Rock Stacking

[aklaum]

Hello all,

I am in the process of setting up my first reef tank. It is a 55 gallon standard tank. My question is about stacking the rock. Can the rock lean against the back wall of the tank or does it have to be entirely free standing? If you can do either than what are the pros and cons of each?

The 55 gallons are kind of narrow so getting a nice open rock structure free standing is going to be a bit of a balancing act. I'm worried though about putting pressure points on the back glass by leaning the rock.

 

[Fast Fred]

Better to lean the rock against the glass yourself, than to have a creature knock it over for you. IMO, leaning is just fine, as long as it's not excessive. The impact from toppling rocks will possibly break the glass though.

I lean mine against the back as I think most people do.

 

[Avi]

I agree with Fast Fred. One thing to bear in mind though is that you would want a good deal of waterflow from some source or sources like a closed loop, powerheads, etc. so that the waterflow reaches throughout the tank, inclucing behind the rockwork. This will benefit the water quality in your tank. I would recommend at least 20 times over the tank volume.

 

[Tobman]

Moving Corals

Moving Corals

I have read some recommend not leaning the rock aginst the glass as some corals/anenomes will move and like to move up. If the rock is free standing, then they will stop when they get to the top of the rock. If the rock is against the glass, they will move up onto the glass and more easily get into your overflow or powerhead intakes.

Guess it depends on what type of corals you intend to keep.

 

[Avi]

I wonder which corals would literally "move up" the rock. I never have heard of that happening with coral, though it is possible that coral can grow to spread up the rockwork and conceivably onto the glass or even the outside of the overflows. I have seen zoanthids do that. In fact, there are people who have intentionally glued zoanthids on their overflows to make them less obtrusive. I really don't think that would be much of a concern if any coral would do that. Spreading doesn't happen so quickly that it would be something you can't deal with.

 

[bertoni]

Xenia will move up a rock. I think mushrooms can as well.

 

[WaterKeeper]

I think the main thing here is cleaning the glass. Having the rock touching the glass presents big problems if you have an algae bloom as you can't get to it. Even in an algae free tank the coralline has a bad habit of growing in hard to reach areas. I like to leave a little space so I can at least get a magnetic cleaner past the rock.

 

[aklaum]

I have built and plan to use a 5 gallon Carlson Surge Device which should answer the question of water flow. It tends to kick butt in my test tank, I think I may actually have to tone it down a bit in the real tank.

This brings up another question though about cleaning. How far away from the wall should I put the tank? It is currently 6 inches away from the wall but it is in the corner of a room so I don't think I could reach all the way behind with a magnetic cleaner, unless I mounted it on a stick or something.

 

[iceman5]

you can drill the rock and by using plastic zip ties( ones without the metal in the little loop) and zip tie the rocks together

 

[Avi]

As far as the back of the tank and the wall behind it is concerned... six inches is about as far as you'd probably want to go unless the room is so big that the distance doesn't matter. I have to admit, though, that the one side of the glass that I don't manicure from time to time is that back of the tank. If you're kind of A.C. about cleanliness, then make sure you do set up the tank with cleaning the back glass in mind.

 

[piranhaking]

alot of people let their back wall and some times side walls grow up with coraline algae intentionally i guess it depends on if you want to do that or not. Personally i think it looks great that way. As far as the comment about corals moving up the rocks, yes some can move but based on my experience it is a slow process. I know that ricordia species can move and anemones can also move. I havent dealt with anemones, so im not sure how fast they can move, but ricordia are rather slow. I think a ricordia moving onto the glass would be a good thing though, because it would be easy to remove from the glass without damaging it and it would be a great opportunity to frag it. Another option to help with your rock stacking is drilling holes in the rock and using short sections of rigid airline tubing as a peg between them. I have done that in my tank and it worked pretty well.

 

[Pandora]

Unfortunately, a lot of people have problems with the 55's narrowness. I ended up switching to a 75.

If you stack rock, make sure it is stable. You'd be surprised how much a few cleanup crew animals can knock things over in a night. I like to epoxy it together.

As has been mentioned, you can lean against the glass. Many people do not mind stuff growing on the back where you can't clean, because coraline still looks attractive on glass if you have the back wall of the tank against the house wall. The circulation problem can be an issue, because of detritis accumulation.