Vendors! Take care of the live rock!!!

[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

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

this is where we will have to agree to disagree, I have cured with out a skimmer and with a skimmer.. much better results with the skimmer. problem with out it is that you are still going to expose your rock to much higher levels than you would with it. the other problem is wherew is all the junk the skimmer would pull out go if you don't use one. inside the rock and will start the plugging up phase.

Agreed to disagree. Curing rock in the aquarium is somewhat different, you don't typically change more than 50% of the water at one time. If you cured your rock in a separate container (like many people do) you could simply change 100% of the water time and time again until you were satisfied. Your water volume would be small in comparison to the amount of rock you have or compared to your display tank volume. In such case I see little need for a skimmer and don't think it would be worth using. Curing rock in your display is different and could certainly benefit from a skimmer but this isn't the best way to cure rock.

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

you figure 1000lbs of live rock which would be a normal size order is going to need 500gal of water to be in the holding area. so this is about 2.5 buckets of salt. to properly cure rock you need to do about 4 waterchanges so say.. 10 buckets of salt. now if you use a good skimmer you could easily cut out two of thoes waterchanges saving about 5 buckets of salt. which is a good chunk of money towards a good skimmer after only one batch.

and good skimming and dosing is very much a good way to reduce the amount of water changes required.. a water changed is to clean and replace, if you keep the water clean and replace elements you are acomplishing the exact same thing... In the 7 years I ran my big tank I started off with monthly waterchanges, then bi-monthly, then a few times a year, then to once a year.. no differance and everything thrived. now would I recomend this would out the use of a Ca reactor with good median and a good skimmer.. no.

I would argue a much smaller volume for that amount of rock. In addition you would need a skimmer rated for an equivalent of 1000 gallons to hand that much dead rock if not bigger. The cost of the skimmer, it's power consumption and maintenance would likely not pay for itself in a long time. Salt is fairly cheap to a vendor and could always use water changed from other systems for the live rock tank. Also no skimmer will replace water changes nor will it ever be as effective as removing nutrients and contaminants than the good old water change. I can guarantee you that any skimmer on a live rock tank will be more trouble than it's worth. Plus the skimmer seems to be the easy way out, using a skimmer and doing less water changes may be cheaper depending on how you look at it but certainly not better than changing all the water frequently. In terms of quality what is best? I would bet many vendors through little skimmers on there live rock tanks which are more decorative than anything, with the main purpose to impress customers.

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

Um.. you need to re read.. that is what I said . that was only what I would like to do but as I said in the post it is not reasonable for a store due to the investment and time vs. proffit per sq^ft.

That wasn't really referring to your post, just a general statement. However while on the subject if you agree a vendor can't possibly keep rock for long periods of time how could a skimmer possibly benefit such a system? Skimmers require time to remove nutrients while a simple 100% change removes them all in one go. Seems like a better solution in my mind. Skimmers simply aren't designed to remove large amounts of nutrients that quickly, they are steady state machines.


People at LFS are not professionals by any means in fact I don't know anyone who is a professional in that particular industry. How do you define professional?? Profit margins aren't large enough to employ such "professionals", you're stuck with minimum wage type employees who can bag a fish but certainly aren't experts. The only exception we get these days are the small chain stores which are run by the actual owner who tend to be very knowledgeable, however even with these stores it's only a matter of time before extra staff is brought in.

Of course we don't need the best of everything and that was certainly not my point. My point was that no store can be the best at everything and different stores will tend to focus more on certain things and not on others. This is why not all vendors will focus too much time and effort on live rock.

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by sphelps

People at LFS are not professionals by any means in fact I don't know anyone who is a professional in that particular industry. How do you define professional?? Profit margins aren't large enough to employ such "professionals", you're stuck with minimum wage type employees who can bag a fish but certainly aren't experts. The only exception we get these days are the small chain stores which are run by the actual owner who tend to be very knowledgeable, however even with these stores it's only a matter of time before extra staff is brought in.

actualy by def they are professionals

"n - One who earns a living in a given or implied occupation"

