How to tell if its live rock?
 

Hello everyone I am just new to salt water and I am trying to get some materials together to set up a new tank. As the title states how do you know if what you are buying is live rock?

if you buy from LFS under "live rock" then it is live rock but sometime you have to cure it or wait for it cycle in your tank. It is good to go once there is no smell and the ammonia,nitrates tests are zero.

The best way is buying some from canreef member so the rock has been in their tank for awhile to save you time on cycle it and save you quite some money.

Physically, they are chunks of limestone rubble.

Ok thanks, I am buying it from a member, so I just wanted to make sure.

the more active the member is on the board the more accountable he/she will be. lots of posts = something to loose if they lead you astray.

first off, if you base your judgement on the number of posts a person makes then you are unlikely to recieve ALL necessary info.

most shops here in the GVRD sell either cured live rock, uncured live rock or simply base rock. the best way to distinguish the cured vs uncured would be the smell. if it smells like the bay at low tide then there is plenty of die off and would mean the rock is uncured so expect a cycle.

cured rock still smells like the sea but it shouldnt make you gag.

my advice is to go with base rock. and get a few pieces of live rock to seed the bunch. plus the cost of base rock is nearly a third of the cost of live rock.

Another option is to use Bulk Reef Supply and order their Eco-rox which are dry man-made versions of rock that you can seed just like base rock and know that you won't get any pests, etc...

Often base rock tends to be very solid and not the best rock to be used for all your tank. Most live rock is porous, while base rock often isn't.

Sure, but as a newbie he/she could pay top dollar for wet base rock and have no idea if it was liverock (cured or otherwise) or base rock if the decision is based solely on smell.

If the rock is being purchased from a member then you certainly are better off ensuring that member has a good reputation on this board. If the rock is coming from a LFS then you're less likely to be mislead (although it's not totally out of the question).

I am going to look at a members live rock, that's why I was asking. I have faith in the LFS that I deal with, but i don't want to pay $9/lb expecially when this is my first saltwater set up and I'm not ever sure if this is the hobby for me. I have a thing for fresh water but I think salt water is very nice to look at, so just getting my feet wet.

base rock is solid??? base rock is dead live rock. both come from the same place. the ocean. and are made up of the same components. its just as porous as true live rock just without the coraline,bacteria,hitchikers and other algae.

even by looking at it you wont know what hitchikers come with. parasites especially. i would never buy from a fellow reefer unless the rock has been nuked. ie bleached and processed to dry base rock.

the reason i mention base rock is because its inexpensive and dosent come with unwanted pests. and to any experienced reefer dealing with pests is a nightmare. many end up giving up and leaving the hobby all together.

just my 2 cents. take it how you want it

Of course, you don't get any good, interesting life either.

That's how it is with live rock. People have very different expectations of what is considered live rock. For some, LR is just a place to grow bacteria. For me, LR should be full of all kinds of life and have gone as quickly as possible from the ocean to a tank where my best efforts will be to keep as much alive as possible. (including unfortunately, some things I would prefer not to have)

just make sure you see it in their system, if not i wouldnt trust it as much

Hmm. Well, time for my 0.02...

What is sold as 'live rock' and what is sold as 'base rock' are DIFFERENT but SIMILAR. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, it has more to do with the density and shape of the rock. Heavy, boulder-like chunks are sold as 'base rock' and are exactly the same (ostensibly) as 'live rock' in that they contain life (much of which you won't see in the store). My 'live rock' had little more than some coralline on it when I bought it (though some was obviously a dead coral head), but also contained, unseen, a plethora of fanworms, a small crab, various other worms, the spores of various macro-alga, both stomatella and colonista snails, and at least 3 more colors of coralline algae. Pretty 'live' once it gets into a tank without being nuked (though it looked pretty dead to begin with). The difference is that a chunk of this rock weighs 4 lbs. A comparably sized chunk of 'base rock' would have weighed twice that and had half the amount of caves, crevices, etc. ie: had less surface area for colonization. 'Base rock', if it comes from the ocean, should also have a lot of life involved.

If you're looking for plain white rock (which will eventually turn green and brown and probably purple) and are not interested in all the cool sea life, by all means buy dry rock. You won't get any hitchhikers (good or bad), but remember also that this will severely limit the variety of life in your tank, and you'll still have to deal with things like GHA. I'd rather have a growth of coralline (and other life) already started when I put the rock in the tank, personally.

If you're worried about pests, just be aware that a tank started with dead or nuked rock is just as at risk for introduced pests as one started with live rock.

And again, base rock and live rock both contain life, it's more about the shape and density of the rock. Base rock is just that, rock that is used for the base of your live rock structure. I don't have any in my tank, but looked at some in a store and it just looked like big boulders... with fanworms and coralline algae :wink: DEAD or DRY base rock will obviously not have any life on it. As far as telling if it's 'live rock', I would look for some sort of encrusting growth (like coralline algae) on it's surface.

+1... i got into this hobby to see some weird, wacky outrageous stuff living in my tank, and with nuked rock, you'll never get that. you will get a very boring monoculture of life with just enough stuff to qualify as biofiltration. straight from the ocean into my tank.. ill deal with whatever pests i might get. there's fish or chemicals for just about everything.

Thanks for everyone input!!