What happened to all the live rock?

[jamesw]

Hi Everyone,

I admit I'm just getting back into the hobby after a "vacation" of 4 or 5 years. So I have to ask - what happened to all the live rock?????

I always felt like it was best to get a "little slice of real reef" from the Indo-Pacific into my tank so I liked getting raw uncured rock with LOTS of life on it, and curing it myself to see what I'd get. Admittedly, it sometimes comes with small mithrax crabs or the little brown "smasher" mantis but they are pretty harmless. The diversity that the rock would bring to the system was amazing - and totally worth it.

But when I went to order rock a few weeks ago I found that hardly any rock is air-freighted anymore and that most of the stuff coming in is pretty "clean" except for some bacteria and corraline aglae :-( What happened?

I also noticed a trend while reading the boards of people even preferring to use limestone rocks or dead dried-out live rock for their aquariums?????? That means no diversity except for rock and maybe some bacteria - and whatever comes in on the corals. What is the reason for this? People seem to be worried about pests - but the nasty ones (flatworms, isopods, etc) don't come on live rock...

Anyhow if anyone has the time to explain I'd appreciate it.

Cheers
James

 

[Len]

It's cheaper to ship by ocean freight. Since the hobby has grown, moving tons of rock by air is not very cost effective. And yes, people are tired of dealing with bad hitchhikers. I know most of the annoying ones don't come on LR, but people nowadays seem a lot more reluctant to take the chance. You need to realize just how many pests have become a problem now in our hobby. This is mainly due to farming and trading within our hobby (good thing with a bad side effect), but it's created a big paranoia about introducing pests. I had to rebuild my tank due to pests. Be very careful with your build, James. I'd dip every coral I add, and QT'ing everything (fish, corals, inverts) is not a bad idea.

I do miss the old, truly live rocks of 10+ years ago. But very few hobbyist these days care. It's all about coral gardens (which eventually gets all covered and you see very little of the rocks).

 

[Anonymous]

I don't think its mostly about pests and more about what you actually get. I think people have come to the conclusion that the life you get on live rock isn't all that alive once it gets to you, that what does make it usually isn't all that exciting, and then you need to deal with the die off and detritus shedding. If you are going to cure the rock anyway, why bother with stuff that is dying/dead/going to die anyway? Plus, there is the ecological/economical component of harvesting live rock from the SP - is destructive to habitats and air freight puts lots of ickies into the atmosphere.
My recommendations for live rock are to get it from someone getting out of the hobby (there are literally tons of it around) because the idea of rock harvested from the sea going to a landfill is distasteful. Reuse is a place the hobby can really have an effect. I also like making your own live rock, and its easier and looks better than just a few years ago. The domestically harvested dry rock is fine too, just let it soak for a month or two.

 

[Anonymous]

When I set up my tank, it will be with LR straight from the ocean (well, 24 hours from it anyway). I like the diversity as well. I don't really mean the really cool hitch hikers that some people seem to get sometimes (coral, anemones, even fish!). I just mean the wide range of critters like pods, gastropods, brittle stars, the occasional polyp and sponges.

Then, I will be in the unusual situation of living in a country (Japan) where you can get rock straight from tropical seas to the home, transported in heated containers/vans without delay.

 

[Anonymous]

I think the diversity attributed to like rock from the ocean is overrated.

 

[Anonymous]

I think the diversity attributed to like rock from the ocean is overrated.

I don't.

 

[Anonymous]

Do you have any specific example of diversity you can get through from the wild rock that you cant get domestically?

 

[Anonymous]

I just mean the wide range of critters like pods, gastropods, brittle stars, the occasional polyp and sponges.

You get all that on your live corals though. Ever look underneath a brain or plate coral? All it takes is a few of whatever animal to get it going.

 

[jamesw]

I think a lot of the polychaetes, feather-dusters, limpets, and even the turf algaes are unique and seomthing you won't get unless you get it from the ocean - it's not going to come on a frag. There are literally thousands of species of polychaetes alone and I think the more variety the better - in everything. But I can't cite anything exactly - it's just the holistic effect of plopping a piece of reef into an aquarium vs a piece of boiled limestone.

 

[Anonymous]

I am all good with seeding a tank with live rock (though I prefer it from someone elses tank rather than the ocean). I do think the tide has turned from from the SP live rock to other sources because in general, the diversity rarely seems to actually pay off - even when you could get fresh from the SP over night shipped LR. I am all for diversity, I just don't think LR is a particularly efficient way to get it.

