Preferred Live Rock vendors?

[dvs1986]

i personally, buy from john at reefcleaners.org. hes super awesome to work with, the rock is dry so i dont' worry about bad hitchhikers, and the rock is super porous. I've used it on every tank i've ever set up. great stuff.

[Rene]

9 minutes ago, Duane Clark said:

So instead of weekly 10% water changes you would recommend what?  What would be considered "aggressive"?

There is a thread in the Biological Filtration subforum called "the soft cycle thread".  It's stickied and the very first post has most of what you would need to know. In short, you need to test your water for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate daily (and maybe more if your levels are dangerously high) and be prepared to do 50-100% water changes for at least the first few days. It may take a few weeks for the rock to cure and in this time it's appropriate to do large water changes when your ammonia and nitrite are high.

 

This is a LOT of work but along with high quality rock that was shipped to you fast and handled well, it will determine if the stuff on your rock lives. 

[GunslingerGirl]

20 hours ago, Duane Clark said:

While we are on the subject of live rock, I am undecided on whether or not to get "raw" live rock (in this case from Gulfliverock) or the cured version with just the Coralline algae.  The idea of such a potential high die off at the beginning of a new tank cycle concerns me for two reasons:

 

1. would such high levels of ammonia and later nitrite and nitrate completely overwhelm the system and create an overly aggressive algae bloom?

 

2. due to issue one, am I just wasting money when all the extra critters will die anyway?

 

 

I have had gulfliverock ship me overnight and 3 day. Little die off either way. Mostly the halimeda died off for me. I am still finding critters from 6 years ago in my current tank.

 

only issue I had with gulfliverock is I did get a turf algae species which is JUST NOW starting to take off in my tank. I am trying to battle it as we speak. But it seems very easy to kill off.

[jesseatam]

Got my live rock from ARC back in late February, in the beginning I wasn't super pleased but now that I've gone through all the beginning algae issues and what not the tank has really started to mature and stabilize.  I have loads of feather dusters all over the tank and am finding new babies every week and I seem to a very unique symbiotic relationship between a pistol shrimp and some brittle stars that came in as hitchhikers. They have both a premium and regular rock, I bought both but I cant really tell the difference. I assume the rocks that had more coralline coverage are the "premium" but both are good options.  The shipping time varies on location, since I'm in New York it took about 3 days and I had considerable die off which led to high nutrients for a while. The rock is shipped in multiple layers of garbage bags and the rock itself is wrapped in a wet towel. The box also has gloves for handling the rock and a piece of paper about the rock itself and where it comes from and just basic tips. This is my first tank however so I don't have experience with other vendors but I'm definitely pleased and would order again.

[Subsea]

 This is 15 pounds of diver collected rocks. It is sold at four dollars a pound with three day shipping included in the price.  Each rock was individually wrapped.  There was no unpleasant odor.  I asked Dale why he did not ship rock in water.  He said two reasons:  it would cost the customer more but he would do it if asked and most importantly if something died, it would contaminate everything.  If something died on a rock that had damp paper on it, any decomposition would be confined to that area.

 

For me, the best option is air freight.  Same day delivery for up to 100lbs cost $100.  Premium deco live rock is $3.50 /lb.  With this shipping option, more delicate things can survive shipping.

[NanoRox]

When I place  my order for the live rock I was thinking of asking Dan if I can get the rock with as little Macro algae as possible (not even sure he would be able to do that).  I understand macro algae will help with the natural filtration of the water BUT I am also wondering if I am also increasing my chances of just adding to the bioload (In a bad way) if it dies off etc.   I have read about the "soft cycling" of the rock and honestly not sure if I would be able to keep up with that for weeks on end so I guess I am trying to hedge my bets as best I can.  I could also be over thinking things.  :-)

[brandon429]

Nice call. The bacteria are the main goal and those are universally complete with any form of live rock we get. In fact a neat test thread is coming up where a gentleman left his live rock in the air for two days. Non kill of bac predicted, we'll see soon

 

For you to receive less benthic items is best unless they're rare things

 

That old macro you can add anytime agreed

 

If live rock was shipped to me my number one request would be coralline diversity. Bulletproof travelers too. Low on sponges and plant life, I'll put the ones selected from my tank there in time.

