Rock question

[rolikesfish]

I am thinking about getting some Fiji Dry Rock. Here are my questions:

1) How do I make it live? Do I buy a piece of live rock, and dump them all in a tub together while curing the live rock?

2) Does the 1 to 1 and a half pound per gallon of water still apply?

3) How long does it take for the dry rock to become live?

4) Will Coraline algae, mushrooms, or any other type of coral transfer from the live rock to this?

5) How much live rock should I get?

I need some experienced reefers advice.
-Thanks to those of you who will answer

[rolikesfish]

ALSO

6) Will this naturally filter my water just like any other live rock?

[Reefman29]

1. Cure the rock, add it to the tank, then add some live rock.
2. 1 to 1.5 pounds per gallon is usually the ratio.
3. Depends on how much you have and how much live rock you add.
4. Yes, but it will take some time.
5. Depends on the tank size and other factors.
6. Yes it will

[zigzag1]

Reefman is on target. On #1, being that the later added live rock is cured. Or, you could add uncured live rock when curing the dry rock to cycle them together. GL!

[lordofthereef]

1) You could do it that way or just in your tank while establishing a cycle

2) This isn't so much a rule as it is a guideline.

3) To more or less match the "original" live rock IME will take 6-12 months.

4) Yes, but it does take time. Mushrooms can move, but they generally won't do so too much. If you want shrooms to populate your other rocks I would at least have the established rock touching the rocks you wont to populate.

5) Depends entirely on how much time you want to wait and how heavily you plan to stock. I would say you want a minimum of 15-20% live rock.

[Reverend Reefer]

people do this all the time if they have an established tank and just want to add new live rock for the additional filtration. on the one hand, if you're starting a new tank, you can just cycle everything together. on the other hand, if you already have a cycled tank, you can take yer new "dead/dry" rock and cycle it in a bucket, take a bit of sand or some live rock rubble, place it in the bucket with the dead/dry rock, and that will seed it with the bacteria.

i think people get confused about this concept all the time and i think its because of the terminology of "live" rock vs. "dead" rock or dry rock, live sand blah blah. from what i gather, prior to the use of live rock/the history of filtration in water systems, people used things like bioballs and sponge filters. the idea being that people started recognizing the use of bacteria to filter the water. so the use of bioballs and sponges etc., was to provide these filtering bacteria with a surface to grow. fast forward to some point in time and people started realizing that live rock from the ocean contained these filtering bacteria and placing this rockwork was very good at filtering the water in marine systems (along with the other life that comes on as hitchhikers on the live rock) and there's the birth of live rock. eventually, i gather, people started realizing that taking all the dead coral from reefs wasn't so good for the environment (and natural reefs), people started taking the concept of a rockwork as a biofilter and getting highly porous rock or some other material (man-made porous dry "rock") that the live rock provided in the hopes that a similar filtration can be achieved by providing the bacteria with a surface to cultivate within the rock.

so really, from what i understand, live rock or dead rock, sand, sponges or bioballs, its not the rock that filters the water, its the bacteria and stuff that filters the water living inside the media. highly porous rock is pretty, more efficient, is less maintenance than sponges and bioballs, and has other additional benefits (eg. provides surface for snails and such to survive, provides diff species with a natural safe place to hide,and etc.) so that's why the "live rock" method wins for a good biological filtration method. once you understand this concept, you can see what the whole deal is with "live rock" vs "dry dead rock" vs bioballs vs sponges etc.

the initial problem is, how can i filter my water? there are various solutions to this problem, biological/mechanical/chemical etc.. at this present time, the most viable and efficient solution, in terms of biological filtration in home marine aquaria, is the use of bacteria. to maximize the growth of this bacteria, you need some media for them to grow and cultivate, where the most viable and efficient solution to this problem at this point in time is to provide the bacteria with porous rock.

water filtration is the name of the game in home marine aquaria as most people understand that small volumes of water (small compared to the ocean!) gets polluted quite fast, especially when we stock them with all these polluting life. so in most cases, the bacteria and life in live rock is simply not enuff filtration, so we add/employ all sorts of other approaches for filtration - carbon, gfo reactors, macroalgae, protein skimmers, deep sand beds, etc. etc.

i guess all i wanted to get across is that once you understand that it isn't rock/sponge/bioballs/sand that is filtering the water, its whats inside that counts! haha.

[rolikesfish]

Thanks a lot Reverend Reef. This answered a lot of my previous questions and stuff I hadn't really thought about, I will be beginning my build in about a month to a month and a half.

[Reverend Reefer]

no problem. also wanted to add after re-reading my post is all this stuff about vodka and np-biopellets for filtration, now that i actually kinda get what everyone's talking about. people who add vodka (or some other carbon source) is taking the bacteria step further by trying to encourage more growth of this bacteria. in order to do that, they give the bacteria more food (other than the "natural" pollution that your tank is already giving it) in the hopes that increasing the bacteria population can increase your filtration capability.

the latest thing everyone is talking about, with the np-biopellets (or whatever they're called) is that instead of dumping vodka into your tank, the vodka being the food for the bacteria, you put the food on these biopellets thingies, put the biopellets into a reactor, and then that becomes something of a biofilter inside a media reactor.

its still the same thing where you have bacteria filtering your water, you're just trying to bump up your bacteria population by adding food for them (the vodka or vitamin c or whatever) and then with the np biopellets, you just try to get the bacteria to grow in and around these bio pellets that are like a planet of cheese balls to eat for the bacteria, inside a reactor. who knows if any of this works but many report different levels of success.

sorry, i was just researching these np biopellet stuff wondering if i should get some or not.