Came out of reef retirement - New to dry rock

[RedReefer]

Stay new to dry rock. Go with ocean live rock.

 

[schooncw]

I've been in the hobby most of my 64 years and in the aquatic industry as a Dist/Mfg Sales Rep. I would never start a system without live rock, period.

 

[Hemmbone20]

I did the same thing as you and re-started my tank with dry rock. It took 2 years before my water was right. With live rock I had a mandarin goby in there after 8 weeks. The bottled bacteria was trash

Great… well I don’t want to wait 2 years so I’ll have to figure something out

 

[twentyleagues]

Come on now.... dont scare the guy into wasting money by tossing out what he has.
Is there advantages to live rock? yes. Does dry rock and bottled bacteria work? yes. Both are viable options. Yes if you are doing dry rock for the pest issues you are not doing it right. You will get pest stuff eventually. I have used both and both work fine. My current tank is all dry rock started in January had fish in at the end of cycle about 3-4 weeks ( I waited for the complete cycle to establish, I dont care what anyone says about nitrite its not a race) had corals with in a month. Most of the rock is no longer white and coralline algae is growing well. Never had any crazy ugly phase. I do have some bubble algae and aiptasia thats my own fault. Parameters are solid I can increase or decrease nitrate or phosphates usually I keep them about 15n and .06-.08 p04. So none of the "I cant get nitrates or phosphates to stabilize". I feed 2 times a day flake in the morning and frozen at night. I dose afr daily. I do a water change about every 3-4 weeks roughly 10-15%. I added pods to the tank after it cycled I was dosing phyto for the first couple months, I collected bristle worms and mini brittle stars from my tank that was set up on my return to the hobby with lr. This new tank has had way less issues than the other tank. Oh the bubble algae and aiptasia came from the lr tank. No matter how well you think you have cleaned a coral if that stuff is in the tank it will move with the corals.
Can you add lr to whats going on in your current tank? Yes you can! It will eventually be almost indistinguishable from your dry rock. Dont let someone tell you dry rock wont work its simply not true. If you had a successful tank in the past you can do it with dry rock. I did nothing special and this is my first full dry rock tank. Its so much cheaper than lr. I could not spend that much on my tanks rock It would have dwarfed the cost of everything that went into getting the tank where it is now. I have had issues I kind of make it sound as though I havent but they were not related to the dry rock. I brought in bjd with a "nice" frogspawn colony I purchased at a frag swap, that wasnt fun. The bubble algae is annoying thanks live rock. Aiptasia! I hate them thanks again lr, but that could happen with frags too just in my case I absolutely know where it came from.

Dont freak out and through out the baby with the bath water! You are fine. Add some live rock if you wish. It is super cool and lots of cool life forms can come with it.

 

[Hemmbone20]

Come on now.... dont scare the guy into wasting money by tossing out what he has.
Is there advantages to live rock? yes. Does dry rock and bottled bacteria work? yes. Both are viable options. Yes if you are doing dry rock for the pest issues you are not doing it right. You will get pest stuff eventually. I have used both and both work fine. My current tank is all dry rock started in January had fish in at the end of cycle about 3-4 weeks ( I waited for the complete cycle to establish, I dont care what anyone says about nitrite its not a race) had corals with in a month. Most of the rock is no longer white and coralline algae is growing well. Never had any crazy ugly phase. I do have some bubble algae and aiptasia thats my own fault. Parameters are solid I can increase or decrease nitrate or phosphates usually I keep them about 15n and .06-.08 p04. So none of the "I cant get nitrates or phosphates to stabilize". I feed 2 times a day flake in the morning and frozen at night. I dose afr daily. I do a water change about every 3-4 weeks roughly 10-15%. I added pods to the tank after it cycled I was dosing phyto for the first couple months, I collected bristle worms and mini brittle stars from my tank that was set up on my return to the hobby with lr. This new tank has had way less issues than the other tank. Oh the bubble algae and aiptasia came from the lr tank. No matter how well you think you have cleaned a coral if that stuff is in the tank it will move with the corals.
Can you add lr to whats going on in your current tank? Yes you can! It will eventually be almost indistinguishable from your dry rock. Dont let someone tell you dry rock wont work its simply not true. If you had a successful tank in the past you can do it with dry rock. I did nothing special and this is my first full dry rock tank. Its so much cheaper than lr. I could not spend that much on my tanks rock It would have dwarfed the cost of everything that went into getting the tank where it is now. I have had issues I kind of make it sound as though I havent but they were not related to the dry rock. I brought in bjd with a "nice" frogspawn colony I purchased at a frag swap, that wasnt fun. The bubble algae is annoying thanks live rock. Aiptasia! I hate them thanks again lr, but that could happen with frags too just in my case I absolutely know where it came from.

