I received my rock today from Premium Aquatics. Overall I'm extremely impressed. The only thing even remotely bad is all my fault - I asked them for some bigger pieces. I meant - send me SOME bigger pieces *as in a few* ... not SEND ME SOME BIGGER PIECES! (as in most of the order) Well they definitely sent me some big stuff. But some VERY NICE big stuff! And I say this having worked at an LFS 13+ years ago. This was back when nice live rock was really easy to come buy - most pieces we sold out of the store were almost full coralline coverage. So I remember nice rock, and I've seen bad rock. Overall, 80%+ of what I got is pretty nice rock.
I got a mix of 100# of Kaelini Tonga and 100# of Timora. I almost choked when I saw that overnight shipping to WI was nearly $800 - fortunately we're having a mild winder (as is Indiana, where PA is located) so I was able to ship ground ($125) and had it in two days. I was REALLY close to driving to Premium to hand pick it myself, but that's 12 hours round trip...
Our UPS doesn't come until after 5pm most days, so I picked up the boxes at the local UPS office this morning. 4 boxes, each 50+ pounds. It's nice that they actually send you 50# of rock. My full shipment was like 226#, so they're not counting box, paper, etc as rock weight. VERY NICE!
One box was 2 boxes taped together, so I figured that's where the big pieces were - so I opened that one first. Turned out about 1/2 of what I got I'd consider to be big pieces. In the end I could have probably done with about 150# or so.
Here's box #1. This one was in the roughest shape - but only the box. The rock was fine. Rock was wrapped in damp kraft paper - MUCH easier to remove than wet newspaper! Then everything was placed in a plastic bag and then in the box.
Here's the contents of box #1
Check this piece out - almost full coralline coverage on the face!
This bad boy was in box #1 too. I put the 5g salt bucket lid by it for scale. I'm glad I didn't have to take my canopy off to get it in the tank - it barely cleared my halides. The smaller pieces are rubble from the box - it's a future pod-farm!
Here's box #2 - again with the lid for scale. The smaller pieces are more rubble from the box.
Here's a couple of random closeup shots of the "dry" rock. Some funky skeletons on this one.
Nice shape and coralline mixture.
