badamsios
Aquarium Advice Regular
Salt water fish only. Is the live rock a must? My local vender won't let ME choose the chunks, and they always bring out the heaviest most dense they can find!
Is live rock a must?
- Thread starter badamsios
- Start date
The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Crepe
Aquarium Advice Addict
No it isn't but it's worth the price. Go ahead and find another vender. I'm sure in california there are plenty of SW fish stores. I just love slipping on those huge rubber gloves and go digging around in and LFS' lr vats.
milhous3er
Aquarium Advice Freak
my lfs tries to do what with me. heck with the gloves, i'll put my arm in there with those 4 starving damsels to get the pieces that I want !! the owner gets alittle irritated, but when I ask for pourous rock please don't try to get me "live" lace rock.
OP
OP
badamsios
Aquarium Advice Regular
Worth the price in that it looks good? I've seen mushrooms come back after supposedly being cured. Funny you should mention Ca. having lots of fish stores. Nearest live lobster is a 50 minute drive. Just found that out yesterday.
Brian
Brian
milhous3er
Aquarium Advice Freak
Mushrooms or aptasia ? If your talking about the anemone looking thingys that are a brownish color, they'll come whenever they want. Mushrooms should come back if the rock is cured.
OP
OP
badamsios
Aquarium Advice Regular
There wre mushrooms... &*^#$ things reproduced like rabits.
Brian
Brian
Crepe
Aquarium Advice Addict
What color mushrooms? Depending on the type you can make a pretty penny for fragged shrooms.
Ziggy953
Aquarium Advice Addict
Live rock is the basis of the filtration in a SW system. If you don't want to pay the prices that your LFS is quoting you look online. There are a lot of vendors out there. Any LFS that wont let you select the rock you want is not worth doing business with at least on the rock. I have been out of touch in the hobby for a while but Marcorocks.com was a great place to get excellent rock. I ordered from him and was happy with my purchase. There are vendors on this site that offer rock. Check them out.
OP
OP
badamsios
Aquarium Advice Regular
125 gallon tank. How much rock?
milhous3er
Aquarium Advice Freak
1lb to 1-1/2 lb per gallon is whats recommended
OP
OP
badamsios
Aquarium Advice Regular
Oh, goody. A thousand bucks...
Jimbo7
Aquarium Advice Addict
Haha, Curing your own is the best way to go. IMO a lot of time the LFS "live rock" is super crappy and not even that alive. I, like ziggy, have been gone for awhile but i too got my stuff from marcorock. Its all dry rock that you cure and cycle yourself. You can save TONS of money, and only have to wait like 3-4 weeks for it all to cycle. Some people also do 50/50 live rock and dry rock to speed things up.
HTH
HTH
OP
OP
badamsios
Aquarium Advice Regular
Can someone point me to an article on curing?
Here's what I don't get... Mass vs. surface area. My LFS wants to sell big heavy hunks of rock. If they had their way I’d buy 3 - 40 lb rocks. Seems to me that if I find 20 pieces that are spindly, lots of branches and porous with FAR more surface area, why can’t I buy 75 lbs. 125 pounds of rock consumes a LOT of space, especially if it IS porous and branchy. (Just making up new words as I go) It’s taking away from the display. So if I have a Fluval G6 with several pounds of those little ceramic nodules, and a 10 gallon sump with one end full with fully 10 pounds of those nodules, isn’t that hosting enough bacteria?
20 years ago when I was into this and running fish only, it was all about the sump and the bio balls. Changed 20% of the water monthly and live was good. Rinsed the detritus off the balls in salt water every few months… I think we added bio wheel when they first came out but I really thought the bio balls were doing a good job. One could make a case that test kits are more accurate, but I never saw any stress on my fish.
Here's what I don't get... Mass vs. surface area. My LFS wants to sell big heavy hunks of rock. If they had their way I’d buy 3 - 40 lb rocks. Seems to me that if I find 20 pieces that are spindly, lots of branches and porous with FAR more surface area, why can’t I buy 75 lbs. 125 pounds of rock consumes a LOT of space, especially if it IS porous and branchy. (Just making up new words as I go) It’s taking away from the display. So if I have a Fluval G6 with several pounds of those little ceramic nodules, and a 10 gallon sump with one end full with fully 10 pounds of those nodules, isn’t that hosting enough bacteria?
20 years ago when I was into this and running fish only, it was all about the sump and the bio balls. Changed 20% of the water monthly and live was good. Rinsed the detritus off the balls in salt water every few months… I think we added bio wheel when they first came out but I really thought the bio balls were doing a good job. One could make a case that test kits are more accurate, but I never saw any stress on my fish.
OP
OP
badamsios
Aquarium Advice Regular
They're sick alright... Even at a snails pace, they become rock star groupies. Someone told me to rock them to sleep, but they were so stoned, every single cell became porous.
Bit of a rocky start, but I think I have them corralled. Salty little farts are heavy when they retain water. When the lights went out I thought their lively hood was at stake. The detritus fact is, they can get a little crabby some times, but a little turbulence in their crevices skims that attitude. There’s something fishy about that, but everyone needs anemone in their lives.
That took 20 minutes of my life I'll never het back.
Bit of a rocky start, but I think I have them corralled. Salty little farts are heavy when they retain water. When the lights went out I thought their lively hood was at stake. The detritus fact is, they can get a little crabby some times, but a little turbulence in their crevices skims that attitude. There’s something fishy about that, but everyone needs anemone in their lives.
That took 20 minutes of my life I'll never het back.
ilostnemo
Aquarium Advice Addict
your live rock is most of your filtration. plus 75 pounds isnt actaully that much. i could fit 150 pounds in a 55 gallon tank. rock is heavyer than most people think. i mean a basketball size piece weighs at least 15-20 pounds and thatd be nothing in my 58 gallon