 

There is no limit to water change frequency on the types of rocks reviewed in this thread. In my opinion the complete summary of soft cycling as it applies here is that we want the zero ammonia condition because the bacteria require no help in this matter, they'll transfer fine.

 

We want to interrupt a loss cascade of ammonia, this is anti ammonia rock, vs dry rock cycling which needs feed and bottle bac dosing to assist the bacteria to meet someone's cycling deadline. Totally opposite modes, due to benthic life in tow we are paying extra for, and trying to keep alive.

 

Any full water change is a cpr stroke. Do many

 

Even when the rock is done curing if it needed to; the big water changes follow your blast feeding which meets the protein demands of the live rock organisms we just paid extra for

 

Every aspect of the live rock in this thread wants the low ammonia well fed well exported condition and to start like a racehorse in the clean water setting. They're usually insta ready too to the dismay of old schoolers

 

Non cycle rock is usually what TBS ships we enjoy studying their business model in skip cycle threads. I'll link this thread too to a good one

 

a tank approaches the chance of long term support of all that fancy benthic life if the feeding and export work begin and are in place when it arrives

 

Even if the rock does cure down, lose heterogeneity over time as it would in most nanos, the water changes export some of the nutrient helping hedge any algae battles. Then things smooth out in time and it's hands off perfect color rock others are waiting decades to attain

 

Subsea that's amazing

 

[StinkyBunny]

On 10/3/2017 at 3:59 PM, Detritus said:

Anyobe else like to comment on whether or not they use all live rock, all base rock, or a mixture, and why? I'm asking specifically for nano tanks in the 40 gallon and under range.

 

Thanks!

 

-Detritus

 

 

I use some dry rock under my Indo rock. I'll stick some of the Tonga branch out as well. You'd be surprised what comes back to life. In a really small tank, you could use all live rock and not have it break the bank.

On 10/4/2017 at 9:19 PM, Duane Clark said:

So instead of weekly 10% water changes you would recommend what?  What would be considered "aggressive"?

50-100% daily water changes on fresh live rock. When I bring in Indo rock, I do large water changes in my display tanks, the water from the display tanks gets sent to the rock curing tank.

 

[RayWhisperer]

Doing a little necro posting, Stinky? 

 

Well, since you brought it up from the dead, and I’m bored... why not? 

Ive bought TBS live rock and had the best results from that. Not saying the others are bad, as I’ve used GLR in the past, as well. What sets TBS apart? They ship the rock in water. Now, I’m sure others would do this, as well, if asked. It costs quite a bit more, when you factor in the shipping with the weight of the added water. But man, what a difference it makes. 

 

What difference, you may wonder? Well, how about trace ammonia after the first day in the tank. Followed up by a 50% water change. No ammonia after that. Just 3 more days of 50% water changes, just to be sure. Absolutely 0 die off. That includes sponges and barnacles. I did, however, lose several sponges and barnacles, as well as a sea squirt when I went away for a week. That was on me, though. 

 

So, now that this thread is no longer relevant, I’m satisfied that I gave my $0.02.

[Scoutfish]

I've done two purchases from Dan at gulfliverock.com in the past five months. You will be amazed, zero disappoint on my part. I also tried some Florida Keys live rock, it came in nice, then died off; wasn't harmful to the tank, just lost most of its color, now that is the base rock in my tank and Dan's 50 LBs plus is the feature rock. Lots of purple color, live green and red non-intrusive plants, several SPS corals, lots of small anemone looking things, orange sponge on the rocks,  and several other red and yellow life on the rocks that I don't know what they are. I just purchased another tank, and I'm going with Dan again. 

[William]

I have an order of KPA live rock coming on Friday (10lbs). I am paying extra to have it shipped in water. I have been cycling the tank with seachem matrix and live sand for

over a week with daily additions of brightwell microbacter 7 and Dr. Tims Ammonium chloride. The goal of the pre-cycle is to have a functioning biological filter prior to adding the live rock in the hopes for rapidly detoxifying any ammonia present.