Dont freak out and through out the baby with the bath water! You are fine. Add some live rock if you wish. It is super cool and lots of cool life forms can come with it.

Thank you. Of course I wasn’t going to start over... And I agree, the price of the dry was important to me when buying as much as I did.
The debate now is whether I add some live rock to increase the biodiversity in the tank. Which I think this thread has convinced me to do so. At least in the sump.

 

[PharmrJohn]

I did the same thing as you and re-started my tank with dry rock. It took 2 years before my water was right. With live rock I had a mandarin goby in there after 8 weeks. The bottled bacteria was trash

Gotta ask, cause my plan was to cure my old, dry rock over several months while waiting for flooring and painting in my house. Did you cure yours? Or just throw it in and go with it? I have no issue with going LR, I was just trying to save a little cash with the 150# I already have.....

 

[TomTheSeagull]

I agree with @twentyleagues - I'm 6 months in to my first reef tank. I used MarcoRocks and CaribSea sand. I first set up a quarantine tank, cycled that, and then added clowns to that. While QT was cycling and I ordered my display tank, set it up, Sand/Rock etc. By the time the DT was cycled, the clowns had completed the quarantine process and were ready to move to the display. I also added a couple jars of copepods which I fed daily. I waited about a month and then added a small CUC of a variety of snails and hermit crabs. Since then Iv'e added 1 more fish (Bangai cardinal), 14 corals and expanded the CUC to also include a sand sifting star, brittle star, tuxedo urchin, fighting conch. Currently I only dose AFR. Early on I dosed NeoNitro as Nitrates were zero for a long time. I feel like I'm going slow as I only add a couple things each month, but I love all the activity in the tank. Who knew watching the CUC could be so captivating. Coraline algae just started up a weekish ago. I have 4 more fish in the QT (another cardinal, diamond goby, melanurus wrasse, coral beauty angel).

Good luck on your new build. I'm sure you'll have a great time!

 

[paragrouper]

I looked into this actually, but my LFS argued against it. Maybe I’ll get one live rock or a small amount of sand for the sump and see what happens

You will discover there are fans of both dry and live rock. For the record, I’m in the contact TB live rock and get some live rock camp. They have 4 and 8 lb. Treasure chests where you can get a decent amount to help get you tank going.

 

[Oldreefer44]

Lot's of anecdotal feedback, much of it from people whom are considered to be experts by most of us, that while dry rock will eventually be ok, live rock is by far the better choice especially if you are new to the hobby.. However, you should not have to throw your dry rock out and restart everything. If it were me I would replace about a third of it with live rock. TBS would probably allow you to actually pick yours out yourself. Welcome and good luck.

 

[twentyleagues]

Thank you. Of course I wasn’t going to start over... And I agree, the price of the dry was important to me when buying as much as I did.
The debate now is whether I add some live rock to increase the biodiversity in the tank. Which I think this thread has convinced me to do so. At least in the sump.

Yeah absolutely add some live rock if you want to. I wont get any of the sponges and stuff that comes on lr most likely without adding it. There is a very small chance off frags but not probable. I think about it from time to time also. I just dont like when people say its not possible to have a dry rock tank or that it will take years to mature that is simply not true you can have a successful dry rock reef in less than a year. I was out of the actual hobby for quite some time (12 years) but during that time I was still involved from time to time and worked part time in a lfs at points. So I have learned and seen and helped people do exactly this.

