So, there I was...

Koaboy · Feb 1, 2014

Greetings, all.

So, we went to a neighboring town to check out the lfs's up there. Went to one that had beautiful tanks, great prices on hard to find livestock. Struck up a conversation with the owner of the place. I've been doing this pretty successfully for a little more than a year now. Turns out that most of the things that I have been doing or thought about doing were 100% wrong! The guy presented several well thought out arguments to what most believe, such as:

Live rock will never seed dry rock. Never. Did I say "Never"?

LED's do not contain the light spectrum needed to grow any type of coral.

Never do water changes of any kind more than once per month. Doing so only upsets the bacterial balance.

When building an aquarium, 2-pounds of live rock per gallon is minimum.

Because he seemed to support his beliefs, I thought I would post this & ask for the opinions of the R2R community...especially the one about dry/live rock.

mike007 · Feb 1, 2014

Amazes me that a lfs owner would give you this advise. The real advice is here on R2R.

robbrouse · Feb 1, 2014

Live rock will seed dead rock and dead sand.
LEDS have come a long way and lots of people (including myself) use them
Water changes can be done more often than that. Some people do them every day.
I've heard 1 to 2 pounds of live rock. Seem people do it with more or less.

It's hard to find anyone at a LFS that wants to do anything but sell for stuff.

Reefing Madness · Feb 1, 2014

Live Rock will seed Dry Rock.
LEDs are above Metal Halide in output levels, and spectrum
Some people do water changes every other day. It keeps the tank healthy, how in the world could it do harm?
Starter build on a new tank is 1lb per gallon minimum. Reef tank is going to 2lbs and higher. And again, nowadays it all depends on your equipment also.

Koaboy · Feb 1, 2014

Thanks for the quick replies, and please keep them coming! To his credit, he did have beautiful specimen tanks, and he made some sales from me. His thoughts were quite convincing, but I'll trust the strength in numbers here. Swapping my 40 breeder tomorrow for a 70 gal 36"x 18", and using my existing 40-50 pounds of live rock with 30 more in dry rock. Fun day ahead!

evan.lundberg4 · Feb 1, 2014

Koaboy said:
Greetings, all.

So, we went to a neighboring town to check out the lfs's up there. Went to one that had beautiful tanks, great prices on hard to find livestock. Struck up a conversation with the owner of the place. I've been doing this pretty successfully for a little more than a year now. Turns out that most of the things that I have been doing or thought about doing were 100% wrong! The guy presented several well thought out arguments to what most believe, such as:

Live rock will never seed dry rock. Never. Did I say "Never"?

LED's do not contain the light spectrum needed to grow any type of coral.

Never do water changes of any kind more than once per month. Doing so only upsets the bacterial balance.

When building an aquarium, 2-pounds of live rock per gallon is minimum.

Because he seemed to support his beliefs, I thought I would post this & ask for the opinions of the R2R community...especially the one about dry/live rock.