[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by untamed

The thing that comes to my mind is that there are very different consumer expectations as to what constitutes "live rock".

For me...I would want rock available to me as quickly as possible to preserve as much life as possible. That likely means getting the "good" life along with the "challenging" life. LR was/is the most expensive life in my tank. I would want it handled like very expensive fish from start to finish.

Others want their LR all "cured", or "cooked" by the store first. They don't want it to contain any kind of algae or life that might die off in their tanks. Some evaluate the quality of LR only by its porosity and shape.

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exactly, and there is an easy solution for that. one store in Vic where I bought over 200 lbs of rock to originaly start my tank up only sold it by the box and what he would do is add 25 bucks/ box to the actual cost he incured to bring the rock in. so he would take orders untill he had a 5 box min (which usaly only took a week at that time.) then place the order. the next day his order was picked in jacarta or where ever and flowen out right away. that night the people who ordeed rock would meet at the store to get there rock. what we would do is open our boxes and take a look at the sizes and we would trade amongst ourselves so everyone went home with the sizes they wanted. this way usaly worked out to about 4 bucks a lb. if you wanted to hand select your chunks there were 3 other stores you could go to in Vic at that time.

I think a good thing would be to do both.. if you want the fresh uncured rock you could just tag onto a regular order and pick up your box when it comes in.. if you want to chose a specific piece then go to the LR tanks.

you mentiond you would like to see rock handles the same as expensive fish.. I wouldn't expeck a 400 buck fish to be plopped into a tank with no skimmer and bad water.. I also would insist on waiting at least a week to pick up the fish to ensure it was in good shape.

Steve