bcardoro
Community Member
Hi all,
I would like to share my recent (and on going) experience with indonesian life rock, for the fun. In the past I have used:
This is what you want to see when you buy live rock:
The rock arrived pretty clean in terms of algae which, to me, it is a very good sign: it suggests that it was collected from relatively deep and clean water. Of course, this is WILD live rock, and in 100kg you can expect everything. Indeed this was the case here. I have read some people who is afraid from getting live rock with aiptasia, and I would like to stress out that this is actually the most easy to deal pest that you can get with live rock. And if you do not believe it, keep reading.
The thing is that live rock was just 2 days out of water, so it arrived pretty live. This rock was for a new system consisting of 3 tanks and 1 sump, so I had plenty of space for various inspections. When it arrived, I gave it a first inspection piece by piece and I put it in the sump. After that 1st inspection I got this fabulous salad (and this is what you would not like to see when getting live rock):
You can recognize various types of worms, and in particular, two beautiful bobbit worms, crabs, and some of what now I know that are bad cirolanid isopods (they predate on fish). I took the opportunity to get some pics (see the bobbit tweezers):
Notice that many of these hitchhikers would not have been able to be removed if they were fully awaked (nothing was completely dead), hence the importance of this 1st inspection. After a couple of days, I did a 2nd inspection, piece by piece again, and I moved the rock to the tank above. A week later, a 3rd inspection and I moved the rock to the 2nd tank where it sat for 1 month. During that time I realized that the isopod issue was more severe than thought, which slowed down my plans of introducing fish (https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/isopods-in-indonesian-life-rock-id.895834/):
An unidentified nudibranch also showed up:
So again, aiptasia is not the problem here. I eventually gave a 4th inspection and moved half of the rock to the third tank where it will sit while I do not need that space, and the other half to the 1st tank which will be for display.
The rock is now about to be 3 months in the system, and I guess that the natural question is: Would I recommend it? Well, depends on various factors: motivation, amount needed and space and time availability. In my case, yes, I would go this route again. In my opinion, when you buy live rock you do not just buy rock and microfauna, but you do also get time. What amount of time does a tank need to get the sterile dry rock as established as live rock? 1.5-2 years? And even after that, the rock will not be that live and diverse as wild live rock, and the long-time success it is not so insured as I would say it is with live rock. Yes, there is the pest issue(s), and discounting the fact that you will likely have to deal with them, the remainder still comes out positive. Not to say that, for me, live rock has been an experience... another one in this hobby.
I would like to share my recent (and on going) experience with indonesian life rock, for the fun. In the past I have used:
- Real reef rock in conjunction with dry rock that was previously live. I do noticed that coraline algae appeared quite fast (at 1 month old it started to show up) which, in my opinion, was due to the dry live rock that was live in the past. Even if the rock was bleached and dried out, I think that something still remained in the core that speed up the overall process a bit. Anyway, this time the aquarium matured quite nicely, and I think this was also because I continuously added corals to the tank which introduced beneficial bacteria and organisms.
- Marcorocks (fully sterile). This has been the most frustrating thing I have used. I love the fact that you can take your time for aquascaping, but the whole maturing process turned out to be very slow. In addition, I went bare bottom, which did not help. I tried to put some corals in that tank and they did not do well. Over aquascaping, I clearly prefer established rock, since in general terms, it favors and accelerates some of the biological processes that we want to occur in our aquarium. After all, we are trying to recreate an ecosystem, and it is a bit unfair pretending to recreate it with the organisms that are present on the corals (either on themselves or their bases). I think that a good amount of those organisms should already be there once we decide to introduce corals, which brings me to the last option I have recently used.
- Indonesian live rock. I have recently set up a reef room with a 500gal system (https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/r...tems-1000g-from-scratch.898044/#post-10024670), where I definitely wanted to use live rock. It came to my ear that one shipment of Indonesian live rock was about to reach us early this year, so I got everything ready to receive the rock and quarantine it properly. I bought 105kg, 4 boxes in total:
This is what you want to see when you buy live rock:
The rock arrived pretty clean in terms of algae which, to me, it is a very good sign: it suggests that it was collected from relatively deep and clean water. Of course, this is WILD live rock, and in 100kg you can expect everything. Indeed this was the case here. I have read some people who is afraid from getting live rock with aiptasia, and I would like to stress out that this is actually the most easy to deal pest that you can get with live rock. And if you do not believe it, keep reading.
The thing is that live rock was just 2 days out of water, so it arrived pretty live. This rock was for a new system consisting of 3 tanks and 1 sump, so I had plenty of space for various inspections. When it arrived, I gave it a first inspection piece by piece and I put it in the sump. After that 1st inspection I got this fabulous salad (and this is what you would not like to see when getting live rock):
You can recognize various types of worms, and in particular, two beautiful bobbit worms, crabs, and some of what now I know that are bad cirolanid isopods (they predate on fish). I took the opportunity to get some pics (see the bobbit tweezers):
Notice that many of these hitchhikers would not have been able to be removed if they were fully awaked (nothing was completely dead), hence the importance of this 1st inspection. After a couple of days, I did a 2nd inspection, piece by piece again, and I moved the rock to the tank above. A week later, a 3rd inspection and I moved the rock to the 2nd tank where it sat for 1 month. During that time I realized that the isopod issue was more severe than thought, which slowed down my plans of introducing fish (https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/isopods-in-indonesian-life-rock-id.895834/):
An unidentified nudibranch also showed up:
So again, aiptasia is not the problem here. I eventually gave a 4th inspection and moved half of the rock to the third tank where it will sit while I do not need that space, and the other half to the 1st tank which will be for display.
The rock is now about to be 3 months in the system, and I guess that the natural question is: Would I recommend it? Well, depends on various factors: motivation, amount needed and space and time availability. In my case, yes, I would go this route again. In my opinion, when you buy live rock you do not just buy rock and microfauna, but you do also get time. What amount of time does a tank need to get the sterile dry rock as established as live rock? 1.5-2 years? And even after that, the rock will not be that live and diverse as wild live rock, and the long-time success it is not so insured as I would say it is with live rock. Yes, there is the pest issue(s), and discounting the fact that you will likely have to deal with them, the remainder still comes out positive. Not to say that, for me, live rock has been an experience... another one in this hobby.
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