Good live rock

[Scavenger]

If I were to just be starting out again, I would have taken a completely different approach to acquiring my live rock.

When I first set up my initial tank, wide eyed and wet behind the ear, I was enthralled to find live rock at the LFS thriving with life. I purchased many pounds of rock containing brown star polyps, button polyps, mushrooms and other interesting treats.

As my reefing experience grew, I found I wanted to lean toward the LPS and SPS. But, by now my tank was infested with the formally desired life. There wasn't much available real estate. Many rock scrubbings, inverting rocks into the sandbed, anything short of cooking or nuking the rock was the choice of action.

To this day, I have not completely eliminated them, but have them under control with flow and I believe more intense lighting helps too. If I find myself overrun again, I believe I'll just try to trade in on cleaner rock. I think those dusty, dirty, not much coraline rocks sitting unwanted by others would be my first pick as long as the shape and porousness (is that a word) were nice. I'd look at that rock as I saw it months in the future, not in it's current state.

That's just my story, and I guess the moral is look to the future and what you see yourself wanting to keep as a reef years down the road.