More advice please!!! As I await the arrival of the new red sea 650 . I am looking at aquascaping options. Live rock vs Dead rock. How risky is it to introduce live rock ( air ) to a tank and get bad hitch hitchhikers I have read may articles and seen many videos and getting mixed answers. Some good some bad. Obviously I want to get the tank up and running sooner then later but not at the expense of having to deal with some bad critters. And if live rock is a safe (or almost safe) where is the best place to purchase it. (Reliable / trustworthy / quality ). Or is it best to go to the local reef store and purchase it? Again Thanks for assisting me on this.
This is a case where everybody is right. All of the methods work. You just need to figure out what is best for you.
Live rock is going to be expensive for a large tank. An RSM 650 holds about 170 gal of water. Using the usual recommendation of 1 lb of rock per gal of water, your going to need about 170 lbs of rock. Looking at one of our sponsors, Pacific East Aquaculture, the lowest price is $6.79 per pound ground shipping included. This is a typical price, although you might find something better. That works out to $1,154.30. You could use a bit less rock, but even so that's still going to be a lot.
Live rock does have a risk of unwanted hitchhikers. On the other hand, you do get a great diversity of life on it. I was finding new items on my rock for a couple of years after I first added it. However if you get something like a mantis shrimp, it's going to be a #$%^&*( job to remove it.
Live rock, unless you get it from a long established tank, can also be expected to have some die off. This can mean a big initial cycle of the tank. This is not necessarily bad, but does take time. As a note, you should inspect new live rock and remove things like large sponges, obvious hitchhikers, and anything else that is going to just die.
Dry rock is going to be lots less expensive, and you'll need to give it time to fully cycle and become live rock. This can be months. It doesn't mean you can't add other livestock, but you do need to take this into consideration and under stock. After a few years, it will have all kinds of growth, and be about the same as live rock.
Using a mix of live rock and dry rock does have the advantage of costing a lot less and you still get most of the advantages of the live rock diversity of life. However, it only takes one rock with one hitchhiker you don't want to cause a problem.
The question to ask yourself is what do you want out of the tank and how much do you want to spend. You really can't go too far wrong here.
