stupid question about live rock

[legalseafood]

hi
i'm REALLY New to saltwater, so please bear with me anyways, this may be a silly question, but is it possible to store live rock for future use? like put it in a plastic bin for a few years and use it when needed? i'm assuming the organisms on the live rock will die off, but if i introduce a new piece of live rock to the old stuff, can it be used again? thanks for any advice.

 

[1979camaro]

in a word, no...it needs light...however, if you should chose to place new lr in with dead rock (aka base rock) then it will eventually grow new stuff...but why not just buy it when you need it?

 

[wayne]

Well yes, if you really mean what you say. You will kill off anything on the rock, and be left with a piece of porous limestone. You could later reuse it, and it would eventually repopulate. It would be an expensive and wasteful process though.

You can sometimes buy porous limestones at lfs and use them as dead baserock in this way.