Making your own live rock?

[mrebolton]

Does anyone have any info on a way to make your own live rock starting from just base rock?

[Crown Royal]

1. Place some live rock in the same tank as the base rock.

2. Wait

[mrebolton]

I understand that if I put base rock in a tank with live rock, it will soon transfer over. But the question is what would it take if you dont add any live rock and just have base rock in your tank?

[itstheantitang]

You need the life off the live rock to transfer over. So, you want the corillines, the bacteria, the worms, algae, etc. to come over. There is no substitution.

[Crown Royal]

If you went through the normal cycling processes such as cocktail shrimp or putting damsels in you'd eventually develop nitrifying bacteria on the base rock. But you'd get that in any established tank. Nothing special.

If you want "live" rock that has all the critters and diversity of life that people pay big bucks for, you'll never get that with base rock (and only base rock) unless you've figured out a way to spontaneously generate lifeforms.

Having a bit of live rock to begin with will both kickstart bacteria production on the base rock and eventual migration of more complex life forms throughout the tank.

[jsschrstrcks]

the neat little critters, and other things that hitch hike on the live rock is half the fun. if you want to use base rock then i would go half and half at the least :)

my question is, i live in florida, and we have an amazing amount of limestone especially where i live it litters the ground, the canal i live on, etc. my point is that it is everywhere. could i use some of that as base rock? the canal is brackish(sg is about 1.0), if i were to take rock out of canal, is the nitrifying bacteria that grows in brackish water the same as the kind that grows in salt (could i aquaculture my own in the canal before putting it in my aquarium?).
thanks for your answers in advance :)

[themaddhatter]

I'm interested in using Limestone as baserock as well. I've got large amounts of limestone broken into manageable sizes, and I'm cleaning them off w/ a wirebrush (drill powered). I have over 150 pounds of live sand I got out of an established aquarium already in the tank, along with 60 pounds of tufa rock. I want to add the limestone and then seed the rockwork w/ maybe 50 to 60 pounds of live rock from an established tank. I also plan to have a remote deep sand bed and a fuge looped in to help keep nitrates down.