Live Rock?

[fishy]

DO I HAVE TO HAVE A PROTEIN SKIMMER TO KEEP LIVE ROCK, OR WILL IT BE O.K. WITH OUT IT? (VERY SMALL TANK)

THANKS

[Jimnorris]

Fishy how small is small? How much liverock? And how old is the liverock? You may be able not to but what is going in the tank? Can you tell us about the set up?
Jim

[PeeJ]

Keep in mind who you're talkin to...For Jim here, a 150 gallon tank would be "small" HAHA

[JimD]

Ive been running a successfull 12 gallon jawfish tank with no skimmer. About 20 or so lbs of live rock. The key is not to over stock.

[malofish]

Running a ten gal. with no skimmer. I jsut do occasional water changes(not like I should). This is a trick I learned from a friend!! I turn off all the pumps for aboot ten min. then I tear up pieces of newspaper about 6x4, and place them over the surface of the water, after a few pieces , all the surface skum, or film is gone, turn every thing on and move on! the undissolved organics that the skimmer would've got float to the surface, where the newspaper will aborb most of it when it soaks up water!! Seem to work on my 10gal.

[fishy]

10gal tank, about 50lbs live rock

[PeeJ]

50 lbs of rock in a 10 gallon? so how much water do you really have? like a gallon?

[GaryP]

Is the rock stacked on top of the tank?

gary

[PeeJ]

in a 10 gallon tank with 50 lbs of rock, a 2-3 gallon water change would be like 100 %....do you have any photos? im curious to see exactly what it looks like

[Andrew]

Your rock must be extremely dense to fit 50 pounds :shock: in a 10 gallon, unless this figure accounts for sand as well. 50 pounds of live rock will fill a 30 gallon pretty well. I'd go with one small fish, and maybe a shrimp, and a few small corals if you go skimmerless in the ten.

Andrew

[manny]

LOL at PeeJ
This has to be some really dense rock or somethin cause my 30 has 50 pounds and I have a 10 gallon sittin underneath it....There's no way I could fit all my rock in that 10. I'm ready to check out some pics of that 10 also

[fishy]

It's Fiji live rock. This is not my normal set up. I just sold my 150 gal and the guy didn't want the LR because he is going FW. I put it all in a ten for now, but I think it actually looks neat and I was wondering if I could keep it like this? I'll try to post a pic

[fishy]

It's Fiji live rock. This is not my normal set up. I just sold my 150 gal and the guy didn't want the LR because he is going FW. I put it all in a ten for now, but I think it actually looks neat and I was wondering if I could keep it like this? I'll try to post a pic

[matt]

I'd go out and buy another 10 gal and split up the rock between two. There's no way you'll get decent flow in such a small tank with that much rock, unless you had at least 4 powerheads aiming at the rock from different directions. I had serious algae problems in my 10 while I had about 20lbs of figi rock; then I took out a couple of big pieces, with really improved the flow in all the areas in/around the rock. If you're saving the rock for a bigger tank, I think it will be better off for having the increased water flow around it.