 

[Yellotang]

I am getting back into the hobby after a 4 year+ break. I also think I would do mostly dead rock and maybe only 1/4 live. After the last time of spending hundreds of hundreds of dollars on live rock, I got flatworms. Not something that was fun.

 

[Len]

Yeah, flatworms almost killed the hobby for me too.

This time around, I'm extremely paranoid and have been dipping everything I receive. My LR was ocean-freighted, so it doesn't really have the biodiversity of the air-freighted rock I've received in the past. And because I'm dipping everything, not much new gets added to my tank (all the worms and crustaceans and such on the corals are all dipped to death). But, my tank is doing well, if not better then before, so I can understand the "biodiversity is overrated" opinion In fact, a more sterile, controlled tank might be better to grow corals.

 

[Anonymous]

Do you have any specific example of diversity you can get through from the wild rock that you cant get domestically?

What a strange question. That I can't get "domestically"? What does that mean?

Three things. I don't have a tank right now so don't have live rock I can take pictures of. Also, surely the amount of critters you can get with a shipment of live rock is larger in volume than hoping that they will eventually multiply off a few small plugs attached to coral (which quite often look to me like not the most effective way of importing life, given their size, structure etc). Also, bear in mind that I will be living in Japan and my experience of having had a tank before comes from there, so my experience might be different to that of the vast majority of people on here.

As to what I got on the live rock I got in Japan, well all I can remember at this stage is: one abalone; a couple of large brittle stars; loads of the small ones; a small, rock-boring urchin; one small piece of sinularia; some mushroom corals and zoanthids. But I think there was loads more than this. It was about 6-7 years ago that I took delivery of the rock.

Compared to the sort of dry live rock I've seen people adding to their tanks recently in the US, I'd prefer this 100 times over.

 

[Anonymous]

I wonder this is also partly about what sort of tank you want. If you want a display tank for collector's editions of SPS, you might want to reduce the gamble that something in the tank imported with the live rock might add an element which you have less control over. If you're going to have a tank along the lines I'm planning, you have rather less of a highly delicate, nutrient-absent tank and a more resilient, diverse tank.

 

[Anonymous]

Domestically means local to you.

I don't think the type of tank you are setting up has much to do with it.
I think you could add all the stuff you mentioned in the post at your leisure, and that adding it your self would more effective at getting diversity in the medium to long run, and that it would be more sustainable than getting live rock harvested from the SP. It seems to me you can get the diversity by purchasing the animals you want, and by seeding the tank with a piece of LR from any thriving system (not frags, Matt mentioned corals like brain and plate).

Most of this is moot anyway, as James mentioned, its tough to get fresh from the sea live rock from the SP, though I think you can fresh from the sea AQ rock out of Florida.

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I'm not sure what the SP is. South Pacific? Well, I won't be ordering from there anyway. I'll be ordering my live rock from Okinawa when I set up (once I've moved to Tokyo). Which is pretty domestic, given as it'll be only 24 hours away (1200 miles, but given how efficient the Japanese delivery infrastructure is, that's not so far).

I think we'll agree to disagree on this one. I'm really not convinced by what you're saying and the same goes for you by what I'm saying, by the looks of things. :wink:

 

[Anonymous]

Yeah, Tom, your situation is different for the most part.

 

[Anonymous]

Cool. Thinking about it, what you're saying does makes more sense from the point of view of US reefers importing LR from the South Pacific.

 

[Anonymous]

I wish they had rocks like Marco Rocks back when I set up my tank. The Valonia, sawblade caulerpa, and gorilla crabs that came on my LR were a PITA. Any new rock I will get in the future will be dead rock. The only thing I got on LR that was good was coralline algae, amphipods, and stomatella snails. I got both of these on my last frag delivery.

 

[jamesw]

Good discussion. I especially liked hearing the term "collectors edition SPS." To me they are animals, not collectors items lol! But I do know this hobby attracts all kinds of people. If you want a "rare" coral collection display, wouldn't some egg-crate racks of corals be the best?

Back to the live-rock: by definition you can't get diversity by adding a few varieties of worms and molluscs to your tank to "seed" dead rock. On a square meter of indo-pacific reef you probably have over 10,000 different species of "stuff" growing. Of course, some of it dies when you get live rock air-freighted to the US - but a lot of it lives too. I'm surprised every day lately by the stuff I see on the glass in the morning - today was a tiny nudibranch, and a small limpet and who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Cheers
James