How much live rock needed?

vas · #1 10/17/2004, 04:42 AM

I have always wondered how much live rock is needed for one of those huge 4000 or 5000 gallon aquaculture farms? And how much water do they change in total monthly? The people who own those farms must spend atleast $15,000 just on live rock and about $400 a month for salt. Is it really about that?

vas · #2 10/17/2004, 05:00 AM

Sorry, I forgot to put how I got the prices. I am guessing you would need 5000 lbs. of live rock and you could probably get that wholesale for like $3lb. So 5000 times 3 equals $15,000. Holy smokes! Oh and 3000 gallons a month of salt is 15 (200gal bukets of Oceanic or Instant Ocean) at $30 a bucket wholesale equals $450 per month for salt and I forgot to consider water. Like where I live water is 14 cents a gallon. Which means 14 times 3000 equals $420 a month for water. Wow that means these people pay $870 a onth for water changes a month. Noway theres got to be something wrong with that. Can somebody tell me if it is really this expensive, I'm itching to know.

wasp · #3 10/17/2004, 06:05 AM

That amount of rock is not needed in a frag tank with zero or close to zero fish. Can actually get away with considerably less.
In some cases just the rock the frags are on will be most of what is required.
The water change regimen could be influenced by a number of factors, but again, would often be less than in a tank with fish in.
Could conceivably be high though in a very crowded frag tank.

slave-of-rock · #4 10/18/2004, 07:10 PM

also the prices you have are a bit higher then expected, if you buy over 1000lbs of LR its not gonna be $3 a lb, you can prolly get it cheaper, also the same with salt, and if your gonna be doing that many WC's then you would just buy a RO unit instead of buying water per gallon
-kyle

minfinger · #5 10/19/2004, 09:54 PM

The truth be known, if it wasn't for the rock that the actual corals are on, you wouldn't have any "Live Rock" in any Prop System. And for that matter you wouldn't need any rock at all.

Rock is not required to maintain high quality water conditions. High quality water is mantained by high quality purification and skimming and so forth.

Pretty simple stuff but the equipment could run you more than $15,000 in rock. Look at Dendro's Prop Greenhouse.