Starting a tank with DEAD base rock

[Greg Hiller]

This may be a LONG thread. I'll post just a bit here first as I don't have time to comment in detail at the moment. My statement from the thread on live rock was:

I don't see any point in purchasing live rock anymore my self. I think it is unnecessary for the setup of a tank. I've set up my last 8 tanks with nothing but dead rock and seeded with a selected piece of rock from an established tank. It's fun to watch critters come/grow out of live rock, but a VERY large number of things slowly fade away anyhow, and only those things that are able to propagate long term under tank conditions survive. In some ways it's sad to watch the critters on the rock die away.

Some questions I had were:

>Where do you get "dead rock" suitable for a tank? <

There are multiple sources for dead rock: Hirocks.com and others. There was a thread back on the BRS RC forum only a few month back on this. I've picked up most of my dead rock (the best stuff) from vacations to tropical areas. I just pick up stuff that has washed up on the beach. It is usually rain washed and sun bleached for many years and is perfect to go straight into a tank. I've never had any problems bringing it back legally, I always told people exactly what it was. You need to make sure there it is dry and has no life (like ants..yikes!!!) or soil, etc. on/in it. I always like when the airline guys pick up the box and say....'Geeze, what do you have in this...rocks?!?' ;-)

>How long did you have to wait until the critters inhabited the Dead rock? <

Not long, usually you can see coraline algae within about 3 weeks. Worms, featherdusters, sponges, etc. take longer, but within about 6 months you can have some pretty good coverage. Depends a lot on many factors of course. I could go on and on on this topic, and time permitting, and if I see people reading I will!

>Was 1 or 2 pieces of LR enough to cycle a tank properly<

A cup of sand from any established tank is enough to get the tank to cycle. You just need to be careful about how much bioload you add early on. You don't even need rock if all you want is biological filtration. The surface area in a little bit of sand is incredible. Of course there are other, numerous advantages to rock also.

 

[Piscevore]

Greg, that is a fantastic posting. I am considering doing exactly what you've done, for exactly the same reasons. The "life" everyone raves about getting on live rocks doesn't make sense when we all take that rock and immediately "cure" it, which kills 99.7% of all the macro flora/fauna on the rock anyway. I'm not a fan of infestations of valonia, bristle worms, aiptasia, and everything else either. I'm certainly not a fan of paying 10bucks a lb for rock with a little bit of coralline or something....when coralline grows like a scourge upon everyint in my tank anyway.

So long as I can find some nice large light pieces, this sounds like the cats meow of tank construction on a less than gargantuan budget. Also, it never hurts to buy a little too much rock at a buck a lb, and then selling it for 5 bucks a lb once it is fully covered

 

[seasno]

Greg I am tagging along on this one also...makes a lot of sense to me....I can deal with the bristle worms and aptasia but I have yet to find a good way to rid a tank of valonia short of picking it out piece by piece.

Not to mention the economics of using "dead rock"!

 

[Keith Sheridan]

Seanso, I have had great luck with 4 emeralds in a 72 gallon. They got rid of the stuff in a matter of weeks. Incidentley, I never saw them eat it, but it all disappeared, can't be positive it was the crabs, but at the time I was still using tap water and changed nothing.

As for base rock, I started my tank with it and would do so again, with a small percentage of live rock. I ordered my rock from hirocks.com, which is more expensive than Greg's method but so much cheaper than buying a box of live rock. The rocks came in good sizes and shapes, and are very pourous and holey (large enough for small fish and inverts to escape into).

 

[ducker]

I'm on board with this 100%... This is how I am going to be setting up my tank as it is... primarly with hi-rocks and then get a small shipment of TBS to see it. Many people talk about how much life is on the TBS rocks.. I hope that this will help in seeding the base rock... Essentially you're doing in a smaller body of water exactly what TBS is doing down in the gulf....

 

[Scuba_Dave]

I lucked out & bought 100 lbs of "dead rock" from a reefer who broke down his tank -- $100 for some prime hand picked Fiji. It was still wet in a tank, and had maybe bacteria, but corraline & anything photosynthetic had long since died due to lack of light. In order to avoid any problems I fresh water dipped all of it. Never had any problem w/nuisance algae & rock came to life as I increased my lighting (I only had NO at the time - just starting out).
I did end up w/1 crab that has been in my tank & hasn't disturbed anything that I can tell. I am "recycling" rock & getting it ready for my 180g. I am bleaching it & will sun dry it after that. I anticipate setting the tank up this fall w/rock only & letting the bugs & whatever grow for 3-6 months

 

[jmkeary]

i mixed dead and live rock. I figured it was a waste of money to buy live rock and then bury it with more live rock so bought some dead rock and used it for the base. took the money i saved and bought some great live rock to go on top. My only concern was that the dead rock may have phosphates and nitrates since it is taken from a surface quarry but so far have not found any in testing my water.

 

[R Baxley]

tagging along.

 

[Piscevore]

Good soak in bleach, followed by a touch of vinegar, and then a good soaking in fresh water, and sun bleaching, will give good clean base rock (if you're worried about ground level contaminants). The 30 lbs I have in my 20 would be all I need to seed the tank once it was established. Probably just take 1 good sized piece of fresh live rock (uncured) to cycle the tank and get the new rock seeded.... after that you can throw some pretty stuff one the very top, and in 6 mos nobody will be able to tell the difference where the "real" stops and "cultured" starts....

