Texas Holey Rock

It's probably not as porous, looking at the surface of it, but limestone is the same type of rock as our reef rock. Dry base rock is limestone (which itself is usually put under pressure to compress into solid rocks), from deposits with certain known contaminants. For example, you want a limestone with low phosphate and copper, and high magnesium contamination.

As it turns out, just look up the definition of limestone, taken from the first sentence of wikipedia's article: "Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and/or aragonite" . Those two sound familiar at all?

 

I own a LFS and have had to break news twice that texas holy rock is for low ph freshwater tanks not salt water..... but dang it would look so cool eh??? LOL

GreyBeard

 

Unless you're talking about a different type of rock (totally possible, just like confusion because of using common names for fish), Texas Holey rock is limestone, and is chemically no different than what you would call "base rock" (beyond regional differences in exact minor mineral levels), and was in fact a deposit originally created by corals.

In a low pH environment, limestone dissolves (as you know; aragonite is limestone, and aragonite dissolves at under 7.2 pH, and much quicker at 6.5 pH), which is what causes it to release calcium and carbonates into the water (I know you've heard of a calcium reactor if you own a LFS). So, it's not actually good for low pH tanks, but only high pH tanks. In low pH tanks, you'd have troubles keeping the pH any lower than 7.2 with that rock in there.

It seems like it's much more dense than your average limestone, though, which does make it unsuitable for its typical use in saltwater (anaerobic zones in porous rock), but is definitely good if you run something like a coil denitrator to get the same effect (area for anaerobic bacteria to colonize) or have something like an exceptionally large fuge to substitute another nitrate-reduction method.

 

Black Raven!

Thank you I thought I was losing it when i started reading your post thinking.... I know ive read his posts before and they were good so what is up with THIS???? then i realised what was up..... My old eyes where reading Holy Rock and my brain was thinking of Lava Rock... Please disregard my mind is slips out of gear on my days off (not that I have many!) LOL ok i'll laugh at me if everyone else will now... dah

GreyBeard :-[

 

maybe I should have another microbrew and stop typing tonight LOL

 

oh... but first... while I do own a lfs/pet store (the northern most one in MI, way up in the UP)... I've just starting into salt water in the past 2 months at the store so I'm still a wayyyyy newbie at all this anyway.