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if it's a fish only you won't need live rock, if you want to do a fowlr then i would suggest 1 1/2 lbs per gallon so 80+ lbs. lr will help out with your filtration, but you can do a fo as well.
That's what I am doing.
I plan a fish only 20 gallon but have been slowly adding live rock -- when I see nice pieces reasonably priced -- to supplement the filtration. So far, I have about 15 lbs of Live Rock and another 10 lbs of base rock that I can see is slowly being brought to life.
Yesterday I added a few crabs, snails and a star fish.
It will be a while yet before I add a fish.
With regard to powered filtration, I only have a an Aquaclear 150 with a couple of foam inserts and a supplementary power head. Lighting is insufficient for corals -- which I plan to leave for a while -- but will live rock be inadequate for a fowlr.
The fish store hinted as much and directed me towards a small Emperor.
Am curious as to what others think. Jeff
If the primary planning of the tank is around not keeping sessile inverts, the use of rock is still a prefered filtration method unless you want to set up a wet/dry. Personally I'd go with the rock but given the light requirements I would opt for dead base rock for a majority of what you add (1-2lbs/gal), not costly LR. The exspense is much lower and rock does not require special lighting for it's filtration benefits. I would still however suggest buying a few small select pieces of LR that can be used to seed the rest of your base rock.
Thanks.
Actually, in Toronto I wasn't able to find very interesting live rock.
I looked into ordering rock from liverocks.com but with carriage and customs and time to Canada it was prohibitively expensive. As a result, I have gone with a combo of live rock and base rock. I quite like the base rock that is locally available as it seems to have enormous surface area.
Thanks for the help. Jeff
1 1/2 pounds per gallon is recommended but I ran my tank with 1/2 pound of rock per gallon for 6 months with no problem I eventually did go up to 80 pounds however for my 65gal.