Live rock efficiency

[jonray]

I have a very small bare bottomed 35 litre show tank that I wish to look slick. I do not want the live rock on show so have broken it up in to rubble on the floor of the tank. I had a sheet of egg crate over this before but you can still see the rubble and it looked messy. I now have a solid acrylic sheet on acrylic legs on top of the rubble on which the corals sit. All great BUT will the efficiency of the live rock be affected at all by the very low flow getting to it and zero light?

[thegrun]

There are two issues with a lot of rubble on the bottom of the tank. First it is going to collect a lot of detritus which eventually will lead to elevated nitrates. You can use a turkey baster to try and agitate the detritus, but even then it is going to collect and become an issue. Secondly when you break up the rock into small pieces you lose a lot of its denitrifing capacity, that isn't a real big deal, but combined with issue #1 nitrates are likely to become problematic down the road. I assume you do not have a sump, but if you do I would try to keep some larger pieces of rock in the sump.

[jonray]

Thanks thegrun. This tank doesn't have a sump and I prefer to keep it this way for aesthetics. There are no fish, just lps and mushrooms so very little bioload. I think my only solution is a monthly siphon of the rubble. The darkness should hopefully keep algae at bay.

[mcgyvr]

The beneficial bacteria doesn't need light either..

But crap will settle there as stated....
So long as you have a maintenance plan to account for that you should be just fine..

[MG98]

Maybe I misunderstood the op but how small would live rock have to be before it loses denitratification capabilities and attracts detritus as compared to a larger piece?

[Remy LeBeau]

Maybe I misunderstood the op but how small would live rock have to be before it loses denitratification capabilities and attracts detritus as compared to a larger piece?

This link might help.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rs/feature/index.php

[jonray]

Great article. Slow flow and no coralline algae appear to aid denitrification so my initial plan would aid this. Interesting.