The Puffer Forum

was at riverview this am they have a 330 gallon marine tank with maby 50 lbs of live rock / corals growing on it. i askd the guy who set it up and maintains it about the 1lb per gallon rule he told me thats total bs and its about surface volume not weight.
i like this idea as i want a mainly fish only with some stinging anemones for color.
so is the live rock quota for filtration if not using any other means or what?.
everywhere i read on reef / fowlr / fo systems i get different info. id like to have just a center piece in my tank maby 50 lbs max and go live sand with it give the triggers an porc more swim room. please someone who knows for sure chime in and tell me the truth of all this,

ouch! having been chased around the red sea - and almost spitting out my reg laughing at a very irritating diver who's fins were getting munched by a triggerfish, I pity the porc!

PS - I view the irritating diver's treatment funny as it was almost instant karma - about two minutes earlier they'd been trying to make a masked puffer go puff for a photo! (luckily the puffer escaped through the coral unscathed and unpuffed!) And yes, I did give them a talking to back at the surface regarding their treatment of the puffer - as did the dive guide when they heard me telling them off.

porcs suppose to be ok with picasso? if thats not case i wouldnt do it, but atm im more curious about the live rock question.

sorry, I don't know about live rock so will leave that to the experts.... PP???

There's no such thing as "surface volume," so that should give you a clue right there.

well im going to disagree with that as the live rock ive seen varies greatly, a 5lb live rock rubble vs fiji premium branch is like comparing a 5 lb stone to a 5 lb sponge, the fiji definetly has more surface volume per pound then the rubble.

Surface is a valuable measure, bit totally unavailable in commerce. I suspect that the fellow was saying "surface:volume", as in ratio, but the colon is not pronounced unless you insert a "to" for clarity and tack on "ratio" at the end. Nor is that ratio available in commerce. Figi branhed may be one extreme, but nearly spherical lumps are not without merit either. Somewhere between is likely a lot better. And a pile of smaller pieces is better than a monolith. The pile has much more sutface.

DarkStorm wrote:well im going to disagree with that as the live rock ive seen varies greatly, a 5lb live rock rubble vs fiji premium branch is like comparing a 5 lb stone to a 5 lb sponge, the fiji definetly has more surface volume per pound then the rubble.

Exactly! You could have 200 lbs of dense, solid rock or 100lbs of light porous rock. Which do you think would work better for biological filtration?

question is do I need it for filtration since I have overkill filtration as is?., ill add it if its a must but really is it a must?

<insert cryptic answer in half riddle form here>

No such thing as filtration overkill, IMO. What filtration do you have on there now? Is there a sump? I probably have about 250-300 lbs LR in my 90g reef tank (just like the "wall" look). It all depends on how many WC you want to do on there & how much you want to $pend on $alt.

Remember, LR does chemical filtration, biologically mediated. That is not as easy to match/replace as aerobic biofiltration. Plus it does particulate filtration. An all-in-one filtration device with thousands to millions of little workers,and it is self sustaining.

Can't beat that!

thanks for info guys. ive been shopping for live rock and is it wrong for me to want to buy aquacultured?. theres a site that makes there own live rock and donates all proceeds to saving the reef, it dosent look any different really than the fiji i was going to get but the idea of having done something to help the reef is good idea to me. whats your thoughts on this stuff.
http://www.ecoliverock.org/our-products

Sounds great to me! Miles & miles of reef is destroyed for LR for our tanks. Just be aware, you will still have to cure anything that is shipped to you. Another way to purchase cured "aquacultured" rock, is from a fellow reefer's tank.