Yes, and my question about how the water gets through the rock is answered with fauna living inside the rock. Lots of worms, etc, lots of movement with subsequent filtration happening. No worms, no filtration....hmm

Brad thanks for a great thread.

Following your thought above. I started to think about this. There are so many places we now get LR from. A lot is farmed line stone. Other Rock is from a dead or deep reef. I'm wondering if the good porous stuff is becoming harder and hard to find.
I have already been hitting the books but have not hit on the article that started my understanding that LR alone does not complete the nitrogen cycle. In a closed reef system.

OK so I wasn't able to dig up anything concrete yet. But I'll be back into the books tomorrow.

J

Jason, did you read that link? Ron and Eric are supposedly doing further research, so depending on when that link was done, they may have completed it by now. Maybe I'll try to ask one of them if they have more info.

The last few shipments of live rock I bought were crap. Jakarta maybe? I can't remember. All I know is my first tanks with premium fiji were awesome, before I discovered good skimmers even..:lol:

do you see any difference inNO3 with it's use? Or is it combined in existing setups?

Reading now :)

Don't have them anymore Brad, and never had algae enough to want to measure. The tanks I mention were 100% fiji premium.

All I know is that is my rock of choice.

Ya, I never went wrong with the fiji. The jakarta I see now looks like it came from someone's garden.

Well, good article but it appears Dr. Ron and Borneman had a simpilar decusion and had the resources to find the answer.

Things I found interesting
Quotes for Live Rock As A Biological Filter: Hit or MythBy Dr. Ron Shimek

Finally, the interior of the rock has to provide the appropriate physical environment, primarily slow water flow and low oxygen concentrations, to facilitate the appropriate bacterial processes.
Low Oxygen will not create a anaerobic environment. No oxygen does. therefore the anaerobic bacteria will not thrive and Nitrate will not be converted to Nitrogen gas. So is this article about Ammonia -> Nitrite -> Nitrate. Or is it about complete conversion.

I anticipated a reference to the components to the complete nitrogen cycle but never found it.

J

No, no O2 is anoxic, low O2 will creat anaerobic. For our purposes, my understanding of the article says this is sufficient within "good rock". Additionally, if you google "denitrification in live rock" you'll get lots of hits to articles that claim"oh ya, lr does do that, although without anything to back it up.