Why the trend to dry rock?

[Blumy]

If you want to open up a can of worms for the express purpose of quarrel, fine, but please don't let your opening sentence be a blatant lie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_premise

Not at all. I was genuinely curious. There is no way can’t say that a lot of problem posts have pictures of naked rocks in them.

 

[Alaeriel]

I went with dry rock because there is absolutely nothing else available in my area apart from Petco "live rock" but I'd prefer to keep the ich to a minimum.

 

[WheatToast]

I plan on adding aquacultured live rock to my build. However, to preserve biodiversity and prevent my aquascape from collapsing, I have placed Carib Sea South Sea Base Rock (which is dry rock) within my sand bed as a foundation and to elevate my live rock (above the sand so nothing gets smothered).

 

[Shooter6]

This question is about 20 years to late. If there's any trend, I'd say it would be the one where people are starting to reconsider maricultured rock in place of dryrock.

 

[JahStar]

Seems every “emergency”, algae issue and fish issue on here has a tank with a dry rock start up. Is it fear of pests? To me they can be managed and even eliminated with patience. The benefits of live rock far outweigh them in my humble opinion. I started mine with 7 year old rock from a sump from a guy who was tearing down. Had vermitid snails and aptasia as well as tons of sponges and a few mushrooms. Well, a year later after treating the aptasia with aptasia-x, none to be found. Added a bunch of bumblebee snail, vermitids gone. Fully established ecosystem that has been growing SPS since the second month. Not to start a war but why deal with all the issues dry rock presents?

Honestly for me its cheaper. The only reason I have not bought live rock is for the price per rock. Just not a good economic choice. Again this is me.

 

[Spieg]

Wet or dry, I don't much care. I do much prefer real natural rock to the man-made stuff though. BRS did an interesting test on rock and found that natural rock is often much more porous (can absorb much more water weight than man made rock). I believe this additional porosity is beneficial in filtering nutrients from our tank water. Back 30 years ago there really wasn't a man-made option, so everyone used real rock. I still have a couple hundred pounds in a tub that I may not ever use since I run a much smaller tank now than I did in the past. I horde this stuff like gold since the prices today are ridiculously high.

 

[Jubei2006]

Couple of reasons I went with dry rock this go round. 1) pest and nusiance algae. Didnt want either to get started in a 500 gallon tank. Have dealt with both in the past with "real live rock". 2) Fish disease. Have had ich and velvet before, not again if I can help it. All the LFS near me have their live rock bins attached to their coral tanks that have fish in them. And I have gotten sick fish from all of them cause they don't quarantine. 3) Ease of aquascaping. I can take my time with dry rock in and out of the tank without having to worry about die off. 4) Cheaper to buy and ship. So while I do like the porosity, look, and realatively quick cycling of live rock, Ive had too many problems in the past.

 

[ActualProof]

I started with dry rock. Almost 2 years in and have no pests and an establishing ecosystem. I think what people lack in this hobby is patience. Js

Same situation here. Just over two years, and my Marco dry rock (seeded with one small rubble rock from Aquarium Specialty) is now full-on live rock. Everything takes months. Wear should length gloves. Extremely limit the time your skin contacts the water. I never reach in without gloves.
I got some Valonia, added some emeralds. They didn’t eat it overnight. It took 6-9 months before I realized it was fob. I got vermetids…. Added 12 bumblebees and waited - again, 6-9 months and they’re gone. Patience is everything. Nothing happens overnight. Keep your hands out of the tank as much as possible. If you gotta reach in, use gloves!!!

 

[burningmime]

Not at all. I was genuinely curious. There is no way can’t say that a lot of problem posts have pictures of naked rocks in them.

Go here and you'll see the opposite: https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/hitchhiker-critter-id.895/

Not saying one is better or worse; they come with a different set of problems each. The reason you may see more problem posts with naked rock is because more people start their tanks with dry than live, and because new tanks are more likely to have problems than established.

 

[ReefRondo]

I have just started my scape with dry rock as it was almost impossible to get the shape and look I wanted with live rock. With all the glueing and mortar and drying times live rock would be long dead by now giving a host of other problems entirely. Also live rock is almost impossible to source here in Scotland right now unless it’s second hand. By second hand I mean from a tank shutdown that has been shutdown due to algae or aiptasia issues so no thanks. It will be very interested to see if my new setup goes through a serious ugly phase. My hope is having Brightwell xport bricks in all of my other systems getting built up with bacteria for almost a year that will be transferred I will get away with out the major algae outbreak but we will soon find out.

 

[Hurricane Aquatics]

You really answered your own question. You said it took you a year to get rid of aiptasia? Who in the heck wants to spend a year eradicating the tank of one pest species?

Not to mention bristle worms, possible mantis shrimp, pistol shrimp, etc.

 

[Appoloreefer]

Seems every “emergency”, algae issue and fish issue on here has a tank with a dry rock start up. Is it fear of pests? To me they can be managed and even eliminated with patience. The benefits of live rock far outweigh them in my humble opinion. I started mine with 7 year old rock from a sump from a guy who was tearing down. Had vermitid snails and aptasia as well as tons of sponges and a few mushrooms. Well, a year later after treating the aptasia with aptasia-x, none to be found. Added a bunch of bumblebee snail, vermitids gone. Fully established ecosystem that has been growing SPS since the second month. Not to start a war but why deal with all the issues dry rock presents?

