where can i find good old fashioned live rock. I have heard of Tampa Bay but anywhere else doing what they're doing?
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I'm looking for some true live rock myself, and wondering if you have experience with livestockusa.org? I contacted Tampa Bay Saltwater, and he has a long wait list right now due to weather and is months out. Livestockusa.org looks very tempting, but I'm reading mixed things about life on it after curing.Tampa Bay and/or KP Aquatics are excellent sources ... Tampa Bay ships their rock in water, so it can be immediately placed in a tank. .. cultured rock from Fiji: http://livestockusa.org/ROCK.html#fijicultured.
Can you give me an idea of what "hitchhikers" and other life you saw from livestockusa?liverockusa.com only has Walt Smith (man-made) rock from fiji ... last I checked anyway. I ordered a 48 lb box for my 65g back in march and was very pleased with it...and what type of hitchhikers you prefer seeing and/or dealing with.
I think Tampa bay rock, Gulf live rock and KP Aquatics all come from the same place.
Curious what all you got in your rocks (both good and bad) from them?KP and Tampa bay are to completely different things... completely different bio diversity...
I bought some of the same "rock" through a different supplier. It is fake, purple dyed, concrete. With a very nice layer of life on the outside which promptly dies... leaving fake, purple, concrete. I would not buy it again at any price.I'm looking for some true live rock myself, and wondering if you have experience with livestockusa.org? I contacted Tampa Bay Saltwater, and he has a long wait list right now due to weather and is months out. Livestockusa.org looks very tempting, but I'm reading mixed things about life on it after curing.
Can you give me an idea of what "hitchhikers" and other life you saw from livestockusa?
Have you broken any of the rock and taken a look at the rock itself? I'm curious if it matches what I got from a different supplier under the same name ("Walt Smith 2.something aquacultured in Fiji"). (Which turned out in my case to be fake purple concrete.)It ships wrapped in wet news paper and has to be cured (mine took ~7 days), so not nearly as many hitchhikers as there are on TBS rock. Some that I've seen in the past 10 months include:
- zoanthids,
- an SPS that looks like an encrusting montipora (still to early to tell for sure though)
- some small bivalves (dime-sized)
- lots of types of tunicates
- stomatella snails
- vermetid snails
- a bristle worm or two
- some red macro algaes
- some stalks of a calcareous green algae that looked a bit like bean sprouts. Can't remember what it's called but I plucked them before discovering what they were an wish I'd kept them.
- a bit of bubble aglae