Live Rock

[jconly]

New to the hobby and need live rock advice. Was gonna go just fish only but after reading alot of advice on this board I have decided to add live rock. However questions remain. Currently I have 1 snowflake eel and 2 damsels. Can I order online live rock and place it directly into the tank once it arrives? Will it need curing? If so best way to accomplish this? Has anyone ordered live rock from SWF.com? How was it? Any advice is much appreciated.

 

[therock0861]

First of all any LR you order online needs to be cured. They would have to ship it in water to prevent die off and that wouldn't eb cost effective for them. Secondly SWF.com has excellent LR I ordered from them and was very pleased with what I got. Your Damsels may live through the LR ordeal but I don't think your eel will but I am not too sure. Either way I wouldn't do it with livestock in the tank. I would use a plastic container large enough to hold the LR and pu a couple of power heads in there for circulation and change the water every couple of days. HTH

 

[jla9508]

You have to cure all mail order live rock. I ordered 45 lbs and they said it was ready to put in your tank. Before I ordered it I took my fish back to the LFS and traded it in. After putting in my live rock my ammonia went up to 8.0, pH 7.4, trites 5.0, and trates 100. it's two weeks later and Ammonia 0, pH 8.2, trites 3, and trates 40. Also, I have heard very good things about the live rock from this site. I wish I ordered mine from here.

 

[jakob4001]

all suggestions made should be followed; although most retailers claim "fully cured" LR, a certain amount of fie off does occur;occasionally you might get lucky w/ some shipments that got to you expediantly & when placed directly in a large enough system w/ good skimmer & not much bioload, may be put in directly or when you add small amounts at at time from LFS of around 5 lbs at a time every so often...
I have heard nothing but good things from LR from here, but their price is a little high; if you shop around online you might get 45 lbs for $99 plus S&H; S&H may make it cost more than here though. so if you work the #'s out, you can decide for yourself...they also have great cleaner packs here that may or may not survive your eel though; maybe ask others how they fair w/ a cleaner crew & their eel...

 

[400galloncharlie]

Although with livestock already in the tank, it is always good to err on the side of caution and "re-cure" any cured live rock shipped to you before putting it in the tank, instructions from a very reputable LR dealer who is also a doctor indicates that, if your "cured" LR is Fed Ex'd next day, you can thoroughly rinse (not cure for days or weeks) the LR in a bucket of saltwater and provide good water circulation when you place it in your tank.

 

[dsa_mom]

We found it very helpful to search the internet, you would be surprised how many LR vendors there are. Some sell "seeded" rock, or "farmed" rock as opposed to just taking fragments, some vendors describe how they handle the rock after it is taken from the ocean, like do they put it directly in water, or place it on racks and spray it with ocean water. We ordered from a reputable source and are re-curing the rock, so glad we are doing it this way, the rock is smelly as anything, indicating die-off, that would have been a disaster if we had put it directly in the tank. Good luck! ps. it is fun to watch after "light out" to see the bonus critters!

 

[saul t. waters]

Well I just recieved 20lb of live rock for my 55 gallon because they were having a sell at the LFS $4.99lb... any way i emailed them asking about it and they said that they had just ordered 400lbs to sell...so i go and buy 20 lbs and before i put it in the tank i noticed a smell to it, i didn't think to ask them if it was cure.. seeing that they just recieved it.. the smell was kinda like a fresh ocean smell... i don't know what uncured live rock smells like but it seems to be doing fine (had it in tank for about a week now)
I hear that though SWF.com has high pricing on the LR that it is pretty nice and large pieces...

 

[musipilot]

We ordered our live rock for our reef tank from ***********.com...they had Kaelini rock, which had the look we wanted. We added it to a tank with lots of little critters in it, heres what we did: We 'cured' the rock in a giant tupperware for about two weeks, doing constant water changes. Then, to be on the safe side, we only added one large piece every other day, after it had cured, to minimize any spiking in the tank. It seems to have worked, everyone's doing great, although it did take a month to finish the aquascape in the tank.