Dry Rock Sucks

[geekreef_05]

There i said it. Dry rock has made this hobby more challenging than it used to be.

 

I miss the days of live rock. Sure there were some pests. Sure you could spend 2 years fighting aptasia, bubble, fireworms, flatworm, astras and pulling out hitckhikers. 

 

But damn, today with dry rock there is a stark lack of diversity, replaced by massive DINO and GHA blooms. 

 

Those minor nuisances of yesterday have been replaced by much hardier, vigorously growing algae and bacterial problems. 

 

Coralline algae in particular is starkly low in most dry rock reefs compared to how quickly and successful it grew in liverock aquariums. 

 

I may in the near future just drop 1lb of LR rubble into my reef to kickstart more Coralline growth and a more balanced bacterial load.

 

/rant. 

 

For those who have used both, how would you compare the two? 

[KC2020]

20+ years ago I used to buy purple coraline encrusted Marshall Islands rock and Tonga branch just covered in life and full of critters. It was saturated with sponges, plants and small corals. Usually a few crabs, tiny starfish and an occasional octopus. I drove down to L.A. and hand picked it out of big 200 gallon vats. The dealer was not far from LAX. The rock was literally fresh off the plane, just a couple of days after someone had hacked the sh*it out of a beautiful reef. 

 

I'm relieved it's been outlawed !

I simply didn't know at the time how it was being 'collected' and what was happening to the reefs they were decimating. 

I've still got that rock but it's been dry for a couple of years. Tomorrow my live sand arrives along with a liter of Aquaforest Life Source. I'll be using natural seawater from a research facility where it's correctly collected, filtered and then stored underground in the dark for days. The sand and dry rock will go in, then the water and in the filter chamber I'll add Aquaforest Life Bio Fil. 

I'll run it for a month in ambient light only. Then I'll add copepods and a hermit crab.  A week later I'll add a lawnmower blenny if I can find one and a couple of LPS. In 3 months it'll support SPS. A 1 gallon automated water change daily will be sufficient for my 20 AIO. AFR and Kalkwasser will be dosed daily. Trace elements will be either Redsea or Aquaforest. I'll continue to add bacteria as long as the tank is up. 

I've done this a couple of times. I'll probably go through an algae and diatom bloom but they'll be short and the diversity will be tremendous. It's a proven method. If you doubt me I could refer you to a couple of biologist's white papers or you could just watch Ryan's test results. He of course did it without the natural seawater so I have an advantage.

The options we have today are far better than destroying what's left of the world's delicate reefs. 

And given the Nano tank journals I've looked at on this forum success is just a matter of asking a lot of questions, reading, patience and persistence.

Every coral you add brings diversity to the biome with its own unique array of bacteria and micro fauna from the system it was raised in or the reef it grew on. 

The beauty of nature is that it finds balance despite how inadequate a start we may give it.

[InAtTheDeepEnd]

Hard agree with @KC2020 - what right to we have to steal from nature, far faster than it can rebuild itself, for our own enjoyment? IMO, none whatsoever; besides, I personally love watching tanks find their own balance. Sure, there's broadly similar 'uglies'* all go through at some stage, but mother nature's beauty is in her diversity and for every reef it's a bit different, a unique and fascinating process we as reefers are very privileged to have taking place in our homes. 

Natural reefs, on a far larger scale than our home aquariums, have undergone this process too, albeit more slowly and under a myriad more variables than glass boxes in a (bigger) brick box.....it's an ecosystem building itself before your eyes and it's fascinating. Frustrating, at times, too, of course, but ultimately worth it. 

 

 

*I actually don't find algae, etc., particularly ugly. Put it under a microscope and it's just incredible. 

[Jimh61]

I have used both types of rock. I think the dry purple reef rock works just as good. I started with dry sand dry reef rock. Added bacteria and let it cycle.  Added pods and feed phytoplankton daily and to this point no  unwanted algae.  The tanks only 13 gallons and has 3 corals, a watchman and pistol shrimp combo, 2 snails and 2 blue legged crabs.  We can’t keep taking from the reefs, soon we will have none.

