Can I get away with less rock?

[tranceFusion]

I want to re-do the aquascaping in my tank. The problems I have are:

 

1) Getting flow to all areas of the tank, behind rocks, etc.. without blowing my fish and rics away..

2) Having room for low-light low-flow corals that I want.

3) Not enough space to clean glass easily.

 

I want to take out maybe 25% of the rock. Is that bad? I feel like my tank is pretty healthy right now so I am scared to mess w/ it. The thing is, the only things I want to keep in this tank are LPS, zoas, and rics, so I feel like alot of the higher up, high flow areas are getting wasted when what I really want is more ground room..

 

I am not sure exactly how much rock is in there, but I would say it is maybe 18 lbs in a 12g. Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[tbittner]

What fish do you have in the tank?

 

I'll probably get shot down BUT I believe that you CAN get away with less rock IF you don't overload the tank with fish. Keep the biological load down and you don't need as much biological filtration.

 

Please anyone, DO say that I'm wrong if I'm wrong though.

 

(can you tell that this is just a theory of mine? )

[vaironman]

Won't be able to shot your theory down since the condition is correctly stated, depending on the bioload on this nanocube.

 

Here is an alternative I've been contemplating today. Take out 25% of the rock that you would like to reduce.

 

Use a hammer to crush them into small rubble rocks. Put as much rubble rocks back into one of the back chambers; preferrably, the 2nd chamber since the 1st has a sponge to filter out the left over food.

 

Third chamber can be used with carbon + phosphate remover.

 

Beautiful setup for a 12G nano tank btw. Something I would model after. Very clean.

Edited April 27, 2008 by vaironman