Tampa Bay Saltwater is Rocking and Rolling

[areefer01]

We are currently harvesting vintage TBS rock (which is years old) while the first container of Walt Smith finishes maturing.

Here's a photo of a Walt Smith arch that was planted in September. You can see coralline starting, lots of bivalves adhering, and some macro attached. It needs more time to gather sponges, corals, coralline, etc.

There is plenty of vintage inventory on the site and once the new WS is mature, we will be using both the vintage and new.

Here is a photo of a vintage rock harvested 4 days ago.

You are doing a great job!

 

[Daveb300]

Every marine hobbyist, or any other hobby for that matter, should have a budget. If not that is how things run outside project time lines or mistakes happen or threads started with help needed for issues. Understand that while you can start with base rock you can't bypass Mother Nature and time. Dry rock will take a long time to reach maturity. And maturity does not mean completing the cycle or getting past the ugly phase. It means getting the microboes and microbial community in the display to a healthy population and it doesn't happen over night.

As the images above you can see a difference between two time frames. This is no different than out displays. As a hobbyist who used 170 LBS of dry Pukani and 3 1/2 years post cycle I can say without a doubt it takes a long time to mature. Microbiome and tank dna tests help guide and will probably be the new norm rather than is our tank cycled...if one wants to be successful. We see it often - patience is the word.

$9.00 is nothing in our displays big picture comparatively speaking. Look at lights, coral frags, skimmers, and other rock prices. Besides you don't have to do the whole display as mixing and matching also works.

TBS is a great choice and worth the budget consideration.

9 dollars a pound plus shipping or do we have the option of picking it up?

 

[i_am_mclovin]

9 dollars a pound plus shipping or do we have the option of picking it up?

From what I remember on their price sheet you can pick up and it's also cheaper per pound.

Here are pics of rock I received from TBS last week for my new tank. Totally worth it.

 

[Daveb300]

From what I remember on their price sheet you can pick up and it's also cheaper per pound.

Here are pics of rock I received from TBS last week for my new tank. Totally worth it.

Looks great. Maybe I will place an order after all

 

[i_am_mclovin]

Looks great. Maybe I will place an order after all

I'll have acros in this tank next week. It's that mature and diverse.

 

[Daveb300]

I'll have acros in this tank next week. It's that mature and diverse.

I have a 300 gallon tank that I need rock for. How much do you guys recommend? I am thinking 200 pounds of dry marco rock and 50 to 75 pounds of live rock to seed it?

 

[areefer01]

9 dollars a pound plus shipping or do we have the option of picking it up?

Air Freight if you are outside the area and not able to pick up is additional. I know Richard allowed local pickup I'm not sure about the new owners or if they are ready for local pick up (Covid and all). So yes, it is expensive but comparable to other vendors like KP Aquatics. I purchased 15 lbs from KP back in October and the shipping was more than the rock. Still very happy with it.

Today, the US (and probably globally) shipping costs have sky rocketed. The rock is fully submerged in water and shipped over night to your front door. It isn't using damp paper to keep it alive. Again you are paying a premium to keep it alive and usually at your door in under 24 hours.

There is no way I am knocking the choices anyone makes. I originally wanted to use all TBS rock but the price tag was well over $2,000 and I didn't plan properly. So with two in college I couldn't make it work and went with dry. Looking back I wish I did it in stages or mixed both. 4 years later I'm adding oceanic rock to the display to increase that diversity.

This hobby can be both expensive and unexpansive based on the choices we make and how much patience we are willing to put up with. Yes, the rock has a premium price tag but worth considering even if only 5 to 15 lbs should you be able to make it work.

Oh - and with regards to hitch hikers. Yes, there will be some. Most everything we can remove with a little bit of that P word (patience). I had 1 gorilla crab, 7 red mitrax crabs, 1 decorator crab, few snails, and some unknown encrusted coral. I kept everything but the gorilla crab. It is in my overflow box at the moment (I have a lot of rubble in there as it is also a mini refugium) until I can move it to my real refugium (currently housing a small BIOTA matted file fish to let it grow since the flow in the display is too much for it).

Edit: not pushing product on anyone just trying to share short term vs long term mixed in with success. Even the latest BRS video they talk about this I believe. Hope everyone has a great Friday.

 

[ylreefer]

Very happy TBS will carry on. The dry rock fad needs to die.

Here is my live rock from Tampa Bay Saltwater. My tank has been up a few weeks.

This looks amazing. If only we could get rock like this shipped to Hong Kong

 

[TnFishwater98]

From what I remember on their price sheet you can pick up and it's also cheaper per pound.

Here are pics of rock I received from TBS last week for my new tank. Totally worth it.

Did you not wash off the rock? Or is this picks of the QT?

 

[i_am_mclovin]

Did you not wash off the rock? Or is this picks of the QT?

Not sure why you would think this is a QT. I rinsed it but stuff settled on it by the time I took the pics. I have done the Turkey baster a couple times so it’s mostly cleared up now.

 

[TeeJay87]

Hey All - I got my TBS 50 lbs of base rock and 75 lbs of sand for my first tank (75 gal) on Thursday, Dec 9. 50 lbs of premium rock plus clean-up-crew come this Thursday. I've been testing ammonia religiously with the cheap API test strips and wanted to see if my results seem typical to what other TBS customers have seen. Sand and Rocks made it in late evening on Thursday.

