live rock

[Sergio Henrique]

hi everbody,

I want to set up a 75 gal reef tank, but the price of the live rock is a little expensive. is It possible put another rocks in the tank and live rock under and on the front from another rocks, but built a good biological filtration like on fish only system ?

thanks

[upstoday]

There a few threads on the forum about making your own substitue for LR. You can make a few of those and LR into the tank with them. Eventually the other rock will also become LR.

I know some LFS sell base rock, not sure what the opinion is of using it. I would imagine you would have to be sure what the base rock was made of. And also QT it for a while to make sure you get any containiments out of the rock.

[fragged]

I used tufa rock as a base rock...it is very pourous and I'm sure is full of beneficial bacteria!

[MikeS]

You can also use reef "rubble rock"....it's pretty cheap, I have it in my tank, and now you can't tell it apart from the LR at all.....

Mike

By all means, sure you can add other rocks, just make sure that they are calcium based rocks though and the more porous the better. Then as said earlier "seed it" with a few pounds of "real" live rock and you will be okay. Some lava type rocks arent good and any of the sand based type rocks arent such a good idea. I have seen "Lace rock" sold is several stores for about 2.00 a lbs that is suppose to be calcium based and I am tolf this comes from the Salt Lake area. As MikeJS said...picking through a dealers Live rock rubble is always a good option too as I have gotten some pretty choice pieces this way that werent exactly rubble by any stretch of the imagination. Then there is making your own rock with the numerous recipes bouncing around on the net. That is what I have done for the most part and happy with the results.

Just takes a little more time to get coralline algae growing if you take this route as opposed to getting a couple of boxes of Live Rock. But with 6-12 months no-one will know the difference but you. Just about any rock you use will set up bacteria colonies in short order if seeded with some live rock.

HTH's & Good luck with your tank!

[29NaNo_ReEf]

Garf makes some cool agrocrete rocks. Only 1.50 a pound i believe and is fully cured, along with a wide variety of shapes and sizes.

www.garf.org

Mike

[MikeS]

check this out before you dive into aragocrete....

http://www.coralforum.com/ftopic2337.html

Mike