If you could start over: Live Rock or Dry?

[JSeymour]

Really good discussion.... So, I'll pose a couple of questions to the dry rock crowd.

If you are seeding your dry rock with live, aren't running introducing the same chance for nasties that would be present starting with all live. Even if you QT the live rock for a week or two to make sure that there's no visible bad hitchhikers, what about that small piece of bubble algae you missed?

I've read plenty of posts where people are using things like Prodibio BioDigest to kick start bacterial populations whith dry rock...but I would worry about a mono-culture. Are there more complete/diverse bacterial cultures available?

My most recent setup(keeping marine for close to 10 years, sps for about 3) is a diy rock tank as I posted earlier, my first dead rock tank. So far I really like it. I do have the benefit of several systems that have been going for years to pick and choose organisms to add to my new system. Biodiversity is definitely important. I did place several hand picked(out of say, 1000 lb. of ltc rock) baseball sized pieces. I looked for several things.
- Needed to be very porous, my thought on this is more benthic organisms will be present inside.
- Needed to have decent exterior growth, without noticable pests. I chose rocks I had never seen a pest growing on, and watched them further for any additional growth.
- Since all of my chunks of live came out of well established tanks, I also made sure to get pieces from different areas and place them accordingly in the tank. This meant, picking rocks from the top middle and bottom, as well as high flow to low flow areas.

Interestingly, most of the rocks I picked out, came out of fish only systems, the lack of pests was much greater in these systems with great sponge growth underneath.

As far as bacteria, mine came from several different filtration units from, once again, long term fish only systems. I felt this was a good place to get bacterial cultures that had proven themselves hardy and vigorous.

I also collected various organisms specifically to add. To do this I placed various traps to collect worms and brittle stars. Scraped and chipped off sessile organisms lke sponges, fanworms, and vermetids. I plan to continually collect and quaranteen things I find.

Then after all this(took forever it seems), while no fish or corals were present, I began pouring my frozen food water into the tank and carbon dosing to promote growth as well as cycle the tank. Once my nitrates and phosphates started lowering(around a two weeks), I did a massive water change and installed my skimmer. A couple days later, with no detectable nitrates and phosphates, I started adding corals.

Dead rock has advantages, but a big disadvantage is the lack of biodiversiy. This HAS to be compensated for. Collecting and quaranteening additional life can not be overlooked.

 

[sirreal63]

I have done all live rock, all dry rock and greatly prefer all live. However, my current tank was done with about 75% dry. My tank lacks the biodiversity I am accustomed to, and it also lacks Aiptasia, algae, Mojano's and a myriad of other creatures that I can live without. I have had no mystery algae pop up like I did with live rock, I don't miss that. Most of my purchased rock is small pcs so if something unwanted pops up, I can remove just that rock.

I have had to buy pods, bristleworms and collect Chaeto from locals tanks as often as I can, just to shake out all the good stuff in it for my tank. I almost did the TBS "Package" but I have 100's of pounds of dry rock from previous tanks. I cherry pick pcs of live rock from the LFS's, looking for sponges and "life". There is no substitute for biodiversity. For me, the fun is in adding back only what I want. I had a few frags come in with Aips...it took just a little hydrochloric acid and a toothbrush to eradicate that.

To answer the original question...I have started over, several times from my job forcing moves, I will always prefer live rock but have learned to cope with other methods and there are positives and negatives from any method.

 

[JSeymour]

I don't know if it is right to associate post count with experience. just read each post for its own merit, and not base on the number of posts of the poster.

I'm sure everyone has come across post from member with 1 post but has many years experience, and likewise post from member with thousands of posts with flawed logic.

Agreed.

 

[JSeymour]

BOO!

I wish our liverock came in like that. We''ll get the occasional piece that has one coral, but nothing like that. Was the whole shipment like that? Did it survive? PM me if you can with a source, I'd love to carry some great rock like that in my store.

 

[JamesJR]

Is that Tampa Bay rock? That looks like Caribbean rock to me.

 

[juicesay]

I'd go with 90% dry then the other 10% would be other types of liverock to enhance the biodiversity.

 

[Reefer Steve]

Hmmmm...

I remembering when I first cycled my tank. If you actually test your ammonia and bust some W/C's if it gets above .25 you can keep most of the life on that lovely looking rock Gary is showing. Seeing is most of this pest nonsense is because people stock their tanks much too soon and dont QT. If you let this LR stew in a tanks for months (and WATCHING water parameters alk, ca, mag, ammonia, ect) any possible nasty is gonna starve. Parasites need hosts and if you dont start stuffing your tank with fish and frags these parasites will starve. You'll be left looking at rocks with newly emerging sponges, worms, pods of all kinds, among other cool hitchikers. I forgot how much I enjoyed staring at night looking for new critters. It makes me really second guess pruple colored rocks with random corals stick out of them. People rushed to sterile settings when it became common thought that this was the fast ticket for a solid foundation. Maybe not. I think the rush to dry rock needs to be reconsidered.