 

[schooncw]

This excellent thread sums up the benefits of live rock nicely. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/mastering-the-basics-reefing-101.922535/

 

[rhitee93]

This was my tank 11 months ago:

Here it was last week:

Mostly dry rock with a few pounds of (crummy) biologically active rock from a bin at my LFS. Very little drama. Just some patience.

I too was returning to the hobby after a long (20 year) layover. Back then you bought tonga branch rock from the LFS still wrapped in wet newspaper, so this was a different experience, but not at all bad.

It went so well, that I setup a 65gal for my Mom in the exact same way.

 

[Sophie"s mom]

Hi everybody,
As the title suggests, I just started a new tank after being unable to have a reef tank for the past 9 years due to my work travels…
I’m doing everything “right’’ this time. Got a new Red Sea reefer 350 and filled it with 80 lbs of live sand and about 60 pounds of dry rock. Added some starter bacteria and got the cycle going. The cycle is finally over so I added 2 clowns.

My question is about how sterile my tank feels at the moment… last time I had a tank, 9 years ago, I started with live rock and my tank was immediately filled with a huge variety of life. It had its own issues at the time, but I enjoyed all the critters in my tank. I felt like there was never any doubt that my CUC, fish, and corals had food. Since I started with dry rock this time, is there a way to add more biodiversity while also avoiding pests? I assume the answer is to be patient… things will come in on frags and whatnot… but I’m curious if anyone else has felt this way when starting a new sterile system up.

I would definitely get some live rock! SO very worth it! But, if you are worried about hitchhikers, you can just put the live rock in buckets or containers of some sort, with water that is hyper salinity, like 1.035 just for a few minutes. All critters in the rockwork will come out of hiding trying to escape the hyper salinity. Then remove the rock, and keep only the critters you want.

 

[skyrne_isk]

Thank you. Of course I wasn’t going to start over... And I agree, the price of the dry was important to me when buying as much as I did.
The debate now is whether I add some live rock to increase the biodiversity in the tank. Which I think this thread has convinced me to do so. At least in the sump.

I think this is right. Just go add some. The sand they sell is super good too. I went half half new sand and dry, you won’t regret seeding sole
rock. Adding sand is a very small investment.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

This was my tank 11 months ago:

Here it was last week:

Mostly dry rock with a few pounds of (crummy) biologically active rock from a bin at my LFS. Very little drama. Just some patience.

I too was returning to the hobby after a long (20 year) layover. Back then you bought tonga branch rock from the LFS still wrapped in wet newspaper, so this was a different experience, but not at all bad.

It went so well, that I setup a 65gal for my Mom in the exact same way.

Some impressive growth!

 

[Uncle99]

Not all bacteria manufacturers use the same blends.
I add 4 different types for hopefully (a leap of faith to some degree) more diversity.

After doing it both ways, 5 years in, both yielded similar results, however, with live rock, took some time to get the pests out.

Only rock from the ocean is live rock.
Other “live rock” is dry rock placed in water at LFS and IMM, totally useless and still comes with trouble.

 

[Hemmbone20]

Gotta ask, cause my plan was to cure my old, dry rock over several months while waiting for flooring and painting in my house. Did you cure yours? Or just throw it in and go with it? I have no issue with going LR, I was just trying to save a little cash with the 150#

This was my tank 11 months ago:

Here it was last week:

Mostly dry rock with a few pounds of (crummy) biologically active rock from a bin at my LFS. Very little drama. Just some patience.

I too was returning to the hobby after a long (20 year) layover. Back then you bought tonga branch rock from the LFS still wrapped in wet newspaper, so this was a different experience, but not at all bad.

It went so well, that I setup a 65gal for my Mom in the exact same way.

Looks great! Awesome to see how everything blended together nice. Can’t tell what started as dry vs live

 

[Rigoberto]

It is very difficult to re-create the diversity and stability found in the ocean. I used TBS and Garf Grunge (no longer in biz) in early 2000s. Frankly, that path works better than bottle bacteria (which I attempted most recently). I would add some live rock early.