Perseverance Reef

[Fishy888]

I hate to be a Debbie Downer but at least in my neck of the woods, Dead Rock even from Fiji or Tonga or the Marshall Islands is not $10 a pound.

I was selling it live at 4 to $5 a pound and the listings stayed up much longer than I would have thought.

We live in an area where there’s only one LFS carries any saltwater stuff and that’s what they charge here. I’m 40 miles from the nearest real LFS devoted to saltwater. I agree though that it shouldn’t cost that much. Even if it’s only worth $2 a pound the work will be worth it to me.

 

[Fishy888]

Hanna replied quickly.

So 1.026 ish.

 

[Fishy888]

I “wowed” this because that’s certainly not the case here. General and random rock sells for $5 - $6 a pound.

I can’t remember where in iL you live. Those are great prices. Of course has to and from is also a factor in the cost. When the rock is cured and it’s time to seed it, I might buy some in addition to using some from my system. Diversity of creatures is usually a good thing. What LFS do you use?

 

[fishguy242]

Why are you killing rock ? just put in tub w skimmer ,clean and cure like normal ??

 

[Fort Salty]

My lfs has recently had some similar rock from sale from a breakdown. I forget what kind of rock it was exactly, but looked very similar. Nine dollars per pound was the price.

The rock you got looks great! I'm sure it will look great in your tank! Good wife.

FS

 

[crusso1993]

I can’t remember where in iL you live. Those are great prices. Of course has to and from is also a factor in the cost. When the rock is cured and it’s time to seed it, I might buy some in addition to using some from my system. Diversity of creatures is usually a good thing. What LFS do you use?

Ummmmm, I moved from Chicago about 1.5 years ago. I'm in SW FL. This is probably why you cannot remember.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

I “wowed” this because that’s certainly not the case here. General and random rock sells for $5 - $6 a pound.

Maybe it's that whole supply and demand thing at work. There's a lot of reefers around me. There's a lot of Reef shops. There's a lot of tanks being torn down. Live rock. The commodity doesn't fetch as high aprice tag here based on what I see selling and have had trouble selling myself.

 

[tbrown]

I “wowed” this because that’s certainly not the case here. General and random rock sells for $5 - $6 a pound.

Same. Plain old dead rock in my area is anywhere from $2-$3 a pound. Life Rock and live rock is $6-$10 a pound.

 

[Fishy888]

Why are you killing rock ? just put in tub w skimmer ,clean and cure like normal ??

It wasn’t live unfortunately. I could smell ammonia and my olfactory sene isn’t exactly the best. Even the algae were dead. I thought it had a chance still but the ammonia smell made me realize that most creatures were DOA. The water they were in was room temperature when I got them. She had the tote heated at one point but after a couple of water changes she gave up on it and she had these for a while. Most likely she unplugged the heater at that point. I wouldn’t kill rock if it had a reasonable chance of having life.

 

[fishguy242]

It wasn’t live unfortunately. I could smell ammonia and my olfactory sene isn’t exactly the best. Even the algae were dead. I thought it had a chance still but the ammonia smell made me realize that most creatures were DOA. The water they were in was room temperature when I got them. She had the tote heated at one point but after a couple of water changes she gave up on it and she had these for a while. Most likely she unplugged the heater at that point. I wouldn’t kill rock if it had a reasonable chance of having life.

that's where cleaning and curing come in, if it was completely dead you wouldn't smell anything...

 

[Fishy888]

Same. Plain old dead rock in my area is anywhere from $2-$3 a pound. Life Rock and live rock is $6-$10 a pound.

Mine will be live when I’m done but it is basically dry rock now. I’m still happy with it. It’s not about the money anyway. it’s about the beauty of this rock and that it came from the reef.

 

[Fishy888]

that's where cleaning and curing come in, if it was completely dead you wouldn't smell anything...

Exactly. I just don’t want people to think I’d just kill off the life on the rock.

 

[fishguy242]

if you put in RO or freshwater ,you are killing it

 

[Fishy888]

Ummmmm, I moved from Chicago about 1.5 years ago. I'm in SW FL. This is probably why you cannot remember.

LOL I don’t know why I thought you were still in IL. My bad.

 

[Fishy888]

if you put in RO or freshwater ,you are killing it

I had them in saltwater first. I smelled the ammonia in the saltwater. I made fresh saltwater water in both bins and a few hours later I could smell the ammonia.

 

[fishguy242]

Skimmer, ammo breaks down to nitrites to nitrates , curing process
are we beating a dead horse here ?
is rock already in freshwater ?

 

[Fishy888]

This was in the bin that got RO/DI water.

This is a better shot which shows just how dark the water was

I can also see a difference in the rock. It’s subtle but it’s there.

 

[Fishy888]

Skimmer, ammo breaks down to nitrites to nitrates , curing process
are we beating a dead horse here ?
is rock already in freshwater ?

Yes and I don’t run a skimmer. I knew the rock was most likely dead from the picture of them in their original tank. They were full of sediment. But now I’m wondering if I’m crazy for doing so.

 

[Fishy888]

I wish now that I did things differently. I assumed everything was dead anyway but bacteria could very well have been live. As I always say I try to learn from my failures as well as my successes. The good news is that I didn’t see any worms or pods in the bottom of the tote. That would have depressed me tremendously. Sorry guys. I’ve learned my lesson.

 

[Fishy888]

I have some good news though. I just finished changing out the water in the the bin with the rock I left in saltwater overnight. I only used RO/DI water in the one bin. Most of the rock was in the saltwater side. This is the saltwater bin to which I’ll add a circulation pump. I used RO/DI on the rock that sat in RO/DI.

When you showed me that I did something stupid I decided to leave the second bin salty. Then it hit me that athough I shouldn’t have used freshwater on the rock at all, I could do an experiment to see which rock cures first. It may well be that the salty side cures first.

The other good news is that the biggest rock in the bunch has been salty the whole time.

I should have stated that I still had a bin with saltwater in it. Again, I’m sorry I did the boneheaded thing I did. Thank you for keeping me from doing it to the second bin