The Puffer Forum

Hello,

Naive question: What is 'ocean rock'? And where can you get it.

I was reading posts on going brackish to marine. Ocean rock was stated as different from live rock - so I figure ocean rock is any rock structure/hard coral from ocean that is dry (dead).

Can you recommend any online sources of ocean rock? I have not seen much of any at my LFS. I want to use rock to decorate a brackish GSP tank being set up. Thought it might be planful to add ocean rock now to get ready for a later change to marine & live rock.

Thanks,
growitnow

I've also seen "Texas Holey Rock" which I understand contains limestone.

Would this be OK/safe/suitable for brackish or marine puffer tank?

Not sure if Ocean Rock and Base Rock are the same, but Base Rock is what your explaing. You can get base rock off of alot of sites ebay, drfostermith.com, marinedepot.com, etc. Your best bet tho is to talk to a local fish store to get the rock, when buying online the shipping gets really expensive. Nice thing about base rock is you can drill it, hammer and chisel it, do just about anything with it. And if you do decide to go full marine, you can buy a couple of lbs of live rock and it will "seed" the base rock, just takes some time. When I was looking for base rock, i got 85 lbs from my LFS for the price of 50lbs online, just had my LFS order me a case and what they had left. Nice thing about your LFS too, you can pick your rocks, online you get what you get.
I don't know about the Texas Holey Rock, I think thats mainly used for Cichlids, but don't quote me on that. If you want holes, I'd just get some base rock and have fun with a drill, thats what I'm doing. Hopefully someone else will chime in about the Texas Rock.

jefferzbooboo,

Great! Thanks for the info. I heard but did not before know what base rock meant. When you assemble base rock to be structurally sound, do you just epoxy, or use some kind of screws, etc. to put the rock formation together. If use screws, what kind safe for fish, etc.

Thanks,
growitnow

I'm using just plain old underwater epoxy. Screws would rust away from the salt. I've heard of others using just about anything, acrylic rods and drilling the rock, zip ties, etc. As long as it doesn't have anything that'll leach into the tank.