Ceramic clay Live rock: what are your thoughts?

[Ben1]

GSchiemer wrote:
Walt Smith sells a manufactured and aquacultured live rock out of Fiji. It's terrific stuff. It's lightweight, colorful and contains a lot of TROPICAL lifeforms. In addition, it pumps money into the local Fijian economy and reduces the collection of "wild" live rock. It's a win-win.

The only downside to the WS LR is the shapes are somewhat monotonous. Just saw a 2000 lb shipment of the stuff--donuts, donuts, donuts. Different sized donuts, but still donuts. It's a minor thing, but I wouldn't want to stock a tank solely with it.

I agree my LFS had some of this in and it was all donut shaped rocks, not very individual looking pieces. It also appeared very dense and since they were selling it at $7 a pound it wouldnt be too cheap.

 

[bfessler]

When my father set up his reef we found a source of live rock with some really uniuqe shapes for about $7.00 a pound. It cost about $350 to outfit his 30G Tank. A LFS was selling the Vida Rock for $3.00 per pound which would more than cut this cost in half and it comes with numerous arches and caves built into the product. There are also pieces shaped like plates and ledges and stacking the stuff is easy. The downside is that there are no creatures, algea or bacteria growing on the stuff so you have to be patient until the ceramin rock is colonized. Perhaps adding a couple pieces of live rock would speed up the process.