Don't be afraid of Real live rock.

[Kanshi]

I decided in November to set up my 30 gal bow front, that had been sitting empty for far to long as a reef tank. Doing much research for several months, I was amazed and confused about how I wanted to go about it. There was so much bad feelings about using uncured live, live rock. After seeing all that bad publicity and also all the horror stories about the awful monsters that come in as hitchhikers, I did it anyway. I ordered 'The Package" from Richard at Tampa Bay Saltwater. Due to bad weather all winter, there was a bit of a wait. On march 19 I drve to Tampa and got my part one. The rock, even though it was basically the foundation, was teaming with life. It was nice to look at right out of the box. Which may I add was full of water, so I had zero die off.
Kept an eye on the tank for a few days, nothing drastic , no water changes needed. On March 26th, just 7 days later, I was showing trace ammonia but due to the global situation, I decided to get part 2 otherwise who knows how long it may have been. So, drove to Tampa and got part 2. As testimonials say, Richard and Deb are very generous and threw in some beautiful extras. Long story not quite so long, here I am, 10 days later, with a tank fully cycled and full of life and color. Happy critters, and the only bad hitchhikers were a couple of whelk snails. Moral of the story, don't be afraid to start your reef tank with REAL live rock, especially if it comes from TBS.

 

[Auquanut]

Awesome looking tank! Looks like you got some pretty neat stuff. Keep your eyes pealed though. Sometimes the bad guys don't show themselves right away.

 

[jack_aubry]

Totaly agree. I started with uncured live rock and would do it again. Great biodiversity including a bunch of desierable macros, tube worms, spongs, bivalves, and coarls. The diversity and stability has probably saved me from a lot of my new reefer mistakes. Haven't dealt with diatoms, dinos, or cyano.

I did get just about every other common pest with it aptaisia, bubble algae, flat worms, vertimid snails, and calurpa. Also got some macro algae nothing will eat. Even though I have all of theses pests non of them have started to take over (except that one macro) so far they have all been pretty easy to manage.

Plus it's so much fun to see what develops over time.

 

[Zionas]

Would be really nice to get more of a consensus on whether to use uncured live rock, cured live rock, or dry rock / other rock.

 

[fish farmer]

Totaly agree. I started with uncured live rock and would do it again. Great biodiversity including a bunch of desierable macros, tube worms, spongs, bivalves, and coarls. The diversity and stability has probably saved me from a lot of my new reefer mistakes. Haven't dealt with diatoms, dinos, or cyano.

I did get just about every other common pest with it aptaisia, bubble algae, flat worms, vertimid snails, and calurpa. Also got some macro algae nothing will eat. Even though I have all of theses pests non of them have started to take over (except that one macro) so far they have all been pretty easy to manage.

Plus it's so much fun to see what develops over time.

I ran into the same thing with some Florida sourced rock...a macro algae nothing would eat and I couldn't easily remove it. It was very brittle and break apart in tank and start growing elsewhere. I do like the biodiversity you will get, sometimes too much.

if I was to start a tank today I would use dry base for half of it and uncured live rock for the rest, but probably the cheaper Florida options which will still have some life but not crawling out of the box. Possibly some of the Walt Smith cultured rock from Fiji, just for the pacific organisms.

 

[LegendaryCG]

Whether you start with live or dead rock sooner or later you're going to end up with something in your tank you didn't intend. I have some gulf rock that has a ton of sponges and some cup corals that survived 4 days out of water in a box in early winter. Live rock is going to significantly speed up a tanks ability to mature which is worth something to me.