Rock ranch

I'm thinking of starting a live rock ranch at home. I thought it would be good to use my 75g which I just upgraded instead of breaking it down. It has been running for about 8 mos and I just recently moved everything out of it except the deep sand bed ,marine land emperor filter and water. Would this idea work if I buy a bunch of dry rock and put it in there for awhile. If so what params would I need to keep rock in and for how long.

 

If you're referring to culturing true LR, I don't see that alone being profitable. You would need to keep up your reef lighting and water parameters to get good coralline growth, as well as providing a constant ammonia source to insure that it stays well populated with beneficial bacteria, etc. With the time and work invested, you might be lucky to break even.

If you're talking about putting dry rock in your tank for a couple of weeks then passing it off as "live" like so many LFSes, personally, I wouldn't buy it for the same price as dry. Being wet only makes it heavier, not live.

JM2C

 

Renee and I actually had a dedicated LR tank for quite awhile. However, ours was for personal use. We used to find nice pieces of rock (interesting shapes, sizes, etc), so we'd buy them and toss them into the LR tank (it was an old 55 gal acrylic tank with a couple of water pumps dropped in for circulation). We'd drop in some pieces of fish/shrimp every so often to maintain a "light" cycle, but fully cured condition.