Firm Footing for Live Rock

[bound_for_obx]

I have 140#'s of Live Rock in a 75gal tank And I'm getting ready to start aquascaping! I'm thinking about making "piers" out of 3" PVC pipe. My plan is to bore a bunch of 1" holes all over the pipe and cut it into lengths that I can push down into the DSB. I would then stack the rock on top of these piers. I figured that with the piers I should have a good base and I would have minimal rock under the sand. Make sense? Is it worth the trouble or should I just push the rock deep into the DSB?

[austinsdad]

Depends on what kind of inhabitants you're gonna get. For instance, I have a pistol shrimp and a watchman goby. The shrimp loves to burrow beneath the fine sand and tunnel under the rocks. If I didn't have my rocks firmly on the bottom, there'd be a big problem with falling rocks. I've even had gobies (two spots) that sometimes would move sand from under rocks to make hiding places or soemthing. The pistol and watchman goby are very interesting together.

Any particular reason you'd prefer minimal rock under the sand?

[Atari]

Sounds like a good plan to me.. you could also use flat base rock.

[dralarms]

I tried this and it worked for about a week. then my stars and such had them uncovered.

[bound_for_obx]

I hadn't considered that creatures might excavate enough sand that they might get exposed. I figured that they would probably just tunnel under the rock. I wanted to expose as much rock as possible because it would be a shame to bury something that costs so much.

[Clown Monarch]

Originally Posted by Atari

Sounds like a good plan to me.. you could also use flat base rock.

I'm not sure if this is what Atari is saying, but can't you just use cheap rocks as a base - like pieces of a broken cinder block or something.

Can't you also turn some regular rock into live rock by simply placing it next to the current live rock?

[dralarms]

like pieces of a broken cinder block or something

To much limestone in that. You can use "base rock" and build on it with live rock.