 

[Greg Hiller]

I myself have no problem with bristle worms. They are in all my tanks, and I've never seen the average type do any damage to any living creature. Of course there are a huge number of bristle worm species, so I'm sure it would be possible to bring in a problematic species. For me, the bristle worms just clean up any uneaten food, post haste, and decrease the likelyhood that the food will break down and help fuel algae/cyano growth.

More on the live rock issue.

Quite frankly, the live rock I see for sale in most of the shops in the Boston area has hardly any more life on it than dried, dead rock.

As I see it there are a host of advantages and disadvantages to various quality live rock.

The BEST stuff.

Let's suppose you get rock with an incredible amount of life on it, and it was shipped very carefully, and very quickly to you so very few things died in transit. Sounds great, but over time a lot of things are going to die just because they don't have what they need to survive in your tank. As these things die in a closed system they are going to be dumping A LOT of nutrients into the water. It may be very difficult to control the algae growth that will occur. Large clams, and sponges are some of the things that might be dying. This will make your system unstable for a long time...maybe 2-6 months or more. This is probabaly the reason that people say you should not put SPS in your system too early. Though, I think one reason to give the advice not to put SPS in your system too early may be that the hobbiest may just have a lot of learning to do about reef keeping first.

Another problem with REALLY 'good' rock is that there are going to be a lot of hitchhikers you don't necessarily want: Aiptasia, urchins (not that they are so bad, but sometime you get an ARMY of them), mantis shrimp, carnivorous/omnivorous crabs, Bryopsis, Valonia (particularly the small form, I think the genus is actually something other than Valonia, Ventrillia?, don't have my ref. books with me), Caulerpa, hydroids, and ugly/colorless zoanthids.

Of course, an advantage/or disadvantage depending upon how you look at it with good live rock is the potential for really cool macro algae species and corals etc. to grow out. In some cases you get a bunch of neat macro algae that are beautiful, and easy to control. Or you can end up with macro algae that are very difficult to control unless you have the correct organism. This might mean you need a tang, or just the right species of tang. Unfortunately, in our small tanks it's sometimes difficult to keep the correct species of tang because it gets too large. I've found that the blonde Naso tangs can very effectively control Valonia, brown leafy alge, red filamentous algae, red fleshy algae, and most species of Caulerpa, but they get REALLY big.

 

[dad300]

Greg,
Have you ever used Hi-rocks rock? and what do you think of it. is it pourous enough or is it too dense? I'm looking at getting a 30 lb box for my 29 gal. what are your thoughts?

 

[RobboT]

Just to further support Greg . . .

My tank was started with 2 large pieces of dead rock that I got for $1.25/lb, a few dead coral skeletons left over from the previous tank owner, 1 small piece of Tufa Rock(dont laugh too hard), and about 5 lbs of live rock. It took a little over 4 months to finally get things marginally stable, mostly because I had no idea what the hell I was doing.

I definitely would start a new tank with a great deal of dead rock.

 

[R Baxley]

I'm sure all the LFS owners are following this thread...all the while cursing at Greg!

 

[Scuba_Dave]

Most of my LR was $1-2 per lb, the most I paid was still under $3 a lb
#150 - $150
#30 - $75
#50 - $100
close to #90 - $240

 

[RobboT]

I'm sure all the LFS owners are following this thread...all the while cursing at Greg!

Nah, they'll be stocking up on dead rock thats all. A well placed trip to Florida with a UHaul might help them line their pockets.

 

[Greg Hiller]

>Have you ever used Hi-rocks rock? and what do you think of it. is it pourous enough or is it too dense? I'm looking at getting a 30 lb box for my 29 gal. what are your thoughts?<

If I ever get approval from the town of Wakefield to start my addition I will likely use the Hi-rocks rock for a monster tank. Unfortunately, the Hirocks guy is running out of rocks. I spoke to him over the phone about a 1 ton shipment and although he normally does it, there apparently (so he says, I've no way to confirm) is some type of shipping/loading strike in Hawaii, so he's not been getting his regular shipments (he's in Cal). So, he has stopped selling in large volume because he makes a lot more money in small volume and he doesn't want to run out.

FWIW, he sent me a small sample of the rocks he sells. It wasn't bad, but no where near as light/porous as the rain washed stuff I pickup up in Fiji. It was strong though, and had some decent holes and shapes to it. Of course I have no way of knowing if he sent me a representative sample or not.

 

[Steve H]

This thread just saved me a lot of money, I just ordered a 30lb box from Hirocks this morning. I'm new at this so I won't really be able to tell if its good or not but I will post a picture when it gets here.

 

[Matt L.]

This is very interesting. It certainly would be a cost saver. My only concern is that in my tank, I have wonderful Walt Smith LR that I started with, and other rock bought from around the area with little or no growth on it. While my dead rock eventually grew life, after almost two years, it was just never as colourful as the Walt Smith LR.

I don't know what I'm going to do with the 90gal tank... I still have that $150 LR gift certificate from Dr. Fosters & Smith that I won at the December meeting to use up!

Matt

 

[DSG7777]

This thread has really helped me out, thanks a ton. Was starting to worry about rock costs for a larger tank I am about to start. Its only 20-30 gallons, but that can add up for a high school student with a minimum wage job

 

[skatezen]

I ordered a box of rocks from Hirocks.com and IMO the rocks were really dense and not porous at all. I ordered them with the intention of using them as base rock under my sand to give a good base for my LR, which I did. Now that I think about it I don't think I would have ever used them as "show" LR. Just my two cents.

Jeff