reef building the fundamentals

[eli@fijireefrock.com]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

I did it that way when I set up my current tank, but it required making a special arrangement with (the now closed) Red Coral. Rather than having the rock ordered especially for me, I just asked to purchase an entire box worth from his next order, and the night it arrived I picked it up before it was unboxed. I can imagine that if you're ordering the rock just for that person it might be harder to arrange, but in that case he was ordering it anyway and if I had flaked off for some reason it still would have been sold.

I know not everyone can do that every time, but the beauty with dry rock is that you can cycle it perfectly fine without having anything to seed it with, the bacteria you need will proliferate eventually, so you can take your time tracking down the perfect pieces of live rock to 'seed' the critters and algaes you can't otherwise buy. In any case, I don't think I'd ever set up a tank without most of the rock being dry natural rock of some sort again.

I do agree with you that people could buy the whole box when landing and I am sure that most store front shouldn't have an issue with doing so...I just simply think not many folks will do so...or can you imagine a customer comes in for their box and only wanting to pick through all the rock when the store owner is unpacking 10 coral rock and fish boxes at 9 pm or midnight...