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LIVE (gasp) ROCK ROCKS !


Aquatopia

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Hi folks,

My name is Chris and Im another POM escaped from that overcrowded island on the other side of the world ! Been here a year now and looking to get back into the marine hobby.

The few excursions i have made to local fish shops seems to have been a bit disappointing. See, I was about to set up a reef tank at apparently you can't get LIVE ROCK over here? Something to do with bio-security. Now I can understand being protective of this wonderful country, but can anyone help or make suggestions? (Either on here or by IM or email if its more appropriate :wink: ).

Here are a couple of links which you may find interesting, and indicate what i was hoping to find here;-

http://www.reefkeeper.co.uk/acatalog/Live_rock.html

and another

http://www.stm-shop.co.uk/acatalog/Onli ... ck_14.html

Also - any of you members from Christchurch - Im keen to meet, chat etc and to have your advice on where is worth going and not going in the area for fish/inverts/hardware. And are there any online stores in NZ ?

Cheers for now

Chris

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Any live rock you get, other than small fragments corals are attached to, you'll have to get from someone else's tank. You can get base rock which is live rock that's been dried out, steam blasted, irradiated and called dirty names before it's allowed in the country, though. For about the same price most countries can get live rock.

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What does everyone think about existing reefkeeping members on here keeping an extra piece of rock so that new reefers can call on say 5 members (in rotation) and utilise these 5 pieces of already seeded live rocks to fast-track their aquarium setup? Is this something that could work ?

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The best thing to do is try and source some live rock from local marine hobbyists alike. However to find the required amount may be difficult, so you may have to resort to NZ's normal way, which is to get dried Reef rock from FIJI or the likes and mature it yourself, Costs next to nothing and works well, but requires stacks of patience. 8 weeks before usable, and up to six months before it looks any good.

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Thanks everyone for your replies. Have had a few offers to assist with the rock - any other offers will be received with humble gratitude. I could always row to fiji in a pee green boat - me and the owl and the pussycat that is. Anyone got a GPS for dinghies? Lol

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To my knowldge the current rules for live rock state that anything obvious has to be removed and they have to sit dry for three weeks this was a recent change and it doesn't take long to settle them in and are still very much alive inside.

The last lot I got which was a while ago was straight out of the box and still wet.

Aaron.

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I think there are some advantages to starting with dead base rock.

That depends on what you define as dead if they haven't been bleached as they use to do many year ago as required. You will have a high level of decay in the rocks.

However if you were starting from scratch it would be a good why to spike the system and make it start doing somthing.

Aaron

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