How much live rock should I get for a 55 gallon aquarium?
by Aquaboy on Friday, March 5th, 2010 | 3 Comments
I’m starting a salt water aquarium, and at live aquarium it says I need 62.50 pounds for my sized tank. That would be 200 dollars. Do I really need that much?
Live aquarium=LiveAquaria.com
Sorry bout that.
no, get what you want, its all person prefence! Yean it would be nice and beneficial but i know i dont have that kind of money….start off slow. Sand works great too!! Oh wat you can do is buy some live rock and or live sand and buy cheaper rock such as lava rock and use this as your base and it will eventually turn live. I dont the guy below read my answer before he replied because i did say that there is a cheaper way and lava rock will turn live. The only thing is this will not happen over night….. Good Luck
Most live rock is used because it adds surface area for bacteria that convert the wastes in the tank to less harmful substances. It’s the bacteria that make rock or sand “live”.
The general rule I heard when I first started keeping reef tanks was that for maximum biological filtration, you should use 1 pound of Pacific origin rock (Fiji, Tonga, Marshall Islands, etc.) or 2 pounds of Atlantic or Carribean origin rock per gallon of tank volume. The reason fot the difference is that the Pacific rock is more porous, so it provides more surface area per pound.
What none of the references said is that not all of it has to be live rock when you buy it. Yes, the stuff is expensive (going for about $8/lb in stores in my area). But most people don’t consider it for just the bacteria – there’s coralline algae, macroalgae, sponges, clams, tube worms, and other stuff growing on it too. But if you pile a stack of it in the tank, photosynthetic organisms deeper in the pile where there’s no light are going to die. So will other organisms if there’s not enough flow. But the bacteria will survive if there’s any flow at all.
What I recommend is that you buy (locally to save on shipping) is some porous DRY carbonate rock – the lace rock, moon rock, reef bones, etc. This is about $1.50-$2 per pound. Put this on the bottom of the pile and buy maybe 1/3 of the total volume as live rock – put this in the front and on top of the dry rock in the tank. In a few months, the bacteria and other non-photosynthetic organisms will colonize the places where they can survive (and you’ll have less “cool” organisms dying), it’ll function as a biological filter just as well (as long as the pieces are places so there’s plenty of flow around and through the rocks), and you’ll save a bunch of money.
that live rock isnt the only thing that you should be worried
about being expensive for a 55 gallon. the salt and sand
and other live stock is going to be expensive, and fish.
have you done saltwater before? or is this your first time?
and it is about $8.00 a pound on average. and you dont
necessarily need 62 pounds but get at least 50 because it
is VERRY good for the bacteria. and it SPEEDS up the
process of the cycling. so it will take a month but if you
dont have much bacteria it will take more than a month.
and yes live rock and saltwater in general is EXPENSIVE
so dont go into it thinking that it is something that you can
go “cheap” with.