Base Rock?

[Andrew v.s wild]

Sorry for my lack of knowledge.
but i have been seeing alot of base rock for sale.
And have no idea what it is or what its used for?
Im buying rock for my 75gallon tomorrow and was curious about it.
Advice...:bigsmile:

[ErikH]

Base rock is large pieces of live rock. What sand do you have in your tank? did you buy "live" sand from a LFS or did you purchase it from an established tank? I would purchase as much purple rock as possible and haggle your buns off. Even if you don't have room for all of the rock you buy, buy it. You can do wonders in a 75 with alot of rock and sand. I barely fill my cup in my Euro Reef RS135 weekly because the natural filtration works so well. I don't even use my skimmer on my 48....

[swjim]

The term base rock can also refer to rock that was once live rock but has been dried out. It is generally much cheaper and can be "seeded" by putting it in a tank with established live rock. Over a period of time bacteria, coralline, microfauna, etc will grow on it and it will once again become "live" rock.

My 30 gallon tank that I set up in July has around 40 lbs of rock in it, 34 was this type of dry rock and the other 6 were live rock that I picked up from Aquarium Designs.

marcorocks.com and bulkreefsupply.com are two online vendors that sell this type of base rock. The base rock that I am using came from a vendor that is no longer in business - hirocks.com (hawaii rocks), I had some extra in storage.