Reef Frontiers - All About Liverock

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One of the most important things you will ever have in your tank that plays a MAJOR role in your biological filtration and denitrification is your liverock. In a nut shell, all live rock is is what it's name states...Rock that is "alive". Alive in the sense that it is teaming with many beneficial life forms and organisms like sponges and tube worms which are great filter feeders, crabs and worms that can also be benefical in some cases as well as the all important different strains of bacteria that will

biologically "filter" your tank. Your rock will form the foundation of your tanks biological filtration and therefore is something in all cases, you want to include in your system. Due to it being so pourus, it provides tons of surface area for the necessary aerobic bacteria and anaerobic bacteria to colonize...Aerobic being those responsible for converting ammonia produced from waste, un-eaten food etc into nitrite, and nitrite into nitrate and anaerobic bacteria which is responsible for denitrification which is simply the conversion of nitrate into nitrogen gas which is then able to be removed from your system. Simply put, this is the nitrogen cycle at its best which takes place daily in our aquariums making it possible to keep all of the nice fish and corals we all want. Apart from it's biological properties, your liverock will provide a natural habitat for your other marine life giving places for fish to hide and graze on and so forth etc. Here is a picture of some of the life forms you will find on your liverock. If you look closely you can see a few tube worms, tunicate sponges as well as some nice colorful coraline that adds a bit beauty to the tank as well as some purpose.
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With that said, let's take a quick look at the types of liverock (or rock) that is available to the reefer and the pros and cons to each.

Base rock

This is basically dead rock. Could have been once "live" rock, but all life on it is now dead leaving behind nothing, but a mass of rock with no life or bacteria in it. It can also be man made rock which is becoming quite popular as of late. An advantage with going with this type of rock is for one, it is usally cheaper than liverock. Secondly, you are ensuring that you aren't adding any bad hitchhikers, parasite or even diseases into your tank that could have transferred over from where ever the rock came from. In addition to that, you don't have to worry about transferring any un-wanted nuicance algae that may have come on the rock. A disadvantage to using base rock though is that you are starting out basically from scratch without any of the beneficial bacteria you will need to aid your system in biological filtration and de-nitrification as well as you will be starting out without any of the beneficial life forms like tube worms, the pretty coraline algae everyone wants etc. You will have to introduce these things into your system manually.

Cured and Un-cured liverock
Liverock itself is usually purchased or obtained in either a "cured" state or "un-cured" state. Here are the differences

Cured Liverock - This is usually the most expensive type of liverock/rock you will purchase. The reason why is because before you purchased it, either the LFS or whoever is selling the rock has put the rock through a "curing process" which would be to remove any of the dead or dying organisms, organic matter etc from the rock before you purchase it. This is usually done in a holding tank of some sort with ample flow, heater, skimmer etc that is carried out for a few weeks giving whatever is going to die off time to die off and be removed before you purchase it. During this time, they monitor ammonia, nitrite and possibly even nitrate doing frequent water changes and once test come back that there are no more ammonia and atleast nitrite present in the water, then it is considered cured and good to go. What this does is gives you a headstart on setting up your tank and completing your initial cycle as you won't have the long process of curing your rock as it was already pre-cured for you. Nonetheless, you will still probably have a bit of die-off during the tranport of the rock from wherever you are getting it to your tank, but nothing at all compared to what you will experince had you gone with the next type of rock which is..

Un-cured Liverock

Un-cured liverock will be a bit cheaper than cured as you are basically buying the rock straight out of the ocean without anything having being done to it. The curing process as explained above, you will now have to do carry out yourself which is why it costs a bit less as well as the reason why your tank's cycling process using un-cured rock will be a much longer process than had you started out with already cured rock.

So with that all said, it is a bit of a toss up...You can either go with the cured rock that saves you a bit of time and energy, but costs a bit more or you can opt to be a bit patient to buy the cheaper un-cured rock and cure it yourself or you even have the option to go with some base rock and seed it yourself. The choice is yours and to be honest, no matter which route you take, they can all end up with you having a successful aquarium. All it takes is a bit of time, patience and knowledge to get it done properly.

If you would like to view our liverock gallery, please click HERE

Also, if you would like to discuss the article itself, we have a thread setup right HERE that you can visit and we can get into it a bit. The above information I've provided in the article are just my personal thoughts and views on the subject which may or may not necessarily be 100% accurate. Please feel free to chime in and correct or even add to the topic as you see fit. Any feedback is greatly appreciated and welcomed.