
 
Not sure you'd even need to use halides, unless you'd be keeping some coral on it that's photosynthetic. Sun would be ok though...it's free :)
 
I wanted to mainly go for good coraline algae growth .. sponges and other inverts that would help to start new reef tanks
 
Coraline needs some light but not much, sponges and most inverts also don't need much light
 
what about any type of filteration ,,maybe a skimmer and a refugium? I'm going to use dry coral rock , some lace rock , texas holy rock and going to seed with some live curred premium figi rock ,, bear in mind , I want to get the rock covered as fast as I can .. at the end stages i might add some mushrooms or polyps to some ..has any one actually done this before ,, that has experince with what types of flow rates and how often to change the water or add chemicals.. also how long of a photo period would be too long ?
 
All of my rock was dry sterile rock that I collected and bleached before I carried it on the plane. When you put corals on it it needs light but before that, you need hardly nothing, no skimmer, no filter, no chemicals just circulation. I would add some food every couple of days as in pellets because you are trying to grow bacteria and worms.
 
well just ordered 1000 lbs of rock ,, its dry rock out of Fla looks like old coral rock .. but i was told its was mined from land.. I talked to some people at the global pet show ,and they recomened taking the roof off the trailor and replacing with a type of green house roof .
 
You'll need a little live rock to seed it with all of the desireables Coraline alge, worms pods and the like. Then let it sit and grow for about a year or two. I would recommend some actinic light supplementation to help with the coraline growth. You'll still need to check your calcium and alkalinity and keep that up too so your coraline will grow.
 
yes i talked to the Brightwell Guys and they told me some good additives to try ,, I think we are going to look into sky lights for the sun .. any thoughts/?
 
Instead of a skylight I would do a large south facing window to allow heat in, while minimizing heat loss. You can still get the light penetration without the heat loss, might help with costs.
 
It's not quite the same thing you want to do, but I'm going to be volunteering at this farm during my spring break.

http://www.terrasubaqua.com/home.html

They use Coaquina terrestrial rock that is mined just a couple miles from the farm. It's a nice, porous calcium-carbonate rock that originated from ancient reef-building animals. The rock was literally being sent to land-fills because it was covering potential construction sites. The bedrock is too brittle to build on, so it gets removed and then the foundation is laid in the soil beneath it. They didn't have much use for the rock, so they were just sending what they could to landscaping companies and then tossing the rest. That's where TSA stepped in to take advantage of this untapped resource, and they've been going strong for almost 6 years.

The market for aquacultured live rock will definitely be growing, especially as wild harvesting becomes more and more restricted.

I've seen some videos and photos of the farm, and I'm very impressed so far. It will definitely be quite the trip.
 
thats very nice .. i do have some fla aqua cultured rock coming in this month ..that is allways in water .. no die off i hope!!
 
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