Populating Dead Rock?

[tonyh67]

If you put "X" amount of dead rock in a good healthy tank with equal amount of TBS live rock...how long would it take for the organisms on the living rock to cover the dead rock?

[nine9d]

This was a good question, someone should attempt to answer it. I would like to know this also.

[liverock]

Originally posted by tonyh67
If you put "X" amount of dead rock in a good healthy tank with equal amount of TBS live rock...how long would it take for the organisms on the living rock to cover the dead rock?


We tried it 15 years ago....bunch of seed rock, in a vat with our live rock.....na-da.....some coraline...no life appeared, even after 3 years....

Was called "upland" culture, proposed by the State of Florida as an alternative to wild collection.....did not work

Richard TBS:rollface: :rollface: :rollface:

[NamesBruce]

I've owned a tank for all of one month and have already seen significant coraline algae growing from the truly live rock to the dead colorless rock. Even my snails now have purple coraline algae growing on them. I should note that I in my 75 gallon tank I have 113lbs of rock, 25% of which was colorless when it entered my tank.

[hdtran]

In our previous 29g tank, coralline algae colonized a decorative limestone rock readily (along with a fake barnacle) (after about 2-3 months), but we got no colonizing from the cup corals, tube corals, feather dusters, encrusting sponges, and other whatnot (after more than 3 yrs). Of course, that was also Fiji rock, not TBS rock.

[ducker]

We tried it 15 years ago....bunch of seed rock, in a vat with our live rock.....na-da.....some coraline...no life appeared, even after 3 years....

Was called "upland" culture, proposed by the State of Florida as an alternative to wild collection.....did not work


Was this seed rock the same calcium-carbonate base rock that you currently use in your active aquaculture?

[liverock]

Originally posted by ducker
Was this seed rock the same calcium-carbonate base rock that you currently use in your active aquaculture?

Yup

We were trying all sorts of material from all over the world, nothing produced any growth that would be marketable....

Richard TBS
www.tbsaltwater.com :rollface: :rollface: :rollface:

[ducker]

Ok, then why would life migrate to the rock in the ocean, but not in a tank. That in itself is a rather intersting discovery.

[liverock]

Originally posted by ducker
Ok, then why would life migrate to the rock in the ocean, but not in a tank. That in itself is a rather intersting discovery.

No mystery, because the life is in the water column in the ocean, and is not in an artificial environment.

Thanks
Richard TBS:rollface: :rollface: :rollface:
www.tbsaltwater.com