# Live rock for mbunas?



## Chris2500DK (Feb 15, 2006)

Right now I have a reef tank and I'm seriously considering jumping back to freshwater for various reasons, the main one being that salt water fish while pretty are fairly boring to watch.

This leaves me with a lot of corals and stuff to sell which is great since it'll easily cover the expenses of setting up the tank for whatever I'll end up deciding to keep.

I do have all the live rock for the tank, and while I could sell it for decent money I'm thinking about using it for mbunas instead. Probably a saulosi species tank.

The main advantages I can see:


- It's much less massive than what rocks you'd normally use for a mbuna tank so I'll get a ton of nooks, crannies and other assorted bolt holes and hiding places for the fish.
- It'll help buffer the water.
- It looks cool!
- It's really really porous and it should basicly take care of all the biological filtration needed for the tank once cycled.

Any of you have experiences with using marine live rock in a cichlid tank?


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## Joea (May 25, 2004)

Live rock will eventually die in freshwater. I would recommend boiling and scrubbing the rock to make sure that all organisms are removed before adding it to the tank. This would essentially make it just "rock". :wink:



Chris2500DK said:


> It's really really porous and it should basicly take care of all the biological filtration needed for the tank once cycled.


Don't count on it. Even very porous rock won't contain enough denitrifying bacteria to sustain a tank of Africans, you'll still need adequate filtration.


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## Chris2500DK (Feb 15, 2006)

Yeah I know it'd die  And I was planning to add a canister filter anyway.

Basicly it'd just become rocks in odd shapes with lots of hiding places.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

if you sold the live rock, turned around and bought cheap base rock, you'd have the same rock and cash in hand... if you want, you can leave the live rock and as soon as you fill the tank with fresh water, everything dies, coraline algae all flakes off and you end up with base rock and gallons of super stinky water... change that a few times and you have a tank full of base rock.

Hope that helps.


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## Chris2500DK (Feb 15, 2006)

If I could get cheap base rock that'd be a nice option, but here in Denmark base rock costs more than I could get by selling the live rock.


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## F-1 (Jan 17, 2008)

Chris2500DK,

I've converted 3 reef tanks to freshwater for africans and one was just last weekend. Converted tanks do look really cool for mbunas but the bleached rock and white coral sand may wash out some to colors of haps.

I suggest you keep the reef live rock because it's expensive and it can be reused in the future if you ever decided to go back to a reef set up. If you keep your live rock boiling it is ideal or you can cycle your tank with hot water at 105-115 degrees to kill the organism as well.

Good luck,

F-1


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

Chris2500DK said:


> If I could get cheap base rock that'd be a nice option, but here in Denmark base rock costs more than I could get by selling the live rock.


Wow... that sounds messed up... in that case, just add fresh water and let things break down. You could boil the rock as suggested, but honestly I can't be bothered with that sort of mess and trouble when a small bit of patience does the trick...


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## Chris2500DK (Feb 15, 2006)

Thanks for the advice guys. Do any of you have or know of pictures of mbuna tanks using (formerly) live rock?


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## myselfdotcom (Sep 19, 2006)

i would sell the live rock or give it to someone that wants it and buy them dead one from someone else...don't waste good live rock ..save the earth ...enough live rock collection in fiji or whatever..that my 3 cents


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## Chris2500DK (Feb 15, 2006)

Like I wrote before, if I had a way of getting dead rock I would take it. I'm not going to spend extra money on trading my live rock for dead though.

Besides, the rock won't be destroyed, it can easily be turned back into live rock by mixing in a few fresh pieces of live rock and leaving it all in a bin for a couple of months.


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## F-1 (Jan 17, 2008)

Chris2500Dk,

Below you'll find a link to some old pics of my tanks. My 60 gallon had coral sand and bleached live rock from my reef tank. It now has brown play sand and river rock. I'll take some more pics over the course of the next week and update my photo bucket. And although bleached live rock and coral sand aren't natural for africans, it works really well for mbunas in my opinion.

http://s253.photobucket.com/albums/hh66/Malawians/

Let me know what you think,

F-1


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## Chris2500DK (Feb 15, 2006)

Thanks for the pics  It was stuff like that I was looking for. It's hard to imagine how it'll look before you see it with some fish.


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## Chris2500DK (Feb 15, 2006)

Ah, found an alternative I'm very happy with 
http://www.cichlid-forum.com/phpBB/view ... 12#1171312


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