NotSoCivil_Engineer
Community Member
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2018
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- What state or country do you live in
- Minnesota
Long rambling post here as I try to wrap my head around this. Thanks for your time and help in advance. Hopefully someone here is a bit smarter than I am and can point me in the right direction!
I dove into this hobby without much upfront research. The past 8 months have been a whirlwind, with hundreds of hours of youtube and forum reading in me I now feel 10x smarter and "almost" know what I am doing (for someone who has only had their toes wet for 8 months).
I followed BRS vids in the beginning and setup my tank with project reef rock 2.1 - which is concrete painted purple - non porous. I regret it 100%. The scape looks cool, but not what I want long term. I want to redo my scape and swap out my rock.
Aside from the fact that I want real porous rock, I'm battling GHA and my phosphates are crazy high... I'm running a small amount of GFO, have massive chaeto growth, and a octopus reef regal 150int skimmer at 80% and we still can't cut it down. I hooked up a ATS as well to see if that could help, it's already loading up with algae and the DT is still growing. Flucanozole didn't even dent it... after all the online reading - everything keeps pointing back to my poor choice of rock...
My question is how do I do this safely? I have a few corals mounted but are on plugs that I can pop off easily and a few rock flower nems that we'll end up making angry. Otherwise 6 fish and the usual CUC. Tank is RS 350. 75-80 gallons total. As the existing rock is non-porous I don't think it provides much bacteria support. I have 2 marine pure bricks + a few extra smaller blocks in the sump, as well as 80 lbs of live sand up top.
I'm not sure I want to spend the $$$ for live rock just yet. But I still want to shift to the porous dry rock to establish live rock long term. As it stands - the reef rock 2.1 won't even turn into good live rock down the road.
Since I have the marine pure, can I do a hot swap with new porous dry rock directly into the tank? Or should I still cure it seperately for a month or two? Can I do it all at once or should I do one rock at a time? We have three specific rock structures that I could swap in sections if needed...
My corals are growing. Hollywood stunner has doubled in size and my girlfriends favourite rainbow acan has 9 new heads! So with this in mind, I'd like to make the transition before it's too late and our corals are stuck to the rock...
What am I missing? Is this a good idea? Or should I just let it be and not mess it up further?
Picture from when we first set it up and were cycling. We have since gotten a nice solid lid that can support the cat!
I dove into this hobby without much upfront research. The past 8 months have been a whirlwind, with hundreds of hours of youtube and forum reading in me I now feel 10x smarter and "almost" know what I am doing (for someone who has only had their toes wet for 8 months).
I followed BRS vids in the beginning and setup my tank with project reef rock 2.1 - which is concrete painted purple - non porous. I regret it 100%. The scape looks cool, but not what I want long term. I want to redo my scape and swap out my rock.
Aside from the fact that I want real porous rock, I'm battling GHA and my phosphates are crazy high... I'm running a small amount of GFO, have massive chaeto growth, and a octopus reef regal 150int skimmer at 80% and we still can't cut it down. I hooked up a ATS as well to see if that could help, it's already loading up with algae and the DT is still growing. Flucanozole didn't even dent it... after all the online reading - everything keeps pointing back to my poor choice of rock...
My question is how do I do this safely? I have a few corals mounted but are on plugs that I can pop off easily and a few rock flower nems that we'll end up making angry. Otherwise 6 fish and the usual CUC. Tank is RS 350. 75-80 gallons total. As the existing rock is non-porous I don't think it provides much bacteria support. I have 2 marine pure bricks + a few extra smaller blocks in the sump, as well as 80 lbs of live sand up top.
I'm not sure I want to spend the $$$ for live rock just yet. But I still want to shift to the porous dry rock to establish live rock long term. As it stands - the reef rock 2.1 won't even turn into good live rock down the road.
Since I have the marine pure, can I do a hot swap with new porous dry rock directly into the tank? Or should I still cure it seperately for a month or two? Can I do it all at once or should I do one rock at a time? We have three specific rock structures that I could swap in sections if needed...
My corals are growing. Hollywood stunner has doubled in size and my girlfriends favourite rainbow acan has 9 new heads! So with this in mind, I'd like to make the transition before it's too late and our corals are stuck to the rock...
What am I missing? Is this a good idea? Or should I just let it be and not mess it up further?
Picture from when we first set it up and were cycling. We have since gotten a nice solid lid that can support the cat!
if its concrete, you definitely dont want it leeching into the tank. I didnt know people actually did that anymore. If its porus rock (which concrete wouldnt be) then i would leave it. I love the purple look. I did dry this time around for my pico and its a pain keeping it clean/white. all surfaces will become live eventually its just "how much" is the question. a chuck of porus rock will be 10000x more live than a solid rock with just the outside surface. That being said, if you like scape and dont want to change, youre already doing what i would do-add marinepure block. algaebarn has these things where theyre more porus than rock and they come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. that could help with the surface area. 
