tufa prices
 

i'm planning to use ~100 lbs of tufa in my 150. rocky mountain tufa in brisco, bc sells it for $0.30/lb on 100 lbs +, $0.25/lb on 200 lbs +, etc. is there somewhere else that is cheaper? also has anyone had any bad experiences with tufa? i know a number of you are using it.

Re: tufa prices
 

What is tufa?

Re: tufa prices
 

Tufa is "calcium carbonate rock" that's about the best/only explanation I can give you.
Quinn you know I used about 100lbs of it in my tank initially and it's fine.
I know there is a place here in calgary that sells it. I do not know the name but Walter knows. He's not on here much.

It is a landscape supply place on 11th St NE. I don't know the name, but it is due east of Deerfoot Mall. It is on the right of 11th St, just past 8th Ave. You can't miss it, you can see the Airport control tower just up the hill. :mrgreen:

Re: tufa prices
 

What does it look like? Do you buy it in small sheets, or is it shaped irregularly and looks more like live rock? I'm going to guess that it is rock that used to be reef rock, but from a very long time ago. Is this correct?

Sorry for the dumb questions :confused:

Tufa is formed when water evaporates from lime-rich waters, leaving calcite (calcium carbonate) to crystallize, often with impurities of iron oxides (rust), which give tufa its yellow and red coloration.

if you get tufa I would sugest you hand pick it and look for chunks that are white, this will help in minimizing the amount of iron oxides which can help fuel algae blooms.

I looked at Tufa as a money saving idea when I was first setting up my tank but I decided to spend the extra money and get live rock. my thinking was "while tufa might be perfectily fine, there is no guarente that it won;t have minerals that are undesiriable or unwanted. And if it did have thease I would hate to have to go through all the problems of tracking down the cause of a potential problem, then having to figure out how to deal with it."

here are some pictures of Tufa
http://www.tufa.bc.ca/gallery.htm


Water-worn limestone, limestone that is very attractive in appearance because of the action of water on its softer parts, is sometimes confused with tufa. It is a calcium carbonate, but it is not tufa, so check and see which it is.

here are a couple retailers in Calgary

EDWARDS GARDEN CENTER & LANDSCAPING (R)
Calgary, AB
403-288-9638

GARDEN CREATIONS (R)
Calgary, AB
403-236-5175


And one in St. Albert

HOLE'S GREENHOUSES & GARDENS LTD. (R)
St. Albert, AB
780-419-6800

hope this helps

Steve

Thanks for the explanation and link, Steve.

While I've never heard of tufa, I would only consider using live rock in our reefs. IMO, the home reef benefits from having the real thing in so many ways. The top of the list being it's what's natural to a wild reef and I like the idea of having my reefs as authentic as they can be. Also, so much life comes with live rock (some of it unwanted :frown: ) that live rock can't be beat. IMO, that is.

i hear what you're saying, but the cost difference is significant. i am prepared to deal with whatever bad mineral deposits i possibly end up with. :neutral:

Well I now have 160lbs of live rock and I only purchased about 60lbs. You cant tell the diffrence now between the tufa and my live rock.

From reading the thread so far, the cost of tufa is tremendously lower than LR. And when one is on a tight budget, the cost of LR is astronomical, for sure :eek: Heck, even when money is a little more prevelant, the cost'll almost kill you :cry:

I know how much you'd like to get your reef up and running, as nobody likes to wait forever to get the ball rolling on such an important part of their lives. Yeah, reefkeepers can stand only so much delay then they simply have to go for what they can financially handle.

However, think of your reef as a long term investment and an even longer term personal commitment. It'll be something you enjoy, and pull your hair out over with the problems it brings to your life, for years and years - possibly until you're as old as I am :eek: :eek: :eek: And how old am I, you might wonder? Well, let's just say I'm over 45, so in your case, you'd be looking at 20 years or so of keeping your wonderful ecosystem alive, healthy and flourishing.

So, starting out with the best of the basics will only bring you more satisfaction, and hopefully less hair-pulling, down the long road of keeping your wonderful reef. You're still a little bit away from the point of actually putting rock in your tank. Maybe someone on the board will be selling their setup and you'll be able to take their rock and other stock. Or maybe you'll decide to wait a little while longer to order a box or two of J&L's LR just to get started.

Whatever you decide to do is certainly up to you based on your individual circumstances. We've decided to do what we did based on our experience and circumstances, and so has everyone else on this board. Good luck with your decisions :smile:

Hey TeeVee, why not look into the price of base rock if it is available in your area. If not J&L sells it for 50lbs for $75 I think. I've used it to do my aquarium and it quickly became covered in coraline algae and populated with pods. It is a cheap safe alternative to LR.