I used dry rock and live rock. I was informed that dry rock is better and you have a better system in the long run. Again you hear so many different stories on these forums that it is hard to really believe anyone. I have found that this forum is the best of any of them out there with good solid advice. I actually like the dry rock because it is porous and easier to work with and I have gotten the same results in the end, it might have taken me longer to get there but the end results are the same. One thing that I have noticed using dry rock is that you do not get the Coraline algae like you might if using live rock, but all my fish and corals are doing great. It really comes down to personal preference.

 

[ultraArcite]

Not to start a war but why deal with all the issues dry rock presents?

To prevent damage to the environment and preserve what we already have. The "benefits" of live rock don't outweigh the negatives of removing something from the wild.

I beleave all of the live rock comercialy collected in the US, gulf and atlantic is farmed from government leases offshore.

If you had a source and could witness them doing it, that might change; but the government also gave out bobcat hunting licenses where I grew up, sooo....

Wouldn’t corals or fish be the same ?
I just read a article not long ago about saving the oceans , reefs .

There is also a documentary I believe on Netflix making the same comment .

how many people fish , eat fish ?

All of my coral and fish are captive-bred and never touched the oceans. I'm also a vegetarian for environmental reasons.

 

[Massic]

First marine tank, one year old using dry rock

Dry rock offers more options when it comes to aquascaping, in that no matter how much you break it apart or recombine it it's all going to look the same once it's in the tank with water and you don't have to worry about losing the biodiversity while you work with it out of water. Honestly the risk of hitchhikers didn't play a role in my decision at all, unless you have a stringent QT and dip regimen you will get unplanned critters eventually, or that's what I tell myself. I have spaghetti worms, pull maybe 3 asterina a week, I've lost count of the small brittle stars, and recently trapped and "relocated" a few blue bristle worms, none of which seems to affect the coral. I had a hair algae "issue" at around the 6th month mark, but by letting it grow to the point I could pull it off with my fingers maybe once a week, and a CUC of dwarf blue hermits, lefty hermits, emerald crabs, astrea, trochus, turbo and nassarius, it eventually passed and I haven't even seen hair algae since then, nor any aptasia, knock on wood.

Plus I got REALLY lucky, dry rock usually sells for $5-6 a pound in my area, live rock is double that. Amazon had a listing for 45 lbs of dry rock for $80, and here we are.

 

[Blumy]

You really answered your own question. You said it took you a year to get rid of aiptasia? Who in the heck wants to spend a year eradicating the tank of one pest species?

Not to mention bristle worms, possible mantis shrimp, pistol shrimp, etc.

Actually 2 treatments. About 2 weeks in total. Treated them before I put the structure together.

 

[jfoahs04]

I think I reefed backward. My first tank back in 2002 was a 20g started with dry rock only. My 2nd, a 75g softy garden was mixed. My last 2 (26 bow front and 13.5 Evo) were live rock only.

I’m partial to the live rock. A lot of my joy comes from spotting the hitchhikers. In fact, it’s been one of the things that has helped me introduce the hobby to others (people love finding the little life forms in the rocks). I’ve had some pests, but never to the point where it’s been more of an issue than a joy. That said, I get where team dry rock is coming from. There’s never zero risk of pests, but that’s one way to minimize it. Just depends in what you’re looking to get out of the hobby.

 

[McPuff]

I have always loved the way actual live rock looks and when I started a reef tank I didn't even know that dry rock was an option. Because it was always so expensive, I would buy a nice piece here and there and slowly build up my supply. A few times, I was able to buy live from someone that tore down a system. That rock has been in my system for about 15 years now (moved into different boxes several times). More recently when I have set up larger tanks, I have used dry rock (or nuked live rock) to supplement. It is definitely a noticeable difference as the dry rock will have algae issues and look like crap for a while but eventually it becomes impossible to tell the difference (probably 1-2 years though!). Still, I will only add dry rock to my existing system as I don't want to set up a tub to let live rock run fallow for months. So for me, it's a combo platter. Having some form of live rock (sump or display) makes a big difference. If I was starting from scratch I'd want to have some amount of actual live rock from another system.

 

[LiveFreeAndReef]

mostly price, I usually grab dry reef rock on Ebay. My last score was 25lbs for $21 shipped!

 

[Belgian Anthias]

Seems every “emergency”, algae issue and fish issue on here has a tank with a dry rock start up. Is it fear of pests? To me they can be managed and even eliminated with patience. The benefits of live rock far outweigh them in my humble opinion. I started mine with 7 year old rock from a sump from a guy who was tearing down. Had vermitid snails and aptasia as well as tons of sponges and a few mushrooms. Well, a year later after treating the aptasia with aptasia-x, none to be found. Added a bunch of bumblebee snail, vermitids gone. Fully established ecosystem that has been growing SPS since the second month. Not to start a war but why deal with all the issues dry rock presents?

When a piece of coral is introduced on dry rock, what will happen? It will be without any competitors to develop its holobiont. A huge mix of for the coral essential live will spread over the rock which will soon become very good "alive rock". Nothing has to be done.
Everything wanted can be added after a period of quarantine, minimizing the introduction of pathogens and pests
Natural Diversity can be harvested and added without transporting the stone .

Each animal added will introduce its own holobiont including possible pathogens.

A few small pieces of real " life rock" can be introduced if available, following the same safety procedures.

Preventing introduction of unwanted organisms will be difficult or impossible , minimizing the risk is a choice.

What would be the issues to deal with dry rock presents compared to the issues to deal with presented by so called "conditioned live rock"?

Why not first introduce an alive mussel, including its divers holobiont? if one can keep it alive, everything needed is present. If one can not keep it alive, everything needed will be present very soon.

 

[Midrats]

An irrational fear of hitchers.