Base Rock To Live Rock Question

[srgvigil]

I want to add more rock to my tank (i have like 40-50 pounds of great live rock in their already)
I however dont want to pay the price for the live rock
i want to get that base rock
now here is my question
How long would it take for my base rock to become live rock?
And is their anything you can add to speed up the process?

 

[teresaq]

depending on the base rock not all that long, 4 to 6 mo or so i beleive. About half my tank is homemade and it didnt take that long to start growing coraline.
I want to add some more also and am looking at dry tonga rock. It looks pretty nice.
T

 

[michaeltx]

yeah it wont take long for life to migrate into the base rock. are you looking at dry base or wet base rock?
Mike

 

[modilla]

Get some Purple-Up if you do not use it already. And 4-6 mo. is about right on time F.M.E.

 

[srgvigil]

dry base

 

[michaeltx]

Please dont wast your money on purple up all it is is a glorified calcium supplement that they charge an arm and a leg for. a good 2 part calcium supplement will do better for cheaper.
just make sure the dry base is rinsed off and cleaned up good before adding it to the tank you dont want all the dirt off the dry rock added to the tank.
Mike

 

[m0nk]

Originally Posted by MichaelTX
http:///forum/post/2478808
Please dont wast your money on purple up all it is is a glorified calcium supplement that they charge an arm and a leg for. a good 2 part calcium supplement will do better for cheaper.
just make sure the dry base is rinsed off and cleaned up good before adding it to the tank you dont want all the dirt off the dry rock added to the tank.
Mike

6 months is also pretty well right on the money. I only ever use about 1/3 of real live rock when starting a tank (on my 4th tank with rock). I've also used base rock to build up the rock structures some time after starting the tank and my advice is to redo some of your aquascape at the same time, that way you can better incorporate your base rock. The better proximity it has to live rock the quicker it will become live and start to look like live rock.

 

[spiderwoman]

I just reaquascaped our 55 and added about 20lb of dry base rock to the existing 50lb of LR. I used it on the second island and stacked the LR on top of the base rock. We'll see when the change starts happening

 

[florida joe]

You can take a toothbrush and brush over the live rock to put more spores into your water column and help speed up the process

 

[spanko]

Base rock will begin to become alive almost immediatly upon introduction. Normally when talking about live rock we are talking about the addition of rock that has a colony of nitrifying bacteria in residence to kick start the cycle. This bacteria will begin to colonize on the surface area of your addition of base rock almost immediately.
For th other life that comes in on live rock normally we are talking hitchhikers. Thing like polychaete worms, pods, coralline etc. will start to inhabit your new base rock again almost immediately. Howeve to get to the point that the new base is indistinguisable from your old live rock, all of the posters here are correct in that you are looking somwhere in the neighborhood of 6 months.
Sorry to be a little picky on this but wanted to help clarify a little for any new people reading here.

 

[spiderwoman]

I'm glad you posted that spanko. That clears a lot of my future questions

 

[fats71]

Well, I saw takign a toothbrush to the live rock and scrubbing it will make the spores etc goto other rocks and help how much do I wanna scrape off and should I shut down filters power heads etc when i do it for ten or so minutes so as to not just suck it all up into the filters/skimmmer ?
I have a emperor 400 and a skilter 400 which is a filter/skimmer and a koralia 4 in a 75 gallon its like a hurricane in there and it sucks up stuff fast. I drop food in and have to shut it all down or its almost immedialty in the filter.

 

[modilla]

I am sorry but I must defend the purple-up. I have used B-Ionic in my 29gl. FOWL that was stocked with 30lbs. of live tonga branch for a year with little coraline spread, while my 55gl. FOWLR had 40lbs. of dry base and only 15lbs. of fiji and 2-3lbs. of tonga branch rubble and now I have 3x the coraline spread in 6mo. with the purple-up at only 3/4 of the recommended dose. Now I use purple-up in both and use the B-Ionic in my 10gl. nano-reef just until it is gone.

 

[srgvigil]

I'll post my next question on here instead of starting a new thread.
I want to reaquascape my rock
but I dont want to trap/crush my crabs and fish
Do I leave them in the tank during the reaquascaping

 

[modilla]

Any bottom dwellers (inverts & blennies etc.) will be in danger while most swimmers should move. I would still try to remove as many animals as you can until you are done. After all, rocks slip and hands loose grip then accidents happen.

 

[spiderwoman]

Originally Posted by SrgVigil
http:///forum/post/2479709
I'll post my next question on here instead of starting a new thread.
I want to reaquascape my rock
but I dont want to trap/crush my crabs and fish
Do I leave them in the tank during the reaquascaping
I just did mine and used a large kitchen spoon to move my crabs and snails away. Fish we hiding in the other end of the tank when I was working on the other and visa versa. It worked our really well. What hubby did was put in a polisher filter on in the canister to make sure more gunk gets trapped.