Ammonia tests:
Friday @ 0600: 0ppm, 1100: 0ppm, 1600pm: 0.5ppm, 2300pm: 0.5ppm
Saturday @ 1100: 0.5ppm, 1800: 0.5-0.75ppm
Sunday @ 0600: 0ppm, 0900: 0ppm, 1700: 0.0-0.25ppm

The TBS instructions say to do a water change once ammonia is >1.0ppm to bring it down under 1.0ppm. So I haven't done a water change yet, and am not sure if I should do one or just keep testing and see what happens. Are these ammonia test results similar to what you all have seen? Has my tank likely cycled? I was expecting a larger spike in ammonia, but maybe everything is fine and I just had low die off relative to tank size.

 

[i_am_mclovin]

Hey All - I got my TBS 50 lbs of base rock and 75 lbs of sand for my first tank (75 gal) on Thursday, Dec 9. 50 lbs of premium rock plus clean-up-crew come this Thursday. I've been testing ammonia religiously with the cheap API test strips and wanted to see if my results seem typical to what other TBS customers have seen. Sand and Rocks made it in late evening on Thursday.

Ammonia tests:
Friday @ 0600: 0ppm, 1100: 0ppm, 1600pm: 0.5ppm, 2300pm: 0.5ppm
Saturday @ 1100: 0.5ppm, 1800: 0.5-0.75ppm
Sunday @ 0600: 0ppm, 0900: 0ppm, 1700: 0.0-0.25ppm

The TBS instructions say to do a water change once ammonia is >1.0ppm to bring it down under 1.0ppm. So I haven't done a water change yet, and am not sure if I should do one or just keep testing and see what happens. Are these ammonia test results similar to what you all have seen? Has my tank likely cycled? I was expecting a larger spike in ammonia, but maybe everything is fine and I just had low die off relative to tank size.

I never saw more than .5 ammonia and even then it was maybe .25 really on the color. I never had a real cycle and within days I was registering nitrate. So yes what you’re experiencing is normal

 

[LiverockRocks]

9 dollars a pound plus shipping or do we have the option of picking it up?

If you are in the Tampa area, live rock is discounted for pick up.

Sea-ya @Daveb300 on 12/31! Thanks for choosing TBS!

 

[LiverockRocks]

Every marine hobbyist, or any other hobby for that matter, should have a budget. If not that is how things run outside project time lines or mistakes happen or threads started with help needed for issues. Understand that while you can start with base rock you can't bypass Mother Nature and time. Dry rock will take a long time to reach maturity. And maturity does not mean completing the cycle or getting past the ugly phase. It means getting the microboes and microbial community in the display to a healthy population and it doesn't happen over night.

As the images above you can see a difference between two time frames. This is no different than out displays. As a hobbyist who used 170 LBS of dry Pukani and 3 1/2 years post cycle I can say without a doubt it takes a long time to mature. Microbiome and tank dna tests help guide and will probably be the new norm rather than is our tank cycled...if one wants to be successful. We see it often - patience is the word.

$9.00 is nothing in our displays big picture comparatively speaking. Look at lights, coral frags, skimmers, and other rock prices. Besides you don't have to do the whole display as mixing and matching also works.

TBS is a great choice and worth the budget consideration.

Well said @areefer01 !

There is no comparison between ocean aquacultured live rock and LFS bottle bacteria rock in terms of appearance / variety of lifeforms. $9 per lb for premium is a good value for the product.

 

[LiverockRocks]

The visibility has been terrible in the Gulf lately, but folks need their live rock and live sand. Harvesting weekly and are stocked!
Only thing standing in the way for out of state customers is Winter Storm Landon.

 

[areefer01]

The visibility has been terrible in the Gulf lately, but folks need their live rock and live sand. Harvesting weekly and are stocked!
Only thing standing in the way for out of state customers is Winter Storm Landon.

Any day blowing bubbles underwater is a good day. Poor visibility or not

Looks like a nice bag of goodies there. Actually the sand looks amazing compared to the traditional bagged stuff purchased. Off the top of my head mix that with a bag of Carib Sea Florida and it would be beautiful not to mention the instant microbiome/microbes for essential saltwater foundations.

Looks great!

 

[ReefRxSWFL]

It took me a year to get rid of the undesirable hitchhikers, but theres no sub for real live rock, that was 2010, but i have 6 tanks that all are seeded from that rock. My most recent tank, a 25 gallon cube was set up in a day. Built a structure from marco, grabbed 2 acro colonies, 3 monit colonoes, a pavona colony and a leptospirosis colony, added the water, glued the coral to thw rock, threw in a pair of clowns, a cole tang, a file fish and a 2 fist size rock from that live rock lineage in about 5 hours. That was 9 months ago. You cant gat that bacterial diversity from a bottle.

 

[VermontReefs]

The visibility has been terrible in the Gulf lately, but folks need their live rock and live sand. Harvesting weekly and are stocked!
Only thing standing in the way for out of state customers is Winter Storm Landon.

Would you be able to post a bunch of pics of the product you have in stock? I think we all can agree that Live Rock p.o.r.n is kinda cool lol also I'm interested in 100 lbs or so for my new Cade....about a month out.

 

[siggy]

I think we all can agree that Live Rock p.o.r.n

At least I will agree. I often thought of having a live rock tank or vat just to cook live rock.

 

[siggy]