Why the trend to dry rock?

[G Santana]

Yrs ago live rock was relatively inexpensive, I mean 30 yrs ago, now it is an investment. Most people start on a budget and build on that with necessary items purchased first then the flashier items second.
Dry rock is an option that saves you on the initial investment. Not everyone can lay out for top of the line tank, lights, pumps, live rock, sump and accessories all up front.
With that said, everyone who goes the dry rock route has to know it is the longer route to success.

 

[hart24601]

Where's the rock?

Exactly! Get to a point and don’t see the rock anyway.

 

[Reefing102]

Dry rock/Live Rock. It’s all live rock eventually. My own opinion though is back when I started, Live Rock was the in thing. I could get Fiji, Tonga, Marshall Island, Caribbean AquaCultured, you name the places we get coral from, we probably had rock from there at one point. I will always and forever use true ocean live rock. I love the look and the hitchhikers.

As to the question, Like others have said, the main reasons are as follows:

Cost: Live Rock is certainly more expensive now but there’s also minimal demand for it as the vast majority Id say use dry rock. So live rock is a “boutique” item in my opinion
Eco-Friendly - Back in the day that was the push. SAVE OUR REEFS! They use dynamite to harvest the rock! Nowadays, pretty much the only real live rock you can get is aquacultured.
Also, if I’ve researched correctly, Export Bans on true reef rock. I’m not talking Walt smith Fiji but actual reef rock. The only real stuff you find now is the aquacultured Caribbean rock.

Aquascape…I have no argument. It sure is great to be able to design your aquascape outside your tank. Me personally, I’ll design it in my tank and rearrange as needed with my live rock.

Finally…the number one issue…FEAR. Every single time someone mentions live rock, people are jumping up and down yelling about numerous unwanted pests. This is what our new hobbiest are reading. I say What pests?

Even back in the day you had hitchhikers but I don’t recall anything terrible or tank ending. Okay maybe the rare mantis or Aiptasia but nothing that couldn’t be handled or even avoided if you actually looked at the rock your purchasing.
Okay…So bobbit worms…yea we had those back then too. So far they seem to be pretty rare occurrence.
Wait so now bristleworms are a pest? Sure they can be a pain if you dont wear gloves or they may get into the occasional clam but seriously? I’ve never had any issues ever with bristleworms.
Let’s see gorilla crabs…yep definitely a pest. Generally not that hard to catch either with patience

Aiptasia: generally not going to occur on live rock from the Caribbean unless it came from somewhere else first (I.e frags, macro algae, etc)
Are those the only hitchhikers people are worried about?

Now the algae issues that many are running into I do feel is a lack of biodiversity. Now I’m not saying the overhyped bottles of bacteria don’t work, however, real live rock contains millions of bacteria. Back in the day, if you started with dry rock, you almost always seeded with a piece or few pieces of live rock.

With everything above said, I see no issue using Dry Rock, it will likely always be the reccomended thing now. I’ll keep sticking with my live rock. Your dry rock will eventually become live anyway. There may just be a biodiversity variance.

Just my thoughts

 

[minus9]

Okay, where do I start? First, bristle worms are not pests. If you think they are, then you lack the education or the experience to know otherwise. I’m always seeing posts about their removal or elimination, why? Seriously, why are we trying to eliminate the one thing that’s going to help keep your mini ecosystem clean and healthy? This is the wrong way of approaching true biodiversity. Sure, if you lick them or your hands are constantly in the tank, bristle worms can cause some issues, but they aren’t the problem. This myth that bristle worms are bad or unwanted pests, needs to die with the myth that you need to feed small tridacna clams phyto, but that soapbox is for another day. Leave the worms alone!
As far as dry rock, I’m probably in the minority here, but I hate these flat rock aquascapes that look like glorified lego blocks. All this time spent on negative space scapes is kinda funny. I guess if your goal is to only have frags, I get it. But, on the other hand, I thought we are trying to grow some colonies, right? All of this work to create these marvelous scapes, only to be covered up by colonies and never be seen again. I get making caves and overhangs, but these crazy scapes, who are they for? I’m not a pile the rock on the back wall guy, but my goal is to grow colonies of corals. Create open channels for flow and safe places for fish to hide and feel safe. The only way to truly go dry rock is to set up the tank and completely fill it with corals from day one, along with a couple pieces of established rock if you can, but that takes a lot of experience and knowledge from having successfully taken care of normal live rock tanks. You also need to know what corals would work as starter pieces. But if you have that kind of experience, my guess is you’re not going to do that because you know a better way. Otherwise, welcome to the super long waiting game. For me, I’ll never set up a tank with dry rock alone, but I get adding a piece or two if needed for coral/colony expansion down the road. I know there’s more than one way to set up a tank, but if you want to be successful out of the gate, established live rock will make your journey a pleasant one. I get the appeal of dry rock, but having cared for tanks (fresh and saltwater) since the 70’s, my money will always go towards ocean rock, even if it’s just a couple pieces. Jakarta is a new source for ocean rock, so hope is not lost.
Btw, did I mention that bristle worms are not pests? Seriously, let them be!
This concludes your daily “get off my lawn” post. Happy reefing everyone, cheers! Seriously, learn to love bristle worms!