I would never cure the rock in my tank, unless it was a brand new tank set up then why not.. the rock I have cured I have done so in a seperat tank for only the rock.. when I did just waterchanges I actualy had two tanks, when I saw a spike, I would rince the rock and move it to the new water.. then back again for the next spike.. when I did the skimmer method I had the added bonus of being able to keep snails and hermits in with the rock to clean it up with out any die off of the clean up crue. doing this the other way would have resulted in massive death of snails and some hermits.

now having said that I have never been accused of under skimming either

at any rate, no store is going to do 100% water changes either.. to expensive. for one you got the water, the wages for the person doing it and the cost of the salt and wear and tear on the ro filters or DI canisters, electricity to heat the water, space for water while it is heating ect.. . Concider what a store will pay for a huge skimmer.. not near what they charge us and it is a write off as an operating cost. A relitivly new store in Vic has huge skimmers on there rock, they may do water changes also, but they seam to be providing the best enviorment they can.

As well when a store normaly gets rock in it is still pretty fresh and there is minimal die off so realy the load on the skimmer isn't that great. But I think more important would be the "no light" which I don't see anyone doing as they want to move the rock out as fast as they can.

I know store owners don't want to dedicate the Sq^ft to taking care of rock, but if they were going to dedicate it to any type of live stock that is the one to do it with.. as there is no losses so the amout of floor space is always good to make money.. now having said that I would definatly try to do a rack system to minimize the floor area.

one of the better stores for rock (well at least 8 years ago) had two 500 gal containers for rock.. never did a waterchange and was horably under skimmed, but the rock still came out nice. the problem is that LR is a filter in its self and will clear up a horable tank, but another problem arizes from this in that the more rock sucks up the more its pours become plugged up and the less it can filter.. so a store that just dumps rock in a tank and lets it sit till it is cured is decreasing the life span of the rock.. as far as for what I have seen for water changes the stores that do do them usaly do so after the rock had cleared the water so at that point they are doing nothing but waisting salt. what they need to do is conduct a water change as soon as they notice amonia in order to get the crap out of the water.


anyways we've beet this to death.. stores will do one or the other or a combanation of both.. some will light some won't, so decide what you want and find a store that does it that way

Steve

[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...

[sphelps]

So out of curiousity what life exactly are you all trying to preserve?

[Myka]

For me, mostly a diverse selection of nitrifying bacteria and mollusks. I also don't want a bunch of unchecked die-off polluting the rock with phosphate, and gumming it up with detritus.

Out of curiosity, what's the most important aspect of live rock to you Steve (sphelps)?

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by Myka

For me, mostly a diverse selection of nitrifying bacteria and mollusks. I also don't want a bunch of unchecked die-off polluting the rock with phosphate, and gumming it up with detritus.

Out of curiosity, what's the most important aspect of live rock to you Steve (sphelps)?

I'm in it mostly for the structure in terms of shape and porosity. The rest is garbage in my mind. High quality base in worth more in my books than actual live rock. Bacteria is free and you don't need "live" rock to get it.

I'm not sure I see the appeal in mollusks but ok. As far as general bacteria goes ammonia levels wouldn't really affect that and the best way to remove "pollutants" is to eliminate everything that pollutes from the rock.

I just don't see what the big fuss is about with this whole live rock thing. I'll take dead and clean any day over live.

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

Who cares?

Just buy the rock from wherever you want and let the vendors do what they want. It's the same as buying anything, if you don't like a product, don't buy it. Simple.

[Jason McK]

Originally Posted by GreenSpottedPuffer

Who cares?

Just buy the rock from wherever you want and let the vendors do what they want. It's the same as buying anything, if you don't like a product, don't buy it. Simple.

Bravo !

[Skimmerking]

I look at it this way if I'm going to buy Rock I'm going to go where there is the cheaper price, end of bitching, come on people support your local vendors if they arent doing it right thing teach them. Don't bitch about it fix it. wow too much complaining, until you have a head dollar of 100,000K to play with (zip it) its nothing worst then someone bitching to get posts or just to be heard. just to make a statement. sorry folks to many people here trying to make a name for them selfs. I understand that people can't make t he proper business or thatthey dont have enought money. But come on they are making a statment or trying to help out.. give them a chance.
mike OUt

green well said

Originally Posted by GreenSpottedPuffer

Who cares?

Just buy the rock from wherever you want and let the vendors do what they want. It's the same as buying anything, if you don't like a product, don't buy it. Simple.