 

[juicesay]

That is one nasty looking rock, there's a Mojano on the upper left too.

 

[apt220]

I have done both. My next tank will be 100% live.

 

[noobtothereef]

dry rock if you have patients, live rock if you dont, white dry rock looks like crap for 4-6 months... but i would only use dry...too many places selling live rock FULL of pests, and on local tank breakdowns that are selling live rock cheap probably have been neglected for a long time and full of unwanted stuff

 

[SDguy]

dry rock if you have patients, live rock if you dont, white dry rock looks like crap for 4-6 months...

Both take patience IME. Live rock takes many months to settle in. I don't think my very fresh live rock stopped completely shedding for about a year and a half.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

here's something for the "dry rock only" crowd to ponder:

The lack of biodiversity in your system is the reason that AEFW's, Monti eating nudis, red bugs, caulerpa, cryptocaryon etc. etc. etc. can possibly wreak havoc in your system.

Many (most?) of these pests do not hitch-hike into an aquarium on liverock. If they do manage to find their way into a biodiverse system they are often controlled by some type of predator.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

That is one nasty looking rock, there's a Mojano on the upper left too.

this kind of mentality cracks me up. Do you even know what the animals in the picture are?
The picture shows animals living on the bottom side of an Echinopora growing in my aquarium.
Note the proper spelling of Majano anemone.

 

[Zire]

Yeah, that live rock looked pretty nice. That being said LR is more of a luxury to me, if I could go back I'd save the money I spent on all my live rock and put it into some fluidized reactors or a better sump or skimmer or something like that.

 

[reefWW96]

I bought entirely live rock for my tank. Its amazing to watch the real live rock in itself like the one Gary showed up there^. And yeah, it might have an occasional aiptasia or majano, but its deffinitely worth the 20 second it takes to kill it....

 

[Jeremy B.]

Guys, that's not a piece of liverock in the photo above that Gary is showing, it's the underneath side of an Echinopora. He's giving an example of what type of biodiversity grows in our systems using liverock, that you do not get with dry.

I have set up systems both ways over the years. When using liverock that is handled properly (real liverock is treated like it's a coral, fish, etc., and actually tanked in water, not setting on a shelf in a box) it provides without a doubt more filtering and bioload capacity than any system with dry rock only.

I have seen and heard of countless numbers of brand new systems set up over the years with uncured and cured liverock that do not even see a cycle during setup at all. There is no replacement for good, fresh, well taken care of liverock in my opinion.

 

[schroder_reef]

Been doing this 10 years. I just recently set up a tank with 75% or so of dry rock, the rest live. I wish I would've went with all live rock. I have never had so many algae issues at the start of my tanks. I already have dino at the 3 month mark. It could be something I'm doing. However, I just haven't had the same issues I'm having right now. I will get rid of them, but just figured I'd throw my 2 cents out there. The advantage is dry rock is much much cheaper. It is establishing, but you can tell it will take some time.

 

[prodman]

I personally like and only use live rock. Of the people I know who used dry to avoid certain pests (aptasia,algae etc) they all have where I do not. Its not just what is missing from the dry rock that concerns me, its the concern of what is has on it from being inland for so long.

 

[sneeyatch]

I've used both over time. When I set-up my 90 a long time ago, I bought 110lb of Marshall Island rock right from the Marshalls. Not the $20 / lb "seeded Marshall" you get at the LFS - the real deal. Weird kinds of macros growing all over it, coralline algaes, you name it. It was 100% pest free too as far as I could tell. The system lasted for many years and looked great. I've also started tanks with dry base rock too. It takes a while to get it where you want it, but it can very easily look just as good as a tank with good quality LR. Sure, the rock carries major bio-diversity, but the muck and mulm areas of the reefs contain sooo much more. Most LR that comes in has been sprayed down by either fresh or salt water and transported here from halfway around the world. You never get to see half to three quarters of the bio-diversity that everyone's claiming - even if you're extremely patient with your curing cycles.

Just because that pic of the underside of the coral shows some additional growth doesn't mean that it's because of the fact you used live rock. Yeah - it looks nice, but any fully established system will have all kinds of creepy crawlies that live under things. You'll probably reply stating that you never said it was a result of using LR in your system, but the way it was posted simply insinuates it so let's not get offended.

The bottom line is adding LR rubble, "grunge" etc, to either any newly set-up or any existing and well established system will add much needed bio-diversity and can quite easily show growth such as what you've shown above.

My new system will be all base rock. To each his own.

 

[MK Reefer]

+1
All future tanks will be started with dead rock that I seed. I am more concerned about nutrients locked in the surface of the rock than anything.

+1

Started my latest 300G tank with dry rock and never again will I use live rock. No pests, no algea blooms. 6-months in it looks every much as live as the normal live rock would! I did dump about 40-50 pounds of live rock into the sump, and one small piece into the main tank to seed everything.

Mike