[SPasse]

Hi All,

In general, I recommend not placing your live rock against the back wall, for reasons related to circulation. Creating good circulation (front and back) goes a long ways towards keeping your live rock from becoming an eventual detritus trap, with potential algae bloom problems.

Whether this is possible is often related to that available front to back depth, and how much open sand bed area that you need if you intend on keeping sand bed critters such as many of the LPS corals.

Because I like these types of corals, I like tanks with a front to back depth of 24” or more.

One on the nice things about a deep live sand bed is it cuts way down on the amount of live rock that you “need” to make you reef “aesthetically pleasing” and provide a platform for your corals, etc.

For example, my 180 gallon reef required only 150lbs of Fiji live rock to achieve the “look” that I was after, and left me with lots of room for my sand dwelling corals like Open brains, Heliofungia etc. which are sand dwelling critters, not really meant to be placed on live rock.

A mature live sand bed significantly lowers the need for “x” amount of live rock. Indeed culture tanks can consist of live sand beds and no live rock at all.

Regards,

Scott