We generally have Live Rock available from Tonga, and Fiji. We sell these either cured in the store or preordered by the box. The cured rock is ready to place in an established tank. The boxed rock has had no curing whatsoever which means it will be highly toxic and require a few weeks in a separate system.
Critter Cabana's unique Genesis curing and seeding sytem ensures that your live rock has a maximum amount of desirable life forms migrating to your system with your rock.
Genesis Features
- Scrubbed on arrival to minimize the ammonia
- Aggressively treated in a specialized custom curing bin
- Seeded with zooplankton and micro algae cultures
- Supplemented with Seachem's Calcium regularly
- Kept under strong actinic lighting to encourage coralline growth
- Wide selection of shapes and sizes generally available
- Unique and jumbo pieces ordered in regularly
- Competitively priced to comparable premium rock
- Bulk pricing is available on all varieties
- Packed for ride home with premium care to minimize dieoff
Tonga Branch Rock
Generally speaking, Tonga Branch tends to have the most interesting and unique looking pieces. Due to it's slightly higher cost and more unusual shapes, many people use it decoratively on top of Fiji or Base rock. A dazzling medley of orange, red, pink and purple coralline algaes are the standard for Tonga Branch rock. Though these colors generally fade upon acclimation, if given a proper habitat these colors will come back with time. Though this type of rock does not typically carry much zooplankton, Critter Cabana's Genesis Rock is seeded and the amount of microscopic invertebrate life brought into your tank will be nothing short of astonishing. Don't be surprised if you find sponges, macro-algaes, mini brittle stars, snails, crabs, shrimp and more crawling out of your rock as soon as you bring it home. Tonga Branch is often relatively dense due to its shape, so it is worth noting that piece of Tonga Branch will be heavier than other rock of similar size.
Cured price: $5.75 lb
Pre-order Box price: $5 lb
Fiji
This is the most commