Live Rocks Revisited... My International Marine Fish Order

I'm going to rewind a 'lil bit here... My tank is now stocked with live rocks and some corals and it's definitely beyond the initial cycling phase; (or so I'm claiming). However, during this upgrade that was filled with headaches, I failed to blog it as it happened so I'm going to go back and revisit some topics that I skipped over during this somewhat rushed upgrade.

After I filled up my 90 with rocks and corals from my 29g and my 10g, my tank was half full, literally. While my fishes enjoyed the open ocean for a slight period, I was busy looking for alternatives to fill that second half with rocks, instead of water. During your stupid journey to drop hundreds of dollars on rocks and saltwater, the thought of buying it online will most certainly cross your mind. Well, before you jump on all the websites claiming to sell PREMIUM rocks, let me learn the lesson for you and you can judge for yourself if it's worth it or not.


Before I dive too deep into this topic and hit my head on the rocks again... for those of you who want the moral of the story early without pictures of bland rocks, let me just say that during my research on this topic after receiving some lame rocks, two stores came highly recommended for great live rocks. These are ReefScience.com and Premium Aquatics. While Reef Science's rocks are not cheap by any means, the people who ordered them all seem very happy with them. I did not have the chance to do business with either of the companies above, but trust me... random guy on the web here would not steer you wrong. Anyway, on with the show...



So like any Googling fool, I went online, typed in "live rocks" and see which merchants are paying out their wazoo to get my business via the search result ads. One ad that stood out was International Marine Fish who had cheap, cured and uncured rocks for about $3.25/lb. I had debated eBay but the choices and selection were inconsistent... many online stores do sell live rocks but as much as I read, no one sung their praises... so based on pictures alone, I decided to buy from the Int Marine place.


Int Marine sells premium caribbean rocks... I guess I honestly should have done more research because this meant that the rocks were not as porous as kaelini or other types... but the pictures on the site looked good and it looked like Figi rocks so I said "what the heck!" Well, maybe I should have did some more research...


As you can see in these pictures, the rocks weren't necessarily bad. The reason I was disappointed was because I asked for rocks with lots of shapes; which the store did deliver, however most of the pieces I got were chalice skeletons and coral skeletons and the styles of the rocks did not match any of the existing rocks I had in the first picture.


There were however, a couple of nice pieces like the one above which looked pretty good as a brick with life, but unfortunately was not what I was looking for. I guess if I wanted street thug Nemo hanging out in marine alley's soliciting prostitutes then I could build a brick wall with pieces like these. I know... I may be a bit too harsh... however...


I bought the live rocks from this site based on pictures like these... tons of purple, tons of macro algae... tons of life.


So the lesson here is... don't let the pictures fool you. If you are interested in buying LR online, then you should check out the forums (linked on the right) and ask for opinions before you drop any money. Hey, you found this blog which means you are at least 60% net intelligent... so use the forums and don't waste money.

I'm not necessarily bashing Int Marine since the guy I talked to was nice and he shipped the same day I called AND gave me the discounted price even though the advertised period for the discount was over... however, when you have stock photos of nice live rocks and the shipment is no where close to the pictures, that's when the disappointments begin. At least I did learn (while curing the rocks) that my Remora skimmer kicks ass. There's always a bright side right? Oh... lesson number 2; if you can find a local reefer breaking down his tank and are selling LR for cheap, jump on it. That's what I ended up doing after this fiasco and I will post some pictures next time of the result. In the meantime, if you have had a bad experience or a great experience with the online stores selling live rocks, feel free to post a comment!

- Thanks.