questions about live rocks

i have never used live rock before and could use some help figuring a few thing out about it. the place i plan on buying my rock from says they cure the live rock in a tank for 2-3 months, most people i see on here say about 6 weeks. is it an advantage to cure it for longer. also if i add in live rock how will it react with my crushed coral on the bottom of my tank? and if i add live rock with some base rocks do the base kind of turn into a live rock?

 

LR costs lots of $ so lets say if you had a 50 gallon tank get 45-48 lbs of base rock and 2-5 lbs of LR!

 

so then after some time it will be like i have 50 lbs of live rock?

 

If it's been curing for 2-3 months, then that's good.
There will be no problems adding the live rock to crushed coral.
Over time the base rock will become live if you add live rock in with base rock

 

First thing I'd do is replace the crushed coral with sand.
That said, you can use mostly dry rock, and a few pieces of live rock, and all of the rock will eventually become live. "Live" just means it has living beneficial bacteria colonizing it. That spreads quickly to other rock and the sand.

 

and its ok for me to add live rocks to my tank if i have a fish and a cleaner shrimp in it already?

 

isn't sand a lot harder to clean? right now i just use my gravel vacuum whenever i do a water change and get rid of most of the waste.

 

Live rock is basically rock with beneficial bacteria on it, the type that convert ammonia to nitrites, and nitrites to nitrates. The other thing live rock has is all sorts of diverse life... coralline, coral, anemones, worms, crabs, etc.

Base (or dry) rock is just that, rock that is dry. Typically taken from a quarry or an ancient reef. This rock has no bacteria on it.

The time it takes bacteria to transfer from live rock to dry rock in an aquarium is very short... days. I speak from experience, I pulled 100 pounds of live rock out and replaced it with dry rock, leaving just a few pounds of live rock among the dry rock for a few days, and I completely avoided a cycle.

If you're starting from scratch, if it were me, I'd use 95% dry rock, and "seed" the dry rock with a few pounds of live rock from the LFS, taken home and placed in the aquarium quickly to avoid any die-off. Then monitor your params for a week or so looking for a small cycle.

 

ok thanks for all the help everyone

 

You clean the sand the same way as you do the crushed coral.
Yes you can add the live rock now. You may have a little die off, but not enough to kill anything.
Make sure that you make up a fresh batch of saltwater to rinse the live frock in before you put it in your tank