I used all dry rock and it's just getting colour to it now. The dry rock really seemed void of micro fauna and once I added some nice clean live rock the dry really woke up..

Oh, NM, I see they've dropped their prices

I did use about 20% live, so that helped, but it's still a PITA :)

Quick update, getting kinda done with this nonsense.

Currently the fish I could catch are in treatment tank, suffering from who knows what. Looks almost like velvet, but been fighting it longer than fish would last with velvet.
Achilles is dead, 3 Bartletts, a Lyretail and my male Mandarin.

Not enjoying my "hobby" right now :(

Sorry to read this, Brad. Haven't kept up with your whole tank rebuild, but from what I have seen, you are having a few challenges. Hope you get it all worked out, and get back to the glory days,... where you couldn't do any wrong. You had some pretty impressive coral displays.

Thanks! :) I'm sure it will all come together by next year. Just a challenge with this build that I haven't had to deal with in the past. I'm guessing this is a bad outbreak of ich, and hopefully what's left makes it through treatment. Corals are doing well, despite high PO4.
This is just becoming more work than I really want to put into a tank! And losing my favorite fish sucks big time...

Yeah,... you've had such a great tank for so long, you're just out of practice with dealing with all the mundane problems the rest of us have... But I'm sure you will figure it out...

Well, I read all the threads with those problems, so I have a head start :) Algae issues are gone, just dealing with my bad decision to use this rock.

I'm also not as impressed with my zeo system as I used to be, might toss it and try something else. And I'm close to a reset with real rock, just not eager to undo what I've done so far..

Yeah, I still remember when I added dry rock to my tanks a couple years ago. Despite cycling it in my QT for a couple months, with lots of rinsing, I still had a little P04 spike after adding it to my display tanks. However, it was well mixed with my existing live rock (50:50), so didn't take too long to stabilize in the tank. But it took quite a while longer before coralline finally covered it, and it ceased trapping detritus (which the GHA loves).

I don't know how the guys that start with only dry rock do it. Must take a long time before it becomes fully live the same as regular live rock.

Sorry about the problems Brad. Hope it turns around