Ode to a Rock

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(Mike's tank months before the take down)

For those of you that are acquainted with the world of saltwater tanks, you will hate me for this.

Michael has been an avid saltwater tank enthusiast for quite a few years now. In the sad reality that moving meant we had to take down his once beautiful largish tank he ultimately decided to keep his favorite rock alive and bring it along so when we were settled finally he could start up a Nano tank.

For those of you that are completely lost, here are a few definitions to help you follow along:

• Live rock – “Rock from the ocean that has been introduced into a saltwater aquarium. Along with live sand, it confers to the closed marine system multiple benefits desired by the saltwater aquarium hobbyist (1)”. Usually it’s created in the process of building up a tank, which tanks a lot of time, leaving it to absorb naturally good, and some bad, bacteria and other macroscopic marine life leaving it with the name ‘live rock’.

• Dead rock – Rock that had been either boiled, or left in the sun leaving it to kill all possible alive bacteria and organisms there in.

• Nano Tank – “A Nano reef is a type of marine aquarium that is typically less than 140 liters (30 Imperial gallons / 37 US gallons). The exact limit that distinguishes a Nano reef from a regular reef is somewhat ill defined. Some claim that anything less than 180 liters (40 Imperial gallons / 48 US gallons) would qualify (2)”

So in order to keep the live rock actually alive he put it in a five gallon bucket with a marine heater in which was supposed to keep the saltwater around an average from 62 – 78 degrees. Every time we started traveling again we had to take the heater out and cover the bucket so we didn’t get a raging mess every a curb hit us. Miss smarty-pants here trying to be helpful put ‘everything’ back in when we came to our next stop and that ‘everything’ included the temperature gage actually flying into the potato bucket next to it instead of the actual rock bucket leaving the actual heater part to not know how hot it was and I ended up boiling the rock. I really didn’t know what was what on that thing to be honest.

Lo and behold I killed a rock, this is for all the little living guys on that rock, and you Mike. Sorry love, I solemnly swear I am usually up to no good and it’s always not on purpose.

1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_rock
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reef_aquarium