I admit that I have a non-popular opinion about Live rock. My tank does look a little more "untamed" than most people's tanks. That is mostly because of the LR that I obtained got into the tank with a rush trip straight from ocean to my tank.

I find the life on/in the rock itself so interesting that I would consider running a tank full of it without any fish at all.

It's kind of like comparing a garden to a forest. Gardens are beautiful, but carefully controlled/managed, while forests have a wildness that makes them attractive. I'm attempting to make a natural looking tank, not a controlled garden.

I agree that aquacultured LR might not be as good as naturally produced LR (density/porosity), but I can't justify what is happening to coral reefs worldwide when the aquacultured product does the job adequately. If reefs are broken by storms, I still think the broken pieces should be allowed to remain in place where they could continue to survive..not removed from the ocean.

There's a school of thought that the harvesting of live rock from the wild (done in a sustainable way) is actually more beneficial to wild reefs in the long run.

The thinking is that since the locals know they can make money off of the reef, it's in their best interest to keep it around. Put another way, if they weren't collecting the live rock for the ornamental aquarium industry, they would probably be blasting it and dredging it for "development".

That's how it works in a capitalist economy - money talks and if you can convince people that preservation of the environment is profitable, then they are far more likely to want to preserve it.

The whole idea of tourism is based on the same principle.

I agree with the economic viewpoint. Make the harvest sustainable...and make sure that the price reflects the true value of the renewable resource.

Unfortunately, reefs of the world are not thriving or expanding. I believe that they are shrinking at a concerning rate. LR harvesting isn't the main/only cause, but as long as the resource is declining any harvesting should be very tightly controlled. I'm just worried that places like Vanuuatu don't have the controls in place that they should.

When I first started a marine tank, I was able to get wild Florida LR easily. Florida put a stop to that since that time.

As I said earlier, I would just like the LFS to provide a LOT more explanation about the sources of their LR to reassure me that I was part of the solution and not part of the problem.

um ok stop hijacking this thread its about cooking live rock. and i still think you dont understand what it does. it doesnt kill of the bacteria it just kills of plant life and anything stuck in the rock. so it doesnt make it not live rock anymore it makes is "charged live rock" all the use of live rock but with out all the dead stuff in the rock.

It's ok, they stopped hijacking this thread nearly 2 years ago :lol: