Live rock serves as a vehicle for good and bad hitchhikers.Here at Saltwater Smarts, we emphasize again and again the importance of quarantining all marine livestock before introducing it to an established aquarium. But what about those pieces of live rock that we occasionally add to our established systems to bolster biodiversity and biofiltration or simply to spruce up the aquascaping? Do those need to spend time in quarantine too? While live rocks aren’t really living, per se, you can’t just plop them in your system and call it a day. (I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it!) They require a quarantine period just like any animal you choose to add to your tank. Here are three good reasons:1) Excluding undesirable hitchhikers Live rocks are, for all intents and purposes, vehicles for hitchhiking organisms. Notwithstanding their aesthetics and the structural purpose they serve in a reef system, we buy live rocks primarily for the life forms inhabiting them. But in addition to carrying interesting and/or beneficial fauna, they can also bring in their share of undesirable—if not outright nasty—critters, such as Aiptasia and majano anemones, crabs, mantis shrimps, etc
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