How secure do you WANT your rockwork?
My answer is 'not secure'. I balance, prop, lay it a bit like decorative brickwork, but what the ancients called 'drystane' or dry-stone, despite it being underwater. This means I rely on natural balance, I make my arches out of post-and-lintel and rely on gravity, and I do everything I can that way.
Why? Why not make it one rigid form that nothing can ever shake?
Because I have had to go in and do a fish-extraction that is much easier with loose rockwork. I know my rocks, honestly. I know their balance and what can go where: they have characters, if not names, and that boils down to---I can rebuilt it pretty fast.
I do glue or putty my corals. I have just occasionally, on one build or another, 'cheated' by putting a ball of putty between two uncooperative rocks that I would like to use---it's temporary. It breaks easily. I can deal with that.
The occasion of the great ghost eel extraction was when I became very glad I'd proceeded that way. Honestly, I can bucket my corals quite comfortably, bucket my live rock, and net any fish I want, and have the whole 100 gallon tank put back together in perhaps not totally the same configuration, but one I've tinkered with and am pretty pleased with. The fish go wokka for a bit, but they cope with the changes, and it all sorts out. Meanwhile I've not accidentally fragged a coral or hung a net on an lps head while chasing some ingrate fish...I have eggcrate under the whole she-bang to prevent rockslides and 'point load' on the glass, and above that, my scattered pieces of basement rock, which is neck-deep in sand: those won't move. But above that, it's all up for easy takedown and easy reassembly, and there are times I've been very glad of that.
My answer is 'not secure'. I balance, prop, lay it a bit like decorative brickwork, but what the ancients called 'drystane' or dry-stone, despite it being underwater. This means I rely on natural balance, I make my arches out of post-and-lintel and rely on gravity, and I do everything I can that way.
Why? Why not make it one rigid form that nothing can ever shake?
Because I have had to go in and do a fish-extraction that is much easier with loose rockwork. I know my rocks, honestly. I know their balance and what can go where: they have characters, if not names, and that boils down to---I can rebuilt it pretty fast.
I do glue or putty my corals. I have just occasionally, on one build or another, 'cheated' by putting a ball of putty between two uncooperative rocks that I would like to use---it's temporary. It breaks easily. I can deal with that.
The occasion of the great ghost eel extraction was when I became very glad I'd proceeded that way. Honestly, I can bucket my corals quite comfortably, bucket my live rock, and net any fish I want, and have the whole 100 gallon tank put back together in perhaps not totally the same configuration, but one I've tinkered with and am pretty pleased with. The fish go wokka for a bit, but they cope with the changes, and it all sorts out. Meanwhile I've not accidentally fragged a coral or hung a net on an lps head while chasing some ingrate fish...I have eggcrate under the whole she-bang to prevent rockslides and 'point load' on the glass, and above that, my scattered pieces of basement rock, which is neck-deep in sand: those won't move. But above that, it's all up for easy takedown and easy reassembly, and there are times I've been very glad of that.
