live rock
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Retro Reefer
Slow and steady wins the race!
I highly recommend KP aquatics..
www.kpaquatics.com
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We are providing healthy, hand-captured Atlantic Sea Life for over 25 years. We would like to tell you more about us and who we are. Please click here to learn more. Ship Days / Guarantee We normally ship every Monday and Tuesday to ensure save arrival of your order. Follow this link for...
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Dkeller_nc
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Tampa Bay and/or KP Aquatics are excellent sources. The main difference is whether you want your rock shipped wet, or in water. The KP material generally needs to be cured in the manner that all natural live rock once was (i.e., left in circulating, heated saltwater for a couple of weeks) because the exposure to air during shipping will kill the sponges on the rock. Tampa Bay ships their rock in water, so it can be immediately placed in a tank.
If you want Pacific live rock, there's only one source that's imported into the U.S. at the moment - cultured rock from Fiji: http://livestockusa.org/ROCK.html#fijicultured.
If you want Pacific live rock, there's only one source that's imported into the U.S. at the moment - cultured rock from Fiji: http://livestockusa.org/ROCK.html#fijicultured.
JoshF7
Community Member
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.
I second Gulf Live Rock!
I've used gulf live rock a couple times and always been happy. There is some die off because of shipping damp and not submerged like tampa bay but shipping water is expensive so it's a lot cheaper.
malacoda
Valuable Member
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.
When I set up my 24g four years ago, I did it using 'The Package' from Tampa Bay Saltwater and was very pleased with it as well.
Just depends on what type of rock you want ... whether or not you want to go through curing it (TBS ships it in water so there's no curing needed) ... and what type of hitchhikers you prefer seeing and/or dealing with.
When I set up my 24g four years ago, I did it using 'The Package' from Tampa Bay Saltwater and was very pleased with it as well.
Just depends on what type of rock you want ... whether or not you want to go through curing it (TBS ships it in water so there's no curing needed) ... and what type of hitchhikers you prefer seeing and/or dealing with.
JoshF7
Community Member
Can you give me an idea of what "hitchhikers" and other life you saw from livestockusa?
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Retro Reefer
Slow and steady wins the race!
KP and Tampa bay are to completely different things. KP is not gulf rock it’s from the keys, they lease a site from the government and is the oldest running live rock aqua farm.. completely different bio diversity.
their farm..
their rock...
my tank set up with KP live rock..
JoshF7
Community Member
Curious what all you got in your rocks (both good and bad) from them?
The rock I got from gulfliverock was full of sponges, some macroalgaes, limpets etc... I had a severe cold snap when I ordered mine so it got pretty chilled which I think reduced my survivor hitchhikers. No gorilla crabs or anything big like that made it on mine.
alton
Valuable Member
Emerald crabs good, bad gorilla crabs. Pistol Shrimp good, bad Mantis shrimp. Although they are bad I only got one in four shipments average 50 Lbs of LR each time from KP. He was fun to watch, he would come out and bust live rock and eat small things from the rock. Easy to catch, set a bottle trap and in two days I had him and gave away. If you want to set up your tank quickly live rock is they way to go, if you can't afford all live rock they sell there future rock for like $2 a pound.
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.
Most things in the hobby I take a live and let live approach, and figure different people have different tastes. But I don't think anyone orders premium live rock and is really hoping to get some fake purple concrete.
malacoda
Valuable Member
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
I just bought 20 pounds of the Gulf live rock, I agree the rock was not very porous with a lot of plant life. mine has three clams of some sort attached to the rocks. I thought they were rocks until I saw them move.
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.)
Sounds like you got some decent life on yours!
malacoda
Valuable Member
Walt Smith is indeed a man-made mix of sand, shell fragments, and concrete mix. More dense and less porous than natural rock like pukani, etc. I knew that before I ordered though. It has been pretty clearly described on Walt Smith's site as well as most (but not all) of the retailers who sell it dry ... as well as on the forums.
I also chose Walt Smith rock from TBS four years earlier, so I knew what to expect from it.
In my case, I was attempting to set up a Java Sea biotope and wanted as much as the life as possible in my tank to be native to that region. And I definitely want to go with live rock that was seeded in the ocean. Since no more rock is shipping from Indonesia though ... e.g. Java Sea area, the Walt Smith rock from Fiji was as close as I could get. (It's the only live rock still coming out of the Pacific that I know of.)
Not nearly as much life on it you'll find on TBS rock ... but still enough to make it interesting, and hold close to my biotope goal.
The only real draw back I've encountered with it ... other than it being a little heavier, is that having less micro-pores than natural live rock may reduce its ability to turn nitrate in to nitrogen gas. E.g. processes nitrate a little less easily/efficiently. But this can easily be compensated for by using a sand bed or something like zeolite, Seachem De*Nitrate pebbles, or a Brightwell brick.
I also chose Walt Smith rock from TBS four years earlier, so I knew what to expect from it.
In my case, I was attempting to set up a Java Sea biotope and wanted as much as the life as possible in my tank to be native to that region. And I definitely want to go with live rock that was seeded in the ocean. Since no more rock is shipping from Indonesia though ... e.g. Java Sea area, the Walt Smith rock from Fiji was as close as I could get. (It's the only live rock still coming out of the Pacific that I know of.)
Not nearly as much life on it you'll find on TBS rock ... but still enough to make it interesting, and hold close to my biotope goal.
The only real draw back I've encountered with it ... other than it being a little heavier, is that having less micro-pores than natural live rock may reduce its ability to turn nitrate in to nitrogen gas. E.g. processes nitrate a little less easily/efficiently. But this can easily be compensated for by using a sand bed or something like zeolite, Seachem De*Nitrate pebbles, or a Brightwell brick.
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