Dry Rock and an established tank

[Joel_155]

Hi all,
So I have a question and thought I would check as I'm sure a lot of people have done this in the past and I wanted to see what results people got. I want to change the structure of my aqua scape to include more height in the display. Nothing major but since all my LR has coral attached to it I thought it would be better to go with new rock. So I figured that my options were either to find the right pieces at my local LFS and get creative or go with dry rock.
I like the dry rock idea as there are a lot of options and you can pretty much find anything you want. However I know that dry rock will need to be cycled first before it can be added to the tank and that it is known to leach PO4. I manage PO4 I currently use an Algae Turf Scrubber which seems to be working very well.

If I go with dry rock and cycle it in a separate tank how much PO4 an you expect it to leach? I was planning on cycling the rock ith the leftover water from my water change process and going with the fish less cycle process after its been seeded for a little while. Any thoughts on this?

[Joel_155]

Anyone?

[Reefmedic79]

I just add dry rock directly to the tank. There is no way of knowing how much PO4 will come out of the rock, or even if there will be any at all.

Are you removing any of your current live rock?

[Reefer54]

PO4 can leach out of rock for a very long time or pretty much not at all too....It does depend on the rock. the pukani from BRS is spoken frequently of leaching exhorbitant amounts for quite some time. There is really no way to tell. If I were you. I would buy some small cured rocks from the LFS and construct a piece that you are happy with and is stable enough to be put on top of what is existing. In a manner to be sure you dont have a rockalanche....find the high points in the existing sturucture and build on those. It will save you the time and frustration of curing dry rock......and dont add dry rock to an existing setup unless you are the one that dried it. You dont know what methodology it was dried under nor what is gonna leach out of it into your DT.....

[Joel_155]

Yes I'm going to be pulling some pieces out. Basically my softies are exploding with growth and I want to make sure my tank doesn't become just Xenia and GSP. I would like to shift the focus to more LPS. They have completely covered the rocks they are on and are spreading over my other corals