Is it safe?

It will take a long time for your base rock to become live. It is best to add some LR, but the trick is finding some that looks good. Anyone local to you that has a set up already? You could even do just a few small pieces. Scrapings of coralline will just get the coralline started. What makes live rock live, is all of the microscopic organisms that is on the rock (not just the color). These organisms work to create a biologic filtration. I have never been a big fan of the purple up, but I know people that swear by the stuff. I have been happy with letting my coralline come in nice and slow.

How big is your tank? If it is small enough to work in, and if you got a small amount of the LR from your LFS and aiptasia start to appear, you can always kill them with a kalk paste or aiptasia X.

My concern is that I have a big tank and whenever I put something in, I know it will be darn near impossible to really get anything out again.

 

i have a 55g wide

 

That is definitely a little easier to work in that a 150 tall ;D

If that is the only place that you can get LR, I might be willing to take a chance, but I would exhaust all other options first. Anytime we get LR, we take a chance that it will have unwanted hitch-hikers. Some are good, others not so good. Ultimately it is your call.

As far as your base rock becoming live, it will take a good couple of months for that to happen.

Here is a good thread from awhile back that has some great discussion about LR v BR

http://www.3reef.com/forums/live-rock/live-rock-vs-dry-base-rock-62667.html

 

Awesome thread, thanks for all the help! K+