Which vendors for really good live rock these days?

[Anonymous]

I'll be moving in a few more weeks into a larger place, and I'm getting the bug to set up a reef again. There's a specific tank I've been meaning to do for 15 years that I think I'll finally do.

At this point though I'm completely clueless what the live rock scene is like. I'm not going to need much (20 lbs, max). I might just get TBS rock due to how it's shipped, but carribean rock is really not my number one choice. What's the rock of choice right now, and who's carrying it? Price isn't an issue, but quality is.

 

[Len]

http://www.aquatictech.com/livestock.html

They've got a wide variety of nice rocks. Be prepared to cure your rocks in a separate bin since almost all rock (Alor is the one exception I know of) is shipped by boat these days and thus has a lot of die off.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks Len. Looks like their minimum order is a box? Ah well, if it's good rock I'll eat the rest.

 

[Len]

They have fully cured rocks by the pound (scroll closer to the bottom), but it's pricey. I'd buy a box, cure it myself, and sell what you don't use. People should be happy to pick up nice rock to seed their tanks. A lot of people are using dead/dried rock and want seed rock.

 

[Anonymous]

Does it need to be LIVE rock? Marcorocks is great if you have a particular piece/shape size you're looking for, but it is dry.

 

[Petsolutions]

To tell which rock is boat rock and which rock isn't boat rock, the level of rock will generally tell you on most sites. Base, Standard, Premium, Super Premium, Ultra Premium, Electric Mega Super Ultra Premium With Gold Plating and Hotsauce, etc. Generally the more expensive the rock, the greater the odds of it being airplane rock rather than boat rock, at least that is how things work where I am and if you are dealing with all Fiji for example. I always like curing rock myself anyhow, it gives me more of an opportunity to get a feel for the character of the rock before I actually start putting it into an aquarium for display. I say go for semi cured or uncured, but be prepared, some places that send totally uncured I've had the smell be so strong that you wouldn't want to put it in your house to cure it. My two cents.

 

[jamesw]

Welcome back Charles!!!!!! It seems like us old-timers are all coming back to the hobby. I just sent up a 180g 6 months ago and went through this same dilemma. The days of getting raw uncured fiji rock air freight direct from Walt direct to LAX are over :-(

Upon Len's advice I got my uncured rock through AquaticTech and could not be happier. It has amazing critter coverage w/ many live corals that made the trip. That tells a lot about how the rock was handled. It comes from Alor and ships though Bali. I confirmed that because the boxes flew from Denpesar and they also contained newspaper from Bali

Check out my build thread in this forum for some pix. I got 2 boxes. They are 50-60 lb boxes including box weight.

Cheers
James

 

[Anonymous]

Welcome back Charles!!!!!! It seems like us old-timers are all coming back to the hobby.

Yeah, the wife's been telling me that she wants me to do a reef for the past few years. So I'll finally do the Amano-design-principles-tank-o'-xenia I've thought about.

The days of getting raw uncured fiji rock air freight direct from Walt direct to LAX are over :-(

Ran into that four years ago when I did my last reef... the marshall island rock I got then(and from a vendor I've used many times over the past 16 years, who I know isn't the problem) was really a let down. Back in LA in the '90s I wouldn't have used it for base rock, even.

Upon Len's advice I got my uncured rock through AquaticTech and could not be happier. It has amazing critter coverage w/ many live corals that made the trip. That tells a lot about how the rock was handled. It comes from Alor and ships though Bali. I confirmed that because the boxes flew from Denpesar and they also contained newspaper from Bali

The photos look good. Is it mostly chunky boulder style like the old fiji?

 

[jamesw]

Hi Charles,

The Alor I got is not as chunky as the fijian rock. In fact, I found that mine is made up of mostly ancient Blue Ridge coral skeletons. It's boulder shaped but very open and honeycombed inside. I got 2 or 3 fantastically big pieces - in fact the left bommie in my tank pix is made out of just TWO rocks really.

Cheers
James

 

[Saltlick]

I agree that if you want the best you can get, you should go the box lot route, cherry pick what you want,
and then trade the balance to the LFS for dry goods or fish, or cash out to a fellow reefer. But if it was ME,
I know that any real reefer has several tanks, lol. They just seem to get set up somehow. I would make a
separate tank to hold my extra LR and eventually SOMETHING will go in there. It turns out that it is a great
way to get copepod explosions, house fish that are being harassed, seahorses, who knows. But once you have
paid for LR to come over, setting up a separate 20 gallon is not TOO much trouble. You could also find that
based on the rock weight, it sounded like more than it was and the entire box might be just what you needed.
I can't wait to see the photos, lol. I have a fetish for looking at live rock.

And for goodness sake, don't get TBS rock. FAR too heavy and blah shapes.

 

[Minh Nguyen]

Welcome back. Good luck with your new tank. I got dead dry rock and put them in Coprus Christi Bay for several months and end up with some really good live rocks so I don't have any advices for you.

 

[Saltlick]

As I just posted a thread about it in the New Reefkeeper's forum, I hate to lay it on thicker,
but I can personally vouch for the Timor live rock at Premium Aquatics that is JUST arrived
and uncured. Mine spent 2 and a half days in UPS transit and popped open as fresh as if
I had pulled it out of the ocean and left it sitting on the beach for an hour. By that I mean
it arrived wrapped in wet paper so it was still moist but dry. It smelled fine. It looked like
a blend of what their Timor pictures look like as examples and the nice Bali Alor structure
show in the example photos they show for that rock. Mine did not come with all this lush
macroalgae and sponge and coral, but was covered in purple coralline algae and organisms.
Much of what comes on uncured rock never makes it to your tank. The algae turns white
and disintegrates, the sponge rots. Better to leave that to grow from invisible nothing, which
it often does. On a scale of 1-10, I give it an 8. Two points off for being as nice as Alor
but with a touch more weight. It is exactly the kind of rock you need to build a nice scape.
That's my 2 cents. I would say more about the various LR out there, but I have not really
bought rock in ten years, so what do I know. Oh yeah, I got 17 lbs and received 5 rocks.
Three were fairly large, and two were at the small end of medium. What I expected was
two heavy rocks of decent size. Everyone says it's heavier than Fiji. Maybe the LAST
shipment was, but this is about perfect. It's not featherweight, which I know some people like.