New Questions

[sagent3000]

i was looking for some milliporas and i found this website and the people were showing off their tanks. and everything i thought i knew was a lie. i used to think that i was supposed to have 1 - 1.5 lbs of rock per gallon. this one guy had a 150 with 100 lbs of rock. how is this possible? then another guy was talking about he drilled holes in his rock and pegged his corals can i do this with just a regular bit or do i need a special bit to do this?

 

[RyanG]

For drilling into rock or concrete you need a masonry drill bit and a hammer drill, a regular drill will work it will just take a lot more effort. You can use less than 1-2lbs of rock per gallon it will just have less biologic filtration, thus a "dirtier tank" that wont process nitrites and nitrates as well leading to more water changes and aslo it will lead to PH swings. The 1-2lbs rule is "best practice" its not a hard line but is ideal, IE you can breath polluted smoggy air but its a lot nicer to breath easy in fresh country air.

 

[Bifferwine]

There are people that have saltwater tanks with no live rock. It also depends on how dense the live rock is. Really porous rock will weigh less and take up more space than dense live rock. Think of comparing 1 lb of styrofoam to 1 lb of bricks. The styrofoam is going to take up a lot more space, even though it weighs the same as the bricks.

Ryan is correct that live rock is your tanks main source of biological filtration and 1 to 2 lbs per gallon is usually good enough to maximize filtration efficiency while still leaving enough space in the tank for water and animals.

There are people that have had success doing all sorts of things. I've seen amazing tanks that use NO source of filtration whatsoever except for live rock. That doesn't mean that it will work for 99% of the other people that try to do the same thing.

As for drilling rock, check out Reef Videos. In the fourth row, there's a video entitled "Pegging Mounting".

 

[cthegame]

Yes, you can have less or no live rock and keep a healthy tank but in order to do that, you will have to compensate for this in other ways...More water changes, top quality salt, an excellent skimmer, probably have to run carbon more often and change the media on a frequent basis, etc...Just more work.

The more live rock you have the less effort on your part to keep the water filtered...

I definitely recommend 1-2 lb per gallon.

 

[Doc]

it is a matter of "good, better, best". you can get away with cutting some corners and if you are willing to put forth the effort, make things work. I like to keep enough rock to make my fishies happy.

-Doc