You’ve probably seen live rock in all the most elegant saltwater aquariums you remember. They sell aquarium live rock in all the better aquarium supplies stores: pieces of undersea coral reef broken off through the natural action of the sea, picked up by divers for use in aquaria. Coral reefs are made of a very porous substance. The ocean’s underwater environment is filled with tiny creatures, crabs, crustaceans, algae and myriad other life forms that make their home in the little pores, nooks and crannies of these reefs. When a piece breaks off and is fished up by people for use in aquaria, these rocks come with all the life that fills their entire structure; hence the name, live rock.
The saltwater aquarium is a pretty popular option around homes these days; it wasn’t really an option up until a few years ago when aquarium live rock was not commonly available. What is it about live rock that helps though? The thing is, when you put a hunk of live rock into your aquarium, you give the thousands of organisms holed up within, a home in your tank as well; in return, they are happy to earn their keep by entering a symbiotic relationship with their tankmates, the fish.
Fish eat and breathe in the same water space they release their bodily waste in; someone’s got to clean up all the pollution in the water before it gets too thick for the fish. Of course you could always roll up your sleeves every couple of days and filter it all out with plenty of time and equipment. With aquarium live rock though, all you need to do is leave it to the organisms in the rock, the aerobic and anaerobic critters, to turn the bodily waste floating about in the water into harmless nitrogen that bubbles up to the surface and leaves.
The rule of thumb for the quantity of live rock you want for your saltwater aquarium is about a pound of rock for every gallon of water your aquarium holds. But you can’t just lie back and relax just yet; the aquarium live rock that you buy from your aquarium supplies store needed to make quite a trip to your home all the way from the bottom of the sea. The living organisms in there seem to not find the inside of a mail order store’s mailer box quite as hospitable to life as the bottom of their favorite sea. After the grueling trip making it to your aquarium, the rock will take a while to acclimatize to its new surroundings and grow the full complement of life forms it is capable of. In the meantime, you will need to check the nitrate levels in your water from time to time and use a protein skimmer to take up the slack until your live rock kicks in.
When aquarium live rock does kick in though, there is quite nothing like it: the fish love to play around it, the rocks grow beautiful colorful algae and plants, and the rock really lives, changing from day to day in the life it supports. There are several kinds of aquarium live rock you’ll get to choose from when you set forth to buy some. There are rocks from the Fiji Islands, there is Atlantic rock and there is aquaculture rock. The ones from the Pacific are real coral reef, but when you buy something of this kind you never know if environmentally friendly harvesting practices were used to get them. Aquaculture rock could be the best choice; they artificially place porous rock at the bottom of the sea a couple of years to get all the life forms to take to them, and then ship it to you. If you have a saltwater marine aquarium, you owe it to your fish to help them feel at home. They’ll be healthier and happier for your trouble.
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