 

[Jekyl]

Okay, where do I start? First, bristle worms are not pests. If you think they are, then you lack the education or the experience to know otherwise. I’m always seeing posts about their removal or elimination, why? Seriously, why are we trying to eliminate the one thing that’s going to help keep your mini ecosystem clean and healthy? This is the wrong way of approaching true biodiversity. Sure, if you lick them or your hands are constantly in the tank, bristle worms can cause some issues, but they aren’t the problem. This myth that bristle worms are bad or unwanted pests, needs to die with the myth that you need to feed small tridacna clams phyto, but that soapbox is for another day. Leave the worms alone!
As far as dry rock, I’m probably in the minority here, but I hate these flat rock aquascapes that look like glorified lego blocks. All this time spent on negative space scapes is kinda funny. I guess if your goal is to only have frags, I get it. But, on the other hand, I thought we are trying to grow some colonies, right? All of this work to create these marvelous scapes, only to be covered up by colonies and never be seen again. I get making caves and overhangs, but these crazy scapes, who are they for? I’m not a pile the rock on the back wall guy, but my goal is to grow colonies of corals. Create open channels for flow and safe places for fish to hide and feel safe. The only way to truly go dry rock is to set up the tank and completely fill it with corals from day one, along with a couple pieces of established rock if you can, but that takes a lot of experience and knowledge from having successfully taken care of normal live rock tanks. You also need to know what corals would work as starter pieces. But if you have that kind of experience, my guess is you’re not going to do that because you know a better way. Otherwise, welcome to the super long waiting game. For me, I’ll never set up a tank with dry rock alone, but I get adding a piece or two if needed for coral/colony expansion down the road. I know there’s more than one way to set up a tank, but if you want to be successful out of the gate, established live rock will make your journey a pleasant one. I get the appeal of dry rock, but having cared for tanks (fresh and saltwater) since the 70’s, my money will always go towards ocean rock, even if it’s just a couple pieces. Jakarta is a new source for ocean rock, so hope is not lost.
Btw, did I mention that bristle worms are not pests? Seriously, let them be!
This concludes your daily “get off my lawn” post. Happy reefing everyone, cheers! Seriously, learn to love bristle worms!

Agree. I added an arrow crab to keep the population under control but don't intend on removing myself.

 

[Blumy]

With the aptasia-x you probably killed also 99% of all other micro-organisms in/on the rock, could have started with dry rock anyway.

No a chance in heck. The amount of rock vs the dozen dime sized applications amounts to nothing.

 

[ninjamyst]

Dry rock all the way for the scape. I care how my reef looks from the beginning with frags to established with colonies. Dry rock allow me to sculpt it how I want. Seen so many ugly reefs with horrible aquascape.

I don't do it for pest control because I accept that I will get pest regardless.

I just finished putting together my NSA scape and cycling all the rocks in a tub with two big piece of live rocks from my 5 years old established reef. Best of both worlds. My new tank won't get here till November.

 

[N.Sreefer]

But you live near the ocean!!

Lol ya I live by the ocean but most rock near the ocean here is granite or mudstone covered by barnacles and not much else. Theres some limestone but alot of it is in a protected geological site in arasaig. Pods and a couple things live being put in warmer water but most life on rock from the cold waters round here is lost anyway. I do use chunks of oyster reef when they wash up but that's rare. Technically in nova scotia your not supposed to remove anything from the beach without permission from the dept of environment.

 

[Rmckoy]

I was always led to believe even dry rock will become live eventually .
but now to question .
If anyone takes a few pieces of live rock and places them in their sump of a established system.
How long does it take to become live ?

I always have had a few extra pieces in my sump incase I needed to setup another system .
I would have a few pieces to seed the new system

 

[InvertGang]

With the aptasia-x you probably killed also 99% of all other micro-organisms in/on the rock, could have started with dry rock anyway.

