Live rock
 

I'm looking to buy some live rock. What kinds of things should I be looking for in my rock? How can I tell if its good rock?

One word - porosity. Avoid big heavy bricks which have little surface area, are harder to stack and are plain boring. Porous rock holds more bacteria/hitchhikers, creates better structures and allows more flow for less money.

You're going to get pretty different answers. For me...I'm much less interested in shape and porosity as I am interested in biodiversity (life on/in the rock) and environmentally responsible harvest.

So...you need to figure out what you want your aquarium to be and find the rock that meets your specific needs. There's no single "best" way to do things.

I look for porosity as well. Pick the rocks up...they should be kinda light for their size. Less porous rocks will be really heavy. I look for good shapes as well. Stay away from the brick shape!! Go for long and skinny or plate-like, which are my preferences. Personally I don't like a lot of bio-diversity on the rocks as I find most of that diversity tends to be algaes! I really like to put my fresh live rock into bins and "cook" it in the dark with a powerhead and a heater, doing weekly 100% waterchanges until the phosphates read 0 (this may take 12 weeks or more). I will never again set up a tank without cooking the LR.

I second for porosity, especially if you got nice light rock like fiji thats full of holes, it's so practical for attaching corals and easy to stack and secure, watch out for the aiptasia infested rocks, and obviously as much coraline as possible..

When setting up a new system, would you guys buy a box quantity and hope for what your looking for, or would you pick them individually? I can see the later being a more expensive way to go.

J&L gives you the box price just based on weight. You can hand pick what you want for the box price. I ALWAYS hand pick. :)

Watch out for aiptasia. I purchased all of my rock from existing tanks from members and being my first reef tank, I was not totally aware of the nuisance aiptasia can be in a small tank and almost impossible to be rid of.

Im looking at getting some used rock. lt looks dirty. Would this be ok if I cooked it?

If you cooked it for a few months then you will have no problem with your LR.

i also will never use LR without cooking first.ot one piece of LR with a little cyno on it and didnt notice till it was too late. had to do a blackout for a bloody week. on the up side my tank has never looked cleaner.

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I go for nice looking, light weight (porous) rock with a nice covering of coralline.

I avoid boulder or brick shapes even as base rock.

I've never cooked live rock. I've always just hand picked fully cured (smell it when & you'll know when it's not cured) live rock from the LFS & have never really had any issues.

I had bubble algae once, I had aiptasia once, but nothing that required breaking down the tank or anything drastic to deal with.

Everybody has a different preference I guess...

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i got for as porous rock as possible with as much stuff growing on it as possible. I look for unique macroalgae (stuff that ends up looking like broad leaves). I also look for encrusting corals because they often come back.

Shouldn't be a problem. Do weekly 100% waterchanges on the cook tub (remove rocks and swirl in clean SW during the WC to remove detritus) to quicken the process. Remember that if you're going to cook your rock you need to test for phosphates, and put the rock in your tank ONLY after you test 0 phosphates with a quality test kit, AND there is no growth on the rocks anymore. There's no point in doing it if you're not testing phosphates.

Curing liverock is one thing cooking it is pointless, especially in a newer tank. I'm one of those people who likes things on my rock though. I've gotten many different kinds from many different places over many many years and never had to "cook" it. I kind of like walt smiths ideas on curing live rock. If you cannot handle a little algae in your tank...well. Of course certain types are bad ie caulerpa and a few others, but i specifically looked for certain types of macro algae on my rocks....fed my tangs. Aiptasia fed my CBB etc. Covered in cyano or even GSP (some don't like it because it spreads quickly - THE GSP :). is another thing, you can clean it but cook it...naw. Dirty rock becomes clean with a good cleaning crew, coraline grows back etc etc. The only thing I am always concerned about and the one thing i do test for with rocks bought from someone else is copper...in a bin with a powerhead for a week and then test. Copper is the only thing i worry about when buying rock off of someone....the only thing...everything else can be dealt with quite easily. Copper CANNOT.

I would say some of the nicest rock i have ever seen, short of direct witnessing at the exporters...is the tampa bay saltwater rock. Amazing...at their facility and when ordered.

How do you test for copper?

As others indicated, I would recommend
1. new rock , the freshest out of the box is the best because you need clean, pest and chemical free rock. what ever life that is still there will die off anyway while your tank will be cycling
2. Porosity is important for bio filtration
3. Shapes, if you get lucky your box will have cool shapes but PVC structure was always good way to go
4. You only need 30% of live rock or less of the tank volume, if you get more you will need enormous water flow to penetrate this brick wall of live rock in order to get a decent flow. If you get less you will have reduced bacterial bio mass. Dense rock will support less bacteria and you will need more of it which leads you back to reduced flow problem.

Are there some good examples of using PVC as a frame for setting up structures?

I have a few different copper test kits...i test 3 times during each week of curing. If the test shows ...especially an increase then garbage is where the rock goes. There is a bit of copper in everyones systems though...just a very trace amount.

if i were to order some liverock from one of the US distributors (heard great things about a couple of them) would i be able to bring it back over the border?

"hi sir. what's in the box."

"umm...rocks."

"rocks?"

"yes...rocks..."

when i went to pick out LR for my first tank i went to OA. not only did janet help me pick out rocks, but she wasnt the least bit ****ed off that i took so long to pick out 28lbs of liverock.lol. i got some beautiful pieces. 2 gorilla crabs, but i got them, 1 aiptasia. i can handle it :)

i was looking at the rock at JL the other day. didnt seem to have a lot of live on it, but it was uncured, so who knows what could pop up.

i know that lots of ppl like uncured LR, but i kind of prefer cured liverock because it makes things easier, and im not a fan of cooking it.

With the border anything is possible. sometime you are lucky sometimes you are not.

man...when i brought my aquapod and a bunch of gear up from the US i had to explain what a friggin aquarium was.

BorderGuard:"what is in there?"
Me: "it's an aquarium, lights, a couple of pumps."
BG: "a what?"
M: "an aquarium."
BG: "huh?"
M: "an aquarium...for fish."
BG: "what?"
M: "it's a glass box."

i wonder if i would need some certificate or other piece of paper saying that it was legally harvested liverock...

Ok, so I bought the rock. About 300 lbs. It had all sorts of stuff growing on it. It looked like hair algae, and aptaisia. I've put it all into a large tupperware container and started to cook it. I have a heater and two powerheads in there. I plan on scrubbing it and doing 100% water changes every week.

I have some questions.

1. What temp should I have it at?
2. What salinity?
3. Anything else I should be doing?
4. How do I get my wife to forgive me for the smell in the garage?

:biggrin:As far as the first 3 points goe ithink the same as what you want in your tank. as far as #4 you may have to do a lot of butt kissing and flower givin.

1. and 2. People have experimented with both higher and lower temps and hypo/hyper salinity when rock cooking. The accounts I've read seem to suggest that the LR is pretty resilient to reasonable swings both ways. Personally, I keep the both temperature and salinity slightly lower than my display tank to save a bit of $ on both salt and electricity and my LR has emerged fine.

3. I also put the tubs on top of a sheet of insulating foam along with the top on to further conserve heat. Lastly, when doing water changes try to swish the water and rocks around and/or give them a good blast with a powerhead to help dislodge more of the crap.

4. It'll stop smelling after a few days to a week. Cured/cooked live rock doesn't smell at all.

Will the cooking kill everything but the bactieria? I'm just starting and I don't want to fill my tank with problem rock.

The cooking should kill everything but the good bacteria.

How can I tell if I still have the good bactieria?