After posting in a previous thread about how good Sea Life Inc. live rock is, I offered to show pics of what its like out of the box. Here is my order, #20 lbs. It fills up the entire side of the split sink and more. Very light weight. These photo's were taken after I took off the newspaper and a quick freshwater rinse.

Right out of the box!


Sorted out after the rinse:


Close up of two of the five corals on the live rock:


All told I had a couple hitchhikers that I found - two small crabs. I did a hyper salinity bath to kill off anything that I couldn't see, and then another quick freshwater rinse, and into a tank to cycle it. Once the tank is cycled, I'll be parting the rock out for other tanks. Until then it cycles a 24G Aquapod.

I'm pretty darn happy with Sea Life Inc. - great prices (Live Rock @ 3.50 a pound), great communication too.
Not only that, the guy that runs it is trying to restore coral back onto the reefs in Florida. Certainly a noble cause.

So hopefully if you need good live rock, you've got somewhere to look.

Cant see the pictures.
Try photobucket to upload pictures.

yeah, lets see it. I am going to set up a tank shortly and would be interested in good rock.

Weird, they show up for me. Let me try photobucket...

i'll believe it when i SEE it.

That is some of the whitest Live Rock I've ever seen......

Taking it out of the box



Sorted:



Close up of the coral on the live rock:



Hope this works (Sorry if pics are huge!)

it worked. nice rock.

Almost as good as Gulf-View's...and ruined by the bath you gave it. ><

I'm interested in purchasing about 20 or so pounds myself, but I was wondering...I already have an established 40 Gallon tank and want to add the extra rock, would it be safe to just add it all at once or how would I go about adding the rock to the established tank without having to worry about another cycle...??

THANXX!

Rock looks good but why the 3 different baths. 1/2 the fun of really fresh live rock is all the life you can't see that eventually comes out (unless of course you kill it off before hand :-( with strange baths).

Pick off any unwanted items. Scrub with a hard bristle tooth brush taking care not to scrub the corals. Rinse with normal salinity salt water then place in tank to cure. JMHO

If you didn't kill the coral this is what it will look like in the end

Coral to the back and left in the picture

Doubtful that a quick high salinity bath is going to ruin the rock. I got my rock from the same place and also pre-rinsed my rock in high salinity water and my rock looks great over a month later.

I should have mentioned that my rock sprouted all sorts of macro algae (shaving brush, halimeda, red titan, & mermaids fan), feather dusters, sea squirts, and sponges...

How porous is that rock? Are there any holes for things to live?

Color and life wise that knocks livequaria LR out of the water. From my pics, my LR has a lot more interesting shapes and extremely porous.

Lots. There are all sorts of holes in my LR. There was a 3 inch bristle worm that came out of one of them.

Ditto, and neither will a freshwater rinse for just a few minutes. Coral will certainly survive it.

Every once in a while it does rain on exposed corals at low tide after all...

+1 IMO the worst that might do is kill a tiny amount of beneficial bacteria, that will get replaced quickly anyway, and possibly kill a few other weird things that were giong to die anyway.... just my $.02

I did 1/2 hour in pH and Alk balanced freshwater....the crabs all came stumbling out drunk....then 1/2 hour in Iodine dip made up of tank water.....then 1/2 hour in Flatworm Exit.....

Worked great.....

Looks like some of the aquacultured rock that is coming out of Florida. Where ares these guys based?

Florida.

I just placed my order for 15# with them. Should arrive Tuesday.... What should I do???

Brand new JBJ 28G nano.... has 5# of crappy live rock from the LFS and filled with water already. Been up for 2 days. Do I need to rinse the rock from sealifeinc? HELP!

I put mine in the tank and soft cycled to keep everything alive. not sure what's up with this killing of hitchikers. if you don't want those, buy dead rock and seed it with something cured.

that's kinda what i thought! part of the fun is the hitchhikers

Don't rinse it, unless you dunk it in a bath of higher SG water, say 1.030, to drive out unwanteds.

I got about 25lbs from them 2-3 months ago as well and let me tell you the amount of creatures that are popping up. I think I may have about 25-40 feather dusters alone.

The only bad things that has hit me were the hair algae and 1 rock has an Aiptasia issue which I am trying to get thru.

But all in all AMAZING life. Very porous. I thru mine right into a new tank so it had the rotten sea smell for about 3 weeks.

Premium Fiji rock is still the best. I wish I spent more on quality live rock than on the boring base rock I found...

Be patient -- that boring base rock will eventually be nice coralline encrusted LR, just takes time.

Because of my special aquscaping I'm doing for my next build I have to start with all base rock. I will seed it with a couple of pieces of premium LR and let nature and time due it's job.

this is very true.

i just went thru some very old pictures of my 35g hex tank.

MAN that base rock was bleach white. now, a little over a year later.... you cant tell what was base rock & what was "live rock"

2 days after adding it to the tank


a few months in


a 2 months ago

I started with base and a year later it looks like this

so there is 2 perfect examples of how base rock can & will work

^^^ +1

Everything in a reef tank takes time. Patience is everything.

Like this.

holy colors batman

thats some colorfull rock man!