Thats some great news!I can't tell you how many folks have told me this in the last years as dry rock became popular. On reason dry rock came about was a lack of enough quality live rock in the industry. Back in the day there was many folks out collecting wild live rock for the masses. That all ended in December of 1997, became illegal.
That started the aquaculture age of live rock. Same scenario, not enough cultured live rock as not enough folks were willing to do what had to be done to be a live rock farmer.
We have restocked many a tank that was started with dry rock for the issues mentioned in this thread. Your tank will be happier and with real live rock, no doubt.
The good news is there is going to be plenty of the most killer live rock on the planet again. The hard part is finding suitable substrate that works well for colonization. Ken Neidelmier ,<now his kids> KP aquatics and I were using quarried rock from Homestead Florida's ancient reef tract that has awesome shapes and structure for many years. Great stuff.
Let me tell you how much fun it isn't to go into the mine and hand pick each rock when it is 10,000 degrees in the Florida sun. I made 173 trips doing it. Kudos to KP for keeping it up, is pretty much just torture.
Look closely at the rock very porous and an excellent candidate for culture. Like the piece being whacked on....used to take at least 1/2 a day to put 3-4K pounds on the boat, as you had to climb the piles and pick only the qualifying pieces of rock.
As I write this there are containers of Walt Smith rock being loaded in Fiji right now coming this way. I expect by the end of the year we will be ready to rock and roll again!
Richard TBS
Now maybe people will understand why live rock costs what it does.
I will always be glad to pay the premium for it.
My current 120 was 50/50 which I would do again in a heartbeat.