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Get away with less live rock?


Luapinicap

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Hi everyone! Getting ready to set up my first tank a 25g IM lagoon, looking at aqua scapes I am a big fan of a minimalistic approach. I would like a couple islands but a lot of open sand and swimming room. After reading about biological filtration and how the live rock and sand in the tank is very important to that, and I have seen articles talking about how people should have about a lbs of live rock per gallon. My question is will the minamilistic approach come back to haunt me later? If I do go with less rock is there something I need to do to supplement? Thanks for the help!

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Go with quality well aged live rock and you shouldn't have any issues with the minimalist look. Brandon429 has a lot of good posts about live rock that you can search up on these forums.

 

Edit:

I forgot to mention, I have a 22L display, and a large sump. Total water volume is 53 gallons. I only use 20lb's of live rock.

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ReefSafeSolutions

Nah you'll be fine. A pound per gallon is a ton of rock...in my 25 lagoon I have about 17 pounds. With sand in there, you should have enough of a bacteria population to go with fewer rocks.

 

If you're worried about it, you could break up some rock into small pieces and drop them in the rear chambers, depending on what equipment you're going to use.

 

As mentioned above, just make sure your rock is cured. And if you're still worried about it, aim for keeping just a couple of fish in the tank.

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You can use just a few smaller pieces of live rock along with a sand bed. Much of the biological process happens in the live sand (assuming it doesn't become a clogged up mess).

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Using a very pourous rock like reef-cleaners will allow you to use less rock and you can use a media like seachem matrix in the back of your chambers for more places for the bacteria populate. That's my plan with this tank.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Using a very pourous rock like reef-cleaners will allow you to use less rock and you can use a media like seachem matrix in the back of your chambers for more places for the bacteria populate. That's my plan with this tank.

 

 

Porosity's a big factor, more surface area for bacteria colonization and less weight/water displacement. A basketball sized piece of Pukani can weigh less than 10 lbs. When I switched to Pukani from Tonga/Fiji, it was shocking - like going from a rotary phone to an iPhone.

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^ To echo what everyone else has said, you can get away with less live rock if you use other forms of bio filtration media too.

 

I'm running about 5 lbs of live rock in my 20 gallon display with a about 3-5lbs in my 10 gallon sump. Also I have about 250ml of seachem matrix in the sump.

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I'm using 1.5l of siporax to help with my minimalist aquascape.

All I use is Siporax media now. The stuff is amazing. here it is deployed in my 50 cube sump, 6 litres.

 

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