Good live rock

[fishmaster]

Originally Posted by justinl

TBS ships their LR with water in the box. essentially it's underwater all the time. No other place i know of does this practice. Everywhere else ships in wet newspaper. If you want fully cured LR with a pretty good guarantee of no cycle then id say your best chance is to wait until someone local decides to sell off some LR. that's what the classifieds are for!

or if you're a handy man with some time on your hands, you can MAKE your own LR. that way you can get custom shapes to your own liking, while spending about a third of the cash. plus it's super easy on the environment. GARF had a page on how to make it... lets see if i can find it...

I got my rock uncured from my lfs. It came in wet paper, but wasn't too stinky. In order to save some $, I added 40lbs of base rock to the 60lbs of live. The base rock is now becoming cover in coraline, and I'm sure it's fully functioning live rock. If you are going to cure your own, and want the most life possible; first make sure you remove as much of anything clearly dead or dying. If you think it MIGHT make it,get rid of it. No matter how you look at it, anything that dies will cause a major ammonia spike which will kill more stuff. Secondly, spend the money on salt, and do major water changes every couple of days. Make sure to remove as much dead or dying stuff each time. Shake each rock around in a bucket of saltwater to help dislodge dead stuff. The more time you spend, the more that will survive. Make sure you run a good skimmer through the process as well as lots of flow. If you're not concearned with the hitch hikers, your rock will cycle just fine with no water changes in about 3-4 weeks. Your coraline will start to come back as soon as you put it under light. Hope this helps.
Shaun.