CaribSea Moani Dry Live Rock 40 Lbs

Caribsea Moani Dry Live Rock is the perfect solution for starting your marine aquarium with the benefits of live rock.

Moani will behave just like real live rock, providing your aquarium with vital biological filtration and a nitrification base, in addition to providing shelter for your aquarium inhabitants. Caribsea’s open, porous natural rock structure is made from real rock — no concrete products. This carefully earth-mined rock has no impact on aquatic environments.

Moani Dry Live Rock has a shelf stable, spored bacteria that activates upon introducing it into the aquarium. This bacteria makes it behave as live rock.

Shipping: All rock can be fragile. Indiefur makes every effort to securely pack any type of rock. However, we have no control how courier handles it and it may break during shipping. Unfortunately, this is not covered by insurance so we are unable to replace broken pieces.

Specifications

Type: real aragonitic calcium carbonate rock, earth-mined, infused with living spored bacteria
CaribSea product number: 00393
UPC: 008479003935
Pack: one box, assorted shapes and sizes
Nominal weight: 40 lb, about 18.1 kg
Curing required: none
Effect on water chemistry: CaribSea state it will not skyrocket pH or alkalinity

A note on the box weight. CaribSea’s 2025 catalogue lists this item number in 40 lb boxes, and their website currently lists the same item number and the same UPC in 50 lb boxes. We sell it as the 40 lb box, which is what the catalogue and our own stock say. If the exact weight matters to your build — and with rock sold by weight it often does — message us before you order and we will weigh the box that would ship to you.

What CaribSea do not publish for this rock: no density, no piece count, no piece-size range and no porosity figure. Rock is sold by weight and comes as assorted shapes, so the number of pieces in a box varies. We are not going to invent figures CaribSea have not measured — if you need a specific shape or a piece of a particular size for a scape, ask us and we will look at what is in stock.

Sizes CaribSea make: the 40 lb box we stock, plus 500 lb and 1000 lb pallets for people building something much larger. If you are stocking a shop tank or a large system, ask us about the pallets.

Setup & Use

No curing required. This is the whole point of dry live rock and it is CaribSea’s own statement, not our reading of it. Wild-collected live rock arrives carrying dying sponge and other organics that have to rot off in a bucket for weeks while you change water and test ammonia. Moani travels dry, so there is nothing on it to die. It goes into the tank and starts working.

Rinse it, lightly. CaribSea publish this instruction for their LifeRock and it applies just as well here: a light rinse in clean fresh or salt water to knock off loose particles and dust from handling and shipping, then straight into the aquarium. Do not scrub it, do not soak it in tap water for days, and do not bleach it — you would be washing off the spored bacteria that make it live rock.

What makes it ‘live’. The bacteria are dry and dormant. CaribSea infuse the rock with living, spored bacteria that activate on contact with aquarium water, which is why the rock behaves like live rock rather than like base rock and why CaribSea describe it as giving a fast start-up with compressed cycling time. Sporing is also why it survives a dry box in a courier network, which wild-collected live rock does not.

Build the scape before you fill. Dry rock is much easier to work with than wet rock — you can see what you are doing, it is lighter, and nothing is dying while you take your time. Stack it on the bare glass, not on top of the sand, so a burrowing animal cannot undermine the pile; then add sand around the base, then water. If you are aquascaping with putty or cyanoacrylate, do it dry.

It will not spike your pH or alkalinity. That is CaribSea’s own claim for Moani specifically. It is aragonitic calcium carbonate, so it is a buffering material and belongs in marine, reef and African cichlid systems rather than in a soft water planted tank — but it is not the kind of rock that swings the chemistry of an established tank when you add a box of it.

Still cycle the tank. Spored bacteria compress the cycle; they do not remove it. Dose an ammonia source or use a bottled starter, test until ammonia and nitrite read zero, and only then add livestock. CaribSea’s own stocking advice for a newly set up tank is no more than 1 inch of fish per 20 gallons (about 25 mm per 75 litres) for the first two weeks, and no more than 1 inch per 5 gallons in total after that.

Pest-free, which is the other half of the argument. CaribSea sell this as the alternative to wild-collected live rock, and dry rock cannot carry aiptasia, majano, bristleworm plagues, mantis shrimp or hitchhiking crabs, because nothing living came with it. Whatever you put in your tank afterwards is your own decision rather than a surprise.

Handling and storage — our advice. It is rock, so it has no shelf life and needs nothing more than a dry place. Rock is also heavy and the edges are sharp; wear gloves, and be aware that a dropped piece will chip aquarium glass or crack a bottom pane. Do not stack a tall pile against the back glass without bracing it.