[geekreef_05]

Allow me to provide 3 counter agreements:

 

One:

Most scientific projections predict the worlds natural reefs will become extinct between 2050-2100. That maybe within the lifetime of some young folks on this forum.

 

Two:

Even when the hobby was actively removing fish, coral, rock from the ocean it was like less than 1% of the total amount humans removed from reefs. 

 

I visited the Dominican recently and their airport walls are built from dried liverock. My mind was blown. Whats worth its weight in gold to me is a cheap construction material for someone else.

 

And Three: 

The BRS diversity challenge is interesting cause it shows how liverock doesn't equal a monster load of microdiversity. 

 

But here's the thing. We all know there are tones of hitckhikers and the right BALANCE of microbiology. 

 

Liverock has the RIGHT mix of microbiology with good things already naturally outcompeting bad things. 

 

Thats the difference.

 

[fenderchamp]

I've never got "real live rock" I bought some wet rock that was "curing" in the LFS.  The first piece I bought had a little coraline algae on it and I assume it came from another fish tank probably in the omaha area.  I did get a little bit of algae early on, but I did weekly %100 water changes for dang... a year or more ...  Eventually it came around and its still doing well.

 

The other tank I boiled up some dry rock and old live rock, I added a hermit crab and a few pebbles that I put in my other tank for a while.  I added frags, "reef bugs" fed it live phyto.  After about a year I started to get some dinos.  You can look at my thread in the nano forums to see how it turned out them (maybe I just got lucky.  

 

So I've never done the ammonia and chem cycle with straight up dead rock, but I think how I did the second tank would get you in the same spot pretty much as plain dead rock, except with the ammonia and chemicals I think you are growing (some bacteria and ?? maybe other stuff), quickly and in isolation.  

 

The crab and feed it for a while and add some frags with a little seed rock from an existing system takes some time.

 

More than anything, I think you need to have enough rock and you have to get your system balanced out with proper flow/light/rock-water ratio which can take some tweaking as well.  It also seems to take some time for the rock to kind of get some bio-film (turn dark).   Despite the huge amount of "cure dino" threads, I'm still terrified of them, when the invasion started in  my tank it went from 'eh?' to stuff was closing up and a matter of a few weeks. 

 

I attacked my dinos by adding all of the rubble from the overflow in the the main tank, adding more  additional dead rock to the main tank.  I thought it feasible that the minimalist landscape, combined with running a bare bottom tank, wasn't supporting enough 'other things" to compete with the dinos and that perhaps the "stuff' that grew in the light mattered more than the stuff that was growing the dark of the overflow.  I replaced the aio tank with a uns glass filterless tank, only running a power in the tank and deep below the water line, shorting the light cycle to 8 hours, reducing the flow (particularly on the surface of the tank) and cleaning everything vigorously every week for a month, doing %100 water changes.  Adding 10 more hermits to for pooping, feeding the tank pretty vigorously.  Corals looked better in a week, dinos seemed to gone in 3-5.  Dinos haven't come back.  The downside is that I have a bunch of not glued together rocks in the tank now.   I will get it back to having a stable base, but I think it's going to take a little time.

 

 

And of course rushing things is never good.  

 

I would suggest although that (as suggested elsewhere) adding frags is going to give you biodiversity and probably some pests as well eventually.  Good planning, meticulous maintenance and having enough rock to support the biodiversity for a given volume of water might come into play as well.  It also seems like it just takes time for the tank to really mature.  

 

 

[Jimh61]

So why not buy agricultured reef rock that has been in the ocean for a while? Try  Tampa bay live rock. I think this would give you what you’re looking for. 

