Hello all,
I am slowly but surely building up my first reef tank. At the dry tank on a stand, full of rock stage.
My intention was to build the majority of my scape with dry rock and supplement with some live pieces from nearby stores. I was asking around at one of the closer LFSes and the guy there said they sold their live rock for $9 a pound, which kind of surprised me. He pointed to their live rock tank, which seemed to be a potpourri of different rocks and compositions. I asked if it was “live” in that it was from the ocean or just dry rock that was seeded at the store. He said most of it was from people bringing in tanks they were breaking down and if they ever ran out of that, they had rock they seeded themselves.
I knew getting into reefing I’d have to belay my sense of sticker shock, but that does seem kind of egregious, no? I’m also concerned about how good of a practice is just taking rock from anyone’s tank and throwing it all together willy nilly. Am I off base and that’s a normal thing to expect?
There aren’t much for LFS in the area, just two less than stellar offerings. I can drive an hour and a half in a few different directions and hit a couple more, which I’m willing to do. I just want to know if I’m right to have my antenna up after that experience.
I am slowly but surely building up my first reef tank. At the dry tank on a stand, full of rock stage.
My intention was to build the majority of my scape with dry rock and supplement with some live pieces from nearby stores. I was asking around at one of the closer LFSes and the guy there said they sold their live rock for $9 a pound, which kind of surprised me. He pointed to their live rock tank, which seemed to be a potpourri of different rocks and compositions. I asked if it was “live” in that it was from the ocean or just dry rock that was seeded at the store. He said most of it was from people bringing in tanks they were breaking down and if they ever ran out of that, they had rock they seeded themselves.
I knew getting into reefing I’d have to belay my sense of sticker shock, but that does seem kind of egregious, no? I’m also concerned about how good of a practice is just taking rock from anyone’s tank and throwing it all together willy nilly. Am I off base and that’s a normal thing to expect?
There aren’t much for LFS in the area, just two less than stellar offerings. I can drive an hour and a half in a few different directions and hit a couple more, which I’m willing to do. I just want to know if I’m right to have my antenna up after that experience.