That’s basically the mindset I have. I made a mistake once at buying a neon dottyback and adding him into my tank. I had 2 sexy shrimp that I loved. They were both gone within 2 weeks of adding the dottyback. I still have the dottyback and will not get anymore sexy shrimp until he parishes. He’s lucky he’s a pretty fish, otherwise I would have hosted the worlds smallest fish fry.
Yeah exactly. So many things id love to own, but I could never own them safely, without risking their lives, or some other critters life in the tank.
I'd go with live rock to AVOID gha. Dry rock is a GHA magnet--so much free space unoccupied by any other living thing to park right on and grow.
Do tell. I've had ocean live rock complete with crabs, ulva, eunice worms, 10 other types of worms and things that just appear 10 months later. And another system that started with Caribsea "Liferock". The latter is the one that gives me more headaches 100x over.
God no thanks. Just dealing with lobophora algae, aggressive GHA, aiptasia, those pesky lil tube worms that l forget the name of now, majanos. Such a pain in the butt, would rather avoid it, wish I could guarantee a pest free source haha
A way to expel said critters is to add live rock to low salinity water….something like 1.020 range. They’ll leave the rock work in search of better water.
You live in Australia…..where awesome live rock is sought from. I’d go live rock and save all the headaches @JoJosReef mentioned.
Uff, that's horrible stuff. I see now you're shopping in Australian waters--got mine from Florida waters, so no aiptasia or majanos (or rare at least). Spirorbid worms? Definitely annoying. Any alternative places to get your rocks that you can see them first?
Vermetid worms!! That’s the one. Frustrating to deal with, had em all over, exploded seemingly overnight. Not really, I live on the West Coast, and the best live rock comes over east, so not feasible to see prior to buying. The places near me are quite good, but they’re the ones that have me lobophora and other assorted pests to begin with, so I try avoid buying rock from them, and very carefully select coral from there
I really feel like we need to define "live rock" for the purposes of this discussion.
Agree, my definition of live rock is rock sourced from the ocean filled with biodiversity. I started with dry hoping to learn the ropes. I learned a lot but it was a lot of stress tied to it. Not worth it.