I'm truly amazed ol' Bob hasn't jumped on this one yet ! Teevee, base rock is a good alternative option. But will Tufa not also serve as base rock ? I agree with Jon. It all develops characteristics, both visual and biological, similar to the original live rock from which it was seeded.
Full stocking of live rock is just not a financially viable option for most. Regardless of the time commitment.
The big risk which was mentioned is undesirable "elements" which may be present. I've heard Lava rock can be notorious for that and thus create algae problems but I wouldn't know anything about that... :rolleyes: . If ya' want some lava rock let me know...
Over the years I've gambled on many "cheaper alternatives". Some good, some bad...it might work for one yet be a failure for another. Go with the Tufa rock. If it's bad you'll know eventually... :confused:

base rock is at least ten times the price of tufa. i am going to go with tufa, as i have no heard any bad stories about it, and i think jon's tank is a testimony to success with it. should it ever cause grief, i can pull it out. sure it will be a hassle, but i'll have only lost a few hours wages.

apparently true tufa is lava rock, the red stuff, while the white/yellow stuff i am talking about is not. the white/yellow stuff is apparently calcium carbonate with extra minerals in it, good for plants, which of course means bad for reefs. the idea would be to control water quality and keep calcium high until the rocks are covered in coraline, which would prohibit algae growth. i'll keep everyone posted on how it goes.

Good luck if you decide to go this route, make absolutely sure though that your tufa doesn't have any coloured streaks in it. Even a slight yellow/orange tinted streak will mean trouble. Pick only snow white stuff, and when you get it home it sure wouldn't hurt to soak it for a few days or so and then check the water for iron and phosphates... not to mention fertilizers etc which I guess you can't test for anyway.

For the price of Caribsea base rock, you can have cost savings and assurance that you will avoid the problems with lava or tufa rock. With every shortcut there is a price to be paid later on - maybe you'll get lucky or your tank will be the one that turns out beautifully regardless.

Real rock (and real base rock) has so many aesthetic and functional advantages, many of them mentioned here. If the foundation of your reef tank is rock and sand, then do all you can to approximate nature. Are you going with a glass bead substrate?

I agree AJ, I could sell my base rock back to the LFS as live rock any time now and end up ahead of the game.... well not really ahead but.. you know what I mean.

Wouldn't that make for a boring aquarium/hobby, growing out base rock into live rock to sell back to the LFS's....

substrate is SWC oolitic. where are you guys getting your base rock? cheapest i've seen it is $2.50/lb.

J&L sells it for $75 for 50lbs...

oh right. still $1.50/lb... but that means i could get 150 lbs for $225 and get another 50 lbs of live rock. i'll have to think about it some more.

TeeVee, in my humble opinion you don't even need 50lbs of live rock, as long as you give the tank/rock time to seed. You could do well with 20 LBS of live rock as long as it has good coraline algae growth, get your Ca/alk levels set and bust up (almost powder) some of that coraline algae and it will start to grow quickly.
What really worked for me was to dose a bit of the SeaChem Calcium one week and dose Kent the other week.... The SeaChem is Calcium Gluconate which is labeled as a carbohydrate but Kent says it is a sugar... isn't a carbohydrate a complex sugar?? anyway, the coraline aglae really seemed to take off in my tank and most of my base rock has coraline algae on it. I also have a few nice growths of calcerous red algae....

Hey Quin,

Just so you know, I only started with 20 pounds of live rock in my 180, and when you saw it, it was merely 2 months old, and already tons of coraline algae.

The other 250-280 pounds of rock in there was "dead" live rock. I bought it off of a guy that had to move and it was all live rock before but was sitting in stagnant saltwater for 2 weeks. It was all white when I got it. I didn't even boost my alk/calcium levels up...it just takes a little bit of patience.

Hope this helps..

Des

I too am in teevee's position in needing some base rock ... I did not see this advertised on J&L's website for base rock :question:

Cheers

You're right I can't find it either, I would email them and ask them about it, it was on their last website, perhaps they missed it this time around.

Go to "Aquarium Supplies" then "Aquarium Sand and Substrate."

50 lb - $74.95

Hm... I looked there, didn't see it, Oh well, thanks AJ

As has been mentioned, if you start with base rock, or Tufa and seed it with some live rock it will all eventually become live rock. This is essentially how live rock is aquacultured for sale at your LFS. What you will need is lots of patience. As Beverly noted, that and experience come with age. :biggrin:

You will have to add bioload very, very slowly while your rock grows, although it may be very cool to slowly watch your reef develop, basically from scratch.

It is listed under Reef Rock :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Look under Reef Rock. :evil:

Ok Bob .. we got it now ... right ... " Reef Rock " ... :rolleyes:

Cheers

lace rock
 

Big Al's has this stuff called Lace rock. Its going for about 2.50 per lb. He said the rock is inert and should be no problem. Any info from you guys would be helpful. i right now cannot afford live rock. So I'm going with some LR, some crushe coral from tigger, and some maybe lace rock or tufa rock. I only need about 15 lbs.

Ps. I also would like some new life for my sand bed. any ideas.

Thanx George Muller

Re: lace rock
 

This is what 1/2 of my non live rock was. Lace(aka calcium carbonate) rock and some tufa. good stuff

I think J&L sells the stuff by the pound as well, give them a call...

for those of you who were interested in what i was planning to do for my tank: i will not be using tufa. i picked up ~150lbs of base rock today for $150. most of the rest of the rock in my tank will be live. this stuff i got today even has some brittle stars in it (very much dead and dry).

if anyone has a few more chunks of dead rock i can get off them let, me know, i could use a few more chunks.

I found this link on Ebay. Thought it might be of use. :cool:

http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?...4137&category=

the way he describes it makes it sound like BC tufa.