 

[InAtTheDeepEnd]

mariculture is for sure the way forward for the hobby 

[geekreef_05]

1 hour ago, Jimh61 said:

So why not buy agricultured reef rock that has been in the ocean for a while? Try  Tampa bay live rock. I think this would give you what you’re looking for. 

 

Ya thats definately a good solution. 

A middle ground. 

 

Thst said this isnt an ask for starting a new tank. I was making a reflective philosophical hobby statement. 

 

Which is that dry rock sucks lol.

 

[KC2020]

Well obviously everyone is welcome to their opinion.

 

I was just reading Fishy's first reef tank journal, from a first time reef keeper using dry rock. 3 months since he started and it looks like he's doing pretty well to me. 

 

Hmm, I wonder if I can find anymore successful tank journals here using dry rock ? 

 

2 hours ago, InAtTheDeepEnd said:

mariculture is for sure the way forward for the hobby 

It's the only way forward for the hobby and in fact for many of the world's reefs.
 

[mcarroll]

On 2/24/2024 at 9:01 AM, geekreef_05 said:

And Three: 

The BRS diversity challenge is interesting cause it shows how liverock doesn't equal a monster load of microdiversity. 

 

Just to further your main point of the thread by diluting point #3 just a little, there have been actual scientific journal articles that have looked at this – at least judging from your summary, the journals support the thread's hypothesis and not BRS's.  (Link)

 

Just to keep this brief, the other points on this post are 100% spot-on.  Total agree on the thread!  👍  

 

Our hobby used to be conservation-minded in a realistic, practical way...among other progress that was made, that's how we (as a hobby) came to appreciate live rock in the first plac, how we came to produce DIY rock as well as cultured live rock....and eventually cultured DIY rock.

 

Going from that kind of progress back to dead rock (as in the 1960's) is retrograde.  It was never a question of "whether dead rock works" – inert bio-media works exactly like it has always worked.  (ie like any other bio-media)  The point is that "how it works" is the reason we upgraded from dead skeletons to live rock (cultured or otherwise) thru the 80's and 90's, etc.  Actual, real live rock is better.  

 

But we are where we are just the same – probably 9 out of 10 new reef tanks (more?) are started with dead bio-media, just like a freshwater fish tank in 1980 would have been.  🤷‍♂️  

 

GOOD THREAD!  🙂 

Edited February 25 by mcarroll
too many spaces

[erichatesmice]

I haven’t posted in forever but I’ll chime in to say I tried it all. Conservation issues aside, freshly plucked live rock is the best. Cultured dry rock (like TBS) is the next best thing. Dry rock is a distant third. That’s not to say it can’t be done, especially if you help it along with seeded rock or something.

[AaronRV45]

My Innovative Marine AIO 10g started a couple of months ago with purple-painted dry rock and a bag of live sand. My tank is amazing now. No algae blooms at all. For fish, I have a Clown, a diamond goby, a royal dottyback, and a Bengai Cardinal. I have a skunk cleaner shrimp a peppermint shrimp and an assortment of hermits and snails. I have about 8 or 9 different coral frags. I am using a Prime 16HD light.

 

I feed frozen mysis shrimp once a day and pellets once a day. I dose my tank with RedSea Reef Energy Plus Daily. I did boost coralline growth by using a product called 'Coralline Algae in a Bottle, Purple Helix Plus Version, Live Spores + Nitrifying Bacteria'. It works. I have to scrape the glass with a razor blade scraper to keep the coralline off of the glass. 

 

My tank looks beautiful. I have a skimmer but I don't use it because it produces micro bubbles. My water levels are all perfect.

[KC2020]

1 hour ago, AaronRV45 said:

My Innovative Marine AIO 10g started a couple of months ago with purple-painted dry rock and a bag of live sand. My tank is amazing now. No algae blooms at all.

Congratulations ! It sounds like a nice Nano. I'm glad to hear you've had such success with the live sand. It does sound like you've got a full house with that many fish in a 10 😃