The Importance of Live Rock

I first stepped into the hobby somewhere around 2005 and in 2010 I took a break for about a decade before getting back into it. 

What I realized initially is that many aspects of the hobby became much more advanced from a hardware standpoint, but fell off in the biological department. 

I understand that due to bans; exporting/importing live rock became scarce and people had to find their way into jumpstarting their systems biological filtration and microbiome (which is probably where and why the bottled bacteria craze started)

It seemed that the next best thing and eventually the 'right' way to start a reef tank was to use dry limestone and add your bottled bacteria of choice to kick everything off.

Coincidentally, it seems that around that same time; dinoflagellates made their entrance.. People blamed lack of nutrients, lack of water changes, too many water changes, not enough flow, not enough light, too much light, the wrong color spectrum, the wrong grade of substrate, the wrong temperature, and on and on.. 

From what I can recall, I've never heard of these 'dino' issues from folks who've used live rock and had basic knowledge of how to care for a reef tank; and I think that is due to the important fact that these porous rocks from the ocean bring with them their diverse microbiome that distributes itself effectively and efficiently into the closed system of seawater they are placed into. 

Without 'wild' beneficial bacteria that keep detrimental residents at bay, the only semi-successful method of defeating certain types of dinoflagellates I've seen is to increase nutrients and certain elements to a point that diatoms become the new reigning champ and you now have a: less ugly, albeit still ugly, but easier problem to deal with.  

If you have concerns about hitchhikers on live rock, you can always quarantine in a holding tank with adequate flow and heat. You can also give them a quick hypersalinity bath to remove unwanted inverts.

In conclusion; if you're not a fan of dinos and enjoy stability.. start with live rock..