Aiptasia-x is a spot treatment though, you use a syringe to hit the aiptasia directly. It's not a systemic one that goes in the water column. Would it still kill all the micro-organisms? I have a cute feather worm on my live rock and I used aiptasia-x. I wouldn't want to hurt it.

 

[InvertGang]

I only have a small tank, but for me the way I went was a mixture of dry and live, about half and half. I'm brand new to reef aquariums, but I have some experience working with rocks in freshwater tanks which was helpful when working the live rocks into my rock layout.

It was a good compromise for me since I could play with the dry rock outside the tank in advance to get the idea of what shape I wanted, and then could use the live rock in the tank to support the shape I was looking for.

I still have some adjustments to do with some of the small live rock fragments I bought yesterday, but here's the main structure:

And here with circles around the live rocks:

While it took an extra couple tries to get the live rock integrated, the live rock side is actually more stable than the dry rock due to the shapes. I'm going to glue it later once I'm fully sure that's what I want.

 

[Tamberav]

New people to the hobby seem most afraid of pests and even things that old salts don’t consider pests.

 

[fish farmer]

I was always led to believe even dry rock will become live eventually .
but now to question .
If anyone takes a few pieces of live rock and places them in their sump of a established system.
How long does it take to become live ?

I always have had a few extra pieces in my sump incase I needed to setup another system .
I would have a few pieces to seed the new system

I have a mix of dry and old live rock in my current system. It seemed after a couple of years the dry rock was colored up either with coralline or other life...it was not white anymore. Ten years later it is hard to tell which pieces where dry.

 

[Rmckoy]

I have a mix of dry and old live rock in my current system. It seemed after a couple of years the dry rock was colored up either with coralline or other life...it was not white anymore. Ten years later it is hard to tell which pieces where dry.

If added to my sump because it doesn’t have the same lighting as my dt the rocks are a off white , yellowish colour

even after being In the sump for months - years

but I’m positive after months it’s as live as the rocks in the dt

 

[Kfactor]

here in canada its not so easy to find live rock lol

 

[SchrutesReefs]

I know some will disagree, but a reef tank isn’t a reef tank without real live rock (or at least dry rock seeded with some live rock), with out its a saltwater fishtank or a coral display. For me the microfauna and biodiversity that comes with live rock is half the appeal of having a saltwater aquarium, I just can’t wrap my head around peoples’ irrational fear of things like bristleworms or vermetids. In my decades in this hobby, I’ve yet to have a pest from live rock that wasn’t manageable (I’ve purchased probably 1000lbs of live rock from various sources over the years, and every single pest I’ve had that did damage to any of my corals came from frags/colonies and not live rock). I gave dry rock a chance with my latest tank, but I’ll never do it again, it’s just not for me

I appreciate this post, it’s nice to have someone tell if from both perspectives. I used dry rock in my current tank for the first time, and opposite of Max, I like it better. BUT I was poor in my research my first attempt at a tank and just grabbed whatever was in my way. I had the bad results with true live rock. I took my time with this tank and so far I am having a much better experience. But every tank is different as is each reefer.

 

[Gedxin]

I can't get over the fact that live rock is literally taking something from the ocean, an endangered resource, and selfishly putting it in your living room.

Seems a lot of people have no problem pulling stuff from the sea, but I'm not one of them. Dry rock because it's the only sustainable method.

 

[Jekyl]

I can't get over the fact that live rock is literally taking something from the ocean, an endangered resource, and selfishly putting it in your living room.

Seems a lot of people have no problem pulling stuff from the sea, but I'm not one of them. Dry rock because it's the only sustainable method.

This is not the way it is done. The companies selling ocean rock do not just pull it from the ocean. For instance gulfliverock.com has a leased area of the ocean and supplied all of their rock 20 years ago. It was ferried out and dumped. Simply going in the ocean and taking rocks is illegal and not done.

 

[MaxTremors]

I can't get over the fact that live rock is literally taking something from the ocean, an endangered resource, and selfishly putting it in your living room.

Seems a lot of people have no problem pulling stuff from the sea, but I'm not one of them. Dry rock because it's the only sustainable method.

Virtually all live rock collected these days is dry rock that was put into the ocean years ago, it’s not an endangered resource.

 

[Gedxin]

Happy to be wrong about the method of acquiring live rock. I truly hope that's how people are acquiring. Unfortunately I've read a number of posts on R2R where people have mentioned taking from the ocean themselves. I suppose they're outliers though.