Vendors! Take care of the live rock!!!

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by sphelps

Our LFS here has great products, service and prices too but some people still complain because one particular item is $1 cheaper at J&L.

your always going to have thoes people.. I have a friend who has never paid full price for anything.. I don't know how he does it but he gets discounts from anystore he goes to.

my personal theory on mail order from say J&L is that if I am paying so much plus 25 for shipping when I go into the LFS as long as it is under the total I would have paid with shipping I buy it there.. that allows the LFS to have prices that are a little higher and still get my business.

Steve

[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.

So, I suppose a store has to make a decision about what their customers want from LR and attempt to handle and price it appropriately.

[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.

.

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

[JDigital]

I can't really say anything bad about the LR from Red Coral... I had 80-85lbs in my 75G tank, and I NEVER saw a single bit of algae on it in the 9-10months that tank was running. I give credit to RC for how they process their LR when it comes in. They do a thorough job and charge an average price compared to other shops.


Certainly isn't fair to make a blanket statement to all vendors...

[whatcaneyedo]

I didnt see any mention of LR being blanketed in aptasia.... Obviously aptasia exists in the wild and some of it could hitch a ride in on a shipment of LR. I can believe that. But when a LFS has a LR tank that doesnt have any aptasia and then a customer tears down their tank and sells/give their LR to the store which is blanketed in huge aptasia why would they put the two together? It wasnt only the LR tank that got it that day. They put that aptasia infested rock throughout all of their stores systems! Did I forget to mention that they ask $12/lbs for it too? Or $8/lbs if you buy over 20lbs... something like that.

At least I can be thankful that our LFS has a skimmer on their LR tank. Now if only they had a working skimmer on their coral tank...

[Myka]

Waaay too many comments on my post to comment back on, but for those vendors that think they are taking good care of the rock (and I'm sure some of you do, but it really is few and far between), how many of you test the water for ammonia? How many of you do 100% water changes on the new batches of rock?

I agree with untamed that when I buy rock I want it FOB (fresh off the boat) to preserve life because I honestly don't trust a vendor to do this because "most" vendors view live rock with much less value than I do. However, with the prices of "new" live rock these days I have to buy "used" rock, and shop around until I find some good, clean, healthy rock.

I use the same method as Steve (Stir Crazy) when curing rock. I check for spikes, and do water changes as needed. A couple days in 4 ppm ammonia does a lot of damage to the life on/in the rock. Heck, 2 ppm is damaging. For me, I don't really care how you achieve the clean water (be it skimmer or water changes or both), just keep the dang ammonia and phosphate down!!

Btw Steve (sphelps), the comment about opening a store of my own I was joking hence the . I'm not an idiot, I've managed enough stores to know that retail isn't easy and you can't have it all. I'm not one to shop somewhere else over $1, but I sure will if it's a 15% (or more) difference! Retail fish stores don't make very many owners rich...