Why are people so reluctant to pull LR?

[ZoWhat]

Why are people so reluctant to pull LR?

IMO an aquascaped form of LR should look nice !BUT! aquascaped in a way where every single piece of LR should be accessible to be pulled out of the tank when called upon.

IMO if you aquascape to where pulling a single rock causes the whole scape to collapse..... F A I L

If you have aiptasia, gha, whatever.... IMO you should be able to pull an infected LR relatively easily and minimize that amount of collapse.

How's your Aquascape? Easily accessible?


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[Apollo7235]

Why are people so reluctant to pull LR?

IMO an aquascaped form of LR should look nice !BUT! aquascaped in a way where every single piece of LR should be accessible to be pulled out of the tank when called upon.

IMO if you aquascape to where pulling a single rock causes the whole scape to collapse..... F A I L

If you have aiptasia, gha, whatever.... IMO you should be able to pull an infected LR relatively easily and minimize that amount of collapse.

How's your Aquascape? Easily accessible?


.

Nope, I would have to bust out the chisel, haha. I have exactly one large piece of rock that is not epoxied in place, the rest are epoxied into arches. I have thought about what I would do in a situation like what you just described, but I guess that will be the time when I re-scape into something less..... collapsible.

Bad on me.... FAIL

 

[lapin]

Mines hard if not impossible to remove. I have 4ea 16" square openings in the top. My tank is 3ft deep. My rocks weight 20 to 45 lbs ea. It is what it is.

 

[elorablue]

I can remove each piece of rock individually. It's basically Jenga in there

 

[RedReefer]

Same! Lol!

 

[Nick Steele]

My rock structure (20g tank) is one single piece and while it’s easily taken out but is a pain in the butt with just one person. I ripped off my epoxy when I did it myself but was and easy fix. I believe that rocks should be able to be taken out in sections more so then each and every other rock.

When I go bigger (100g) I plan to have 3-4 section I can take out if I need to be but when I get my dream tank (400G) it will most likely be 2-4 sections but not easily taken out if at all.

 

[brandon429]

top excuse Ive seen in help threads for total algae takeover, or aiptasia take over: i can't access my rocks out of the tank they're glued, too big, I worked for hours on the arch, and six more excuses to keep the invasions. agree with this premise.

 

[Arego]

Funny this is brought up. One of my lfs has a 1500g thats 20yrs old that 100% crashed after moving rock around lol. I guess a little to many of the wrong ones.

Tests showed crazy high copper got released from a slow accumulation as all other params were within reasonable numbers considering what was happening. I move rocks alot. I have a base framework then all frags are glued on baseball or larger rocks and nested in that rock work. This allows completely new looks and even easier cleaning if necessary.

 

[blasterman]

I keep smaller, shallow tanks and all my corals including bigger SPS pieces can be pulled, treated and replaced.

This works for smaller tanks. For larger tanks I agree this isnt practical.

 

[Arego]

Mine is a 250. Err guess I should read the thread. Nm me.

 

[Kris 2020]

My past tanks were lots of pieces of rock, but after so many avalanches over the years, I designed my current tank (8 -9 years in) with 3 big pieces of rock glued together. My only regret is not being able to get rbta’s out after they split. Otherwise I’m happy with my decision.

 

[Montiman]

Why are people so reluctant to pull LR?

IMO an aquascaped form of LR should look nice !BUT! aquascaped in a way where every single piece of LR should be accessible to be pulled out of the tank when called upon.

IMO if you aquascape to where pulling a single rock causes the whole scape to collapse..... F A I L

If you have aiptasia, gha, whatever.... IMO you should be able to pull an infected LR relatively easily and minimize that amount of collapse.

How's your Aquascape? Easily accessible?


.

IMO after 10+ years of reefing I can not think of 1 time where removing the aquascape was the easiest response for my display tank. Having worked at an LFS and done commercial maintenance I know there are times where removing the scape is the best solution but once again IMO these are few and far between. Most issues can be fixed easily while leaving everything in place.

The exception is very neglected tanks. Sometimes neglected tanks can benefit from a soft restart but this isn't beneficial for healthy established tanks.

The resistance comes from seeing removing the scape as a hatchet rather than a scalpel. Both are great tools but they have different purposes.

 

[Glenner’sreef]

Nope as well!!! Love the forms and various shapes and sizes of LR. Now you didn’t specify whether that meant “live rock or life rock” I have live rock in my 180 DT but 2/3 of the structures in my tank are Carib Sea life rock. Most are locked in and puttied. If I get gha or aptasias or an aggressive fish that I want out of the tank, I will just have to purchase a CBB to destroy the aptasia population. (Did it) Aggressively confront the gha and win and I did four years ago. And even get a fish trap to trap the unwanted resident. (Done that too). Great question.

 

[NashobaTek]

Very few of my rocks are glued / cemented together. Mainly because I plan to change out the dry base rock I started with for live rock and move to a bigger 200+ gallon tank.
Even then it probably won't all be glued.

 

[KrisReef]

Good point on aquascaping for accessibility. Thanks for posting that thought.
Still, If the coral grows in the same place long enough then you can still end up with an effectively unmovable object.

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

I like bigger pieces. My tank prob has 6 pieces or more of rock in it. Some are pretty heavy. Lol. Idk if i will be able to remove when the coral grows on em. Lol
D

 

[Tamberav]

Moving rock is very easy in my shallow tank. 16 inches deep. Even with the corals on it.. it’s fairly easy.

Probably difficult to scape a deep tank though and still keeping rock accessible.

 

[fish farmer]

I'd break corals if I pulled rocks. I glue most everything down and considering all the nooks and crannies that things like aips and vermetid snails can live, well....I'll just whine about my infestation here, I'm sure I'd miss a couple if I did a rock pull. Vermetids can actually live inside pipes without light.

 

[RobB'z Reef]

At some point this approach has diminishing returns in a successful reef and should not be your determining factor for a long term reef tank.