Biological Filtration Question

[isaacharry]

Hello

 

I have a reef tank that has been established for two years, however i hate the look of my live rock, i want just dry rock. my question is, can i remove all the live rock and replace it with dry rock ? or will it have a negative effect

[VW_TDI_02]

Live rock is just rock with beneficial bacteria on it which you can't even see. I'm not sure what you are asking. If you just take out all your rock and replace it, you'll end up crashing your tank because you're removing the majority of your beneficial bacteria (the stuff that converts ammonia to nitrite and then to nitrate).

[Muraki]

I agree with VW_TDI_02. You need to figure out a solution to switch the rock out slowly over several months I would think.

[Hig789]

Or if you had someone to hold all the livestock for you you could just tear it down and cycle the dry rock and whe. It's ready slowly move everything back over.

[righttirefire]

Do you have a sumped system? When I added my sump I added 15# of rock... allowed it to "cycle" occasionally switch out rock/s from sump into display.

[Azedenkae]

It won't really work though... once you've swapped it over... things will grow again, the dry rock will become live rock and it will look the same.

 

Unless you're just talking about different shapes of rocks, and wanting to swap that out.

[printerdown01]

+1 with slowly replacing. And by replacing I mean add a rock let it sit there for a long while... then remove a rock. Repeat process until everything is changed out.

 

It might actually be faster to just set up a whole new tank and let it cycle -while you livestock lives elsewhere as suggested above. Even in that scenario expect to loose a little bit .

[ajmckay]

With the use of a bacterial supplement you can move things much quicker. I would still leave some of your old live rock in the tank but you could potentially take out the majority and replace it immediately with the new dry rock - following the instructions as though you are cycling a new tank. When looking for a bottled bacteria know that they are not all equal - get something that states specifically that there's active bacteria from the family nitrobacter like biospira or Dr. Tims but there are others that use confusing words to make it seem like they contain bacteria...

 

I'll probably be following this same procedure in a few months as I plan to swap out some LR for new dry rock.

 

Alternatively you could leave the tank as it is and put the dry rock in a tub with some of the LR to let it cycle then swap the rock. I would do some ammonia dosing in this scenario though.

 

Note that my comments assume your tank isn't overstocked and that you don't have any particularly sensitive fish, inverts, or corals. If you've got showpiece corals in there you should probably do some more research and have a very methodical plan before proceeding.