Aquacultured Live Rock

[spawner]

I am about to set up a 100% aquacultured reef tank. I am trying to decide on live rock. Has anyone seen Walt Smith's cultured Fiji rock. I would like to get some opinions on it as far as shape, density, and coralline coverage.

 

[jamesw]

Here's a quick write-up I did about Walt Smith's aquacultured stuff - after my visit there:

http://reefs.org/ops/jameso/fiji/

Cheers
James

 

[Anonymous]

I've actually seen it, and gosh darn it, it looks really good! (For cultured)

 

[Anonymous]

where can I get it as I am not a fan of decimating our coral reefs (but I have live rock from fiji, tonga, marshal and other places) I just like aquacultered stuff seems more eco friendly

 

[Expos Forever]

Have you considered Florida rock? Not the most porous, apparently, but it seems to be full of life.

 

[gbundersea]

Have you considered Florida rock? Not the most porous, apparently, but it seems to be full of life.

I strongly recommend Gulf-View (http://www.gulf-view.com) On June 27, 2003 I received 250 pounds of "base" rock from Gulf-View for which I paid $2.00/pound. (Note: I'm sure I received a better price due to the quantity I purchased, but Gulf-View's prices are very reasonable regardless.) Theirs is Florida aquacultured rock, but is lighter and has better structure than that offered by others, including Tampa Bay Saltwater. It was originally Bahamas lace rock, and is very porous.

I cannot say enough about the quality rock and great service which Dale provided. The rock was only out of the water for a total of maybe 6-8 hours, thanks to the care Dale puts into coordinating the shipping. Much of what he calls base rock qualifies as decorator rock in anyone else's vocabulary, at least in the batch I received. It was full of coralline, feather dusters, huge bivalves, at least 3 species of corals, and I counted at least NINE species of macroalgaes! In less than a week I was seeing new macroalgaes growing out of it. We keep finding new things: 3 species of nudibranchs, as well as crabs, Christmas tree worms, tunicates - you name it! All this rock went into a 120-gallon FOWLR aquarium, and I only cleaned off the very few organisms which were obviously dying, mainly one patch of tunicates. I left everything else on it. In spite of this, my ammonia level only peaked between 0.25 and 0.50 PPM, my skimmer's output steadily dropped, and the smell of the water, which was never bad, became normal rapidly. After only 21 days, and in spite of being so much rock, my ammonia and nitrites were 0! Soon after getting the rock, I had added over 200 pounds of mostly live sand, forming a 5-6" deep sand bed. I also have a 30-gallon multi-compartment DIY wet-dry/sump/refugium, and a Turboflotor skimmer.

Nitrates peaked at 40 on 7/19/2003, 8 days later (7/27/2003) had fallen to 20, and were 10 on 8/5/2003.

I am a staff diver at the Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans. One of the husbandry staff offered to run a sample of my water through their $4000.00 Hach spectrophotometer. We did so on 8/12/2003, testing only pH and nitrates in order to keep the test time short. pH was 8.21, pretty much perfect. The nitrates, which he tested twice, thrilled us both: 4.2ppm! The rock, sand, skimmer, and refugium are obviously working.

ALL THIS OCCURRED WITHOUT MY DOING ANY WATER CHANGES! I have not changed a single drop of water since setting up that system! The corals and inverts are thriving, and I'm now seeing new coralline growth in many places.

I had seeded the tank with substrate and filter media from my established 29-gallon tank, and also, half of my live sand came from an established reef tank. These factors gave me a huge kick start on getting the bacteria established.

The 29-gallon was heavily overstocked, due to the fact that 3 of the fish had grown considerably in the 2-3 years we've had them. After triple-checking the water parameters, I moved them on 7/20/2003 into the new tank, only 3 weeks after adding the LR. The fish are doing great!

I want to keep all that stuff on the rock thriving, so I'm determined to maintain low nitrates in spite of this being essentially a fish tank. With the rock, sand, and fuge I think I have a good shot at it. I started dripping kalk to keep Ca and KH high. I had been using B-Ionic, but that gets expensive. After reading a whole lot on the subject, I found Mrs. Wages Pickling Lime for $1.49 a pound. I rigged up a cheap but effective DIY drip container, and I was in business. So far, so good!

I will soon write up a more complete report on my Gulf-View rock and the tank into which it went. However, the short version is that I could not have been more pleased.

If you end up doing business with Gulf-View, do tell Dale I referred you.
__________________

Don't miss my Jensalt sump horror story site.

Also see how to cycle a new tank with household ammonia.
__________________

Greg Bunch
http://www.gbundersea.com
Home of the Digital Lens Dock, MXTENDER, Save-A-Lens Kit, and u/w photography

http://www.reefngom.org
Co-founder and fish ID instructor
REEF Field Station of the Northern Gulf of Mexico

 

[spawner]

Thanks for the info.

I have some of Gulf View's rock in a tank in our office area, its very nice. It has a ton of life on it and they are extremely helpful.

I am really interested in hearing from someone who has had Walt Smith's aquacultured rock in their tank for a while. I have spoken to Walt Smith about it at meetings and see a lot of his presentations, but I was hoping to here from a few people who have hands-on experience with it. I really like the hand made shapes a lot.