Making "live rock"

[swha]

Hi,
I am setting up 29G sal****er aquarium in which there is already 21 pounds
of live rocks.
Also, I recently bought dry rock such as "CaribSea Reef Bones Aquarium Base
Rock " to make it a live rock.
Does anyone let me know optimal conditions such as light intensity, etc to
make it?

Thank you,
Sungwon

[Mislav]

Well, to make it realy live you should put it in an established tank for a
few years. Dead rock takes 20 or more years in oceans to become live.
If you are thinking only of growing coraline algae on it the way is to put
it together with real live rock with coraline growths on it.

So you have 21 pounds of live rocks. My suggestion is to put dry rock to the
bottom of the aquarium and live rock on top of it. It would be unwise to put
live rock on bottom because it can be more beneficial when put in good
waterflow. Dead rock on the bottom will grow coraline in few months if you
have good flow (10 or more times volume of aquarium/h) in tank, no
phosphates and lots of coraline on existing LR. Light intensity isn't very
important in my experience. In my tank coraline grows best in shaded areas,
but the reason could also be that I have sort of coraline that doesn't like
much light.

Mislav

"swha" > wrote in message
...
> Hi,
> I am setting up 29G sal****er aquarium in which there is already 21 pounds
> of live rocks.
> Also, I recently bought dry rock such as "CaribSea Reef Bones Aquarium
> Base Rock " to make it a live rock.
> Does anyone let me know optimal conditions such as light intensity, etc to
> make it?
>
> Thank you,
> Sungwon
>

[Marx]

U¿ytkownik Mislav napisa³:

> Well, to make it realy live you should put it in an established tank for a
> few years. Dead rock takes 20 or more years in oceans to become live.
> If you are thinking only of growing coraline algae on it the way is to put
> it together with real live rock with coraline growths on it.

it's not true
only 3 years is enough to make rock looks live
But only porous rock will be beneficial in terms of filtration.
Filtration = algae inside rock.
Marx

[Anthony Pruitt]

"Mislav" > wrote in message ...
> Well, to make it realy live you should put it in an established tank for a
> few years. Dead rock takes 20 or more years in oceans to become live.
> If you are thinking only of growing coraline algae on it the way is to put
> it together with real live rock with coraline growths on it.
>
> So you have 21 pounds of live rocks. My suggestion is to put dry rock to
> the bottom of the aquarium and live rock on top of it. It would be unwise
> to put live rock on bottom because it can be more beneficial when put in
> good waterflow. Dead rock on the bottom will grow coraline in few months
> if you have good flow (10 or more times volume of aquarium/h) in tank, no
> phosphates and lots of coraline on existing LR. Light intensity isn't very
> important in my experience. In my tank coraline grows best in shaded
> areas, but the reason could also be that I have sort of coraline that
> doesn't like much light.
>
> Mislav


Live rock simply means is has the live filter bacteria present, so it will
actually be *live* in as little as 6 to 8 weeks. The quality of the live
rock depends on what else is present. Since the majority of the life on the
rock requires light to grow, dead rock makes sense when cutting costs. The
base you build your reef on will be mostly covered and the light won't be
able to reach it and a large percentage of the live stuff will die off
anyway. Try using the dead dry rock for the base and a shell of good quality
live rock over it. Within a few weeks, the actual filtering capacity will be
the same as if you had started with all live rock and you won't have any die
off from the organisms on the buried live rock to contend with.