Adding live rock to a new tank

Hey Guys and Girls,

I have a new aquarium that I will start cycling soon, and I was wondering when is the best time to add live rock.

Should I add my live rock at the start, and all of it at one time, or stagger the addition of the rock until all the rock is in there.

Thanks for you advice. ;D

 

You can. Depends on how deep your pockets are. Meaning if you can afford live rock all at once or build up to the desired need. You can come out cheaper by buying 75% of dry base rock and seed it with Live Rock. It might take the cycle a little longer but it'll save your money on other cool things.

 

Thanks for the advice. Since I plan on making PVC structures and then cable tying and epoxying the rock around the structure, I think ill go with it staggered, make sure the water has time to stabalise each time a new structure is added.

 

There's no real need to use live rock at all. FWIW, I used all dry rock and substrate in my last build and my cycle only took 5 weeks, which is typical unless you use all precured LR and add it all at one time, or add a bacterial supplement. The problems I see with your plan are:

1) Once your initial cycle is complete, you will need to cure any subsequent additions before adding to the main DT to prevent an ammonia spike, unless it is fully precured (very pricy).

2) IMOPE, the cons to using LR far outweigh the pros. There are tons of pests that can crawl out of the woodwork, and with all that LR glued and tied together, you will have no other option but to deal with it in the main DT. Also, LR is sold by the pound, and it's a lot heavier when wet.

If you use all dry rock, you will save lots of money now and headaches later, you can get it all done at once, and you can seed the entire structure with one small piece of LR if you want. The cycle time won't be that much different.

 

Dryrock all the way! I bought a 1 lb chunk of coralline covered liverock to seed 40+ lbs of dry rock and I can not even tell you how many little things came with that small rock to help seed all the dry rock not to mention the coralline popping up everywhere now

 

Thanks using I think I might use dry rock to build my quite complex PVC structures (such as my overhang I plan to build) and use the occasional piece of live rock to seed it. Then if I wish to add any further down the track, ill add dry rock and it can become seeded by the other rock in the tank.

Great advice.

 

I added 6o pounds of LR all at once and my cycle is over in 9 Days. It is a very good way ( IMO the best way) to fast cycle your tank. I just hate waiting.

 

All good things come in time my friend .

 

-1 This Hobby is all about waiting
But i love it

 

Yea thats the other great thing about dry rock, you can take as long as you want to scape and build your scape in the tank before you add water and sad to make sure it is stable. Took me a few days and a couple thigns of epoxy to build the one in my signature.

Im not sure if it means anything, but when I went to buy a small piece of liverock I selected the pieces that were in the hermit tank at the lfs. Figured hundreds of hermits would devour and lessen the chances of any problem algae hitchhiking its way into my tank and I even ended up with a hitchhiking hermit! Along with pods, feather dusters, vermatid snails, bristleworms, a ball aneomone (not a bad one), and some other aneomone that is not an aptasia but havnt ID'd it yet.