Legit Live Rock
- Thread starter mchain275
- Start date
Idk. You can get into the weeds with rock sitting in a for the most part sterile tank will develop a predominant bacteria that may not be what you want. Why I believe LR works is because it has all the in and outs in nature to help you jump start that on your tank. One thing to be aware of with LR being sold now a days, make sure it’s not boated rock (shipping in a container), versus flown.
I think it's a matter of opinion and choice. For this next build, I'd like to go old school if possible and use natural rocks, both because I find them more aesthetically pleasing and I want to capture the diverse micro biome that bacteria in a bottle just can't match.
I used Marco rocks for my last build. I was very happy with them at the time, and it was very amusing to experiment with mortaring them together into structures. And they've been more than adequate in my tank, no complaints really. That said, in my opinion, they simply don't compare to natural reef rock. I have some old school Tongan branch rocks and they're my favorite rocks in the tank.
In my experience, real rock is vastly more porous such that, pound for pound, they occupy more space. I would presume that they offer vastly more space for both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria to colonize relative to synthetic rock. Further, they take to drilling a lot better than synthetic rock, which is nice for mounting plugs.
Will real reef rocks make corals grow faster? I don't know, I wouldn't think so. Will natural rocks kickstart the establishment of a solid reef tank? I think absolutely yes.
At this stage in the hobby for me personally, I'm more concerned with aesthetics than growth rates. And as a guy in his 40s, I have some nostalgia for live rock delivered in wet newspaper. I don't mind splurging a bit on this build.
I used Marco rocks for my last build. I was very happy with them at the time, and it was very amusing to experiment with mortaring them together into structures. And they've been more than adequate in my tank, no complaints really. That said, in my opinion, they simply don't compare to natural reef rock. I have some old school Tongan branch rocks and they're my favorite rocks in the tank.
In my experience, real rock is vastly more porous such that, pound for pound, they occupy more space. I would presume that they offer vastly more space for both aerobic and anaerobic bacteria to colonize relative to synthetic rock. Further, they take to drilling a lot better than synthetic rock, which is nice for mounting plugs.
Will real reef rocks make corals grow faster? I don't know, I wouldn't think so. Will natural rocks kickstart the establishment of a solid reef tank? I think absolutely yes.
At this stage in the hobby for me personally, I'm more concerned with aesthetics than growth rates. And as a guy in his 40s, I have some nostalgia for live rock delivered in wet newspaper. I don't mind splurging a bit on this build.
I would take real ocean rock over dry rock every single time. The only dry rock I like is the QM ecoscape, but that stuff is super pricey. The good this is, you only need a free choice pieces to seed your system, so you don’t need much. Don’t get me started on Marco rock, that stuff is so ugly, it’s not funny. But it’s all subjective.
If I had to go with dry rock, it would be the ecoscape with a few pieces of ocean rock. Otherwise, the best method is to fill your tank up with coral (not frags) and just go.
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If I had to go with dry rock, it would be the ecoscape with a few pieces of ocean rock. Otherwise, the best method is to fill your tank up with coral (not frags) and just go.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
