[untamed]

Originally Posted by jslaney

Its too bad that they dont ship up here. What a bureaucracy that I cant buy aquacultered live rock from the states but I can by who knows what taken from indo at the LFS

Hey Untamed, just wondering how you got yours from seattle. I am assuming you got them to send it to their airport but how did you get it across the border. I am a little nervous about having 300 dollars worth of live rock confiscated and dont really want to go to jail.

I put the back seats down, and filled the car. Whatever you do, don't try to hide stuff...just tell them what you have and how much it is worth...go in and give them their money.

I can only provide my personal experience which is that I have had no issues with bringing aquacultured LR across the border. I've always travelled with a lot of information about what the product actually is, in case they want to open a box and look. So far, they have not had any interest in inspecting it or questioned me in any detail about it.

They do struggle with how to classify it. On my next trip, I'll bring the paperwork from the previous crossing to help them out. Last time they classified it as "limestone" for import purposes.

I avoid using the term "live" to describe the rock. That's a term that we use as hobbiests. To non-aquarists, that means very different things and they start searching for import criteria for live animals. If you end up at "live coral", then you are getting close to losing your shipment. To them, it is just "rock for an aquarium". If the conversation turns to "living coral", my response would be that the rock contains no living coral that I am aware of.

My POV is that it would not make any sense for Canada to NOT allow Florida aquacultured rock, when they allow natural LR to come in from other parts of the world and be sold at retail. Aquacultured rock is a product of the US...licenced for sale by the US and Florida governments for the express reason that it is deemed to be sustainably harvested.

My belief is that one rarely gets in trouble for trying to do the right thing.