enough rock?

hei guys is 30 to 40 LBS of live rock enough for 55 gallon reef...
with a tang, pair of clowns, 4 damsels and pair of dartfish and few corals?
i also have an oversize skimmer and coral sand as substrate...
cheers guys!

 

nahh, you need like 1.75 lbs per gallon for reef and 1 lbs per gallon for fish only. this is a rough number to go off of

 

also a tang in a 55 may be a lil much

 

1 to 2 times the gallonage is usually Ok so 55 to 100 lbs or so. I have about 200 lbs in my 120 gal reef. The idea behind the live rock is it has a denitafying ability coupled with live sand and if possible a refugium. It will keep the nitrates down which is a good thing.

 

This is about right for a reef tank.

 

I think it depends on how dense your rock is. If u have pieces with lost of crevices and the pieces are larger than they look weight wise than u may be ok. I have maybe 70lbs in my 90 and its a very nice full look cause my rocks are solid dense pieces of rock. I think lighter more porous pieces of rock will do u more good than the strict lbs per gallon rule cause with more porous and crevice filled rocks u essentially have more surface are for bacteria to grow. Plus keep in mind u will find coral that is already attached to rock and u wanna save room for it. Otherwise you will find your rock laying in a bucket in the basement cause u took it out to make room for corals that is attached to rock. lol

Dennis

 

u wanna keep it open so water can flow thru also, dont want a dense mound of rock...especially with a tang. Hes gonna want to swim.

Heres my tank with a happy sohal and a hippo. 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates. I easily grow hard coral and pretty much what ever coral i want, i also have a happy mandarin thats gets fatter every week for the last 6 months and im under the "recommended" lb per gallon.

 

Hey your tank looks awesome but i think ever though your doing ok under the recomended i think it would just look better with more rock thats just my opinion, your tank looks great,

 

Hope nobody minds me adding

Bioload is the most important consideration when questioning how much live rock - AKA biological filtration to a tank and other factors such as what other biological filtration methods are employed, and also skimming, have a bearing on how much Live rock you need

the 1 - 2 Lbs per gallon came into effect when the Berlin system was commony accepted as the most effective way to run a reef tank - thus formulas such as how much Live rock and how much flow where created - the live rock was in fact your biologocal filter system thus you needed enough of it to deal with the nurtients being generated

Thus for example - if you where running a tank with a large external power filter , full of a good biological medium like sintered glass, the amount of live rock you had in the tank could be reduced

parameters of your tank are key - if you have 0 Ammonia, 0 Nitrite and 0 nitrate for example with your current set up, and you dont intend to add anything else - then I would say you have enough live rock

what have you got in there, and what do you eventually want to have in there are equally as important as the accepted Formulas

and the more rock you add = the less swimming space you have - important if you have species like the Tang who needs a bit of swimming room

Just my perspective

Steve

 

Don't you mean the opposite? Denser = heavier for a given size, so 70 lbs of dense rock will look smaller than 70 lbs of porous rock.

Instead of using a lb/gallon rule, I like to use volume rule, it negates the density issue and type of rock you have. If you fill your tank with about 1/3 of the volume with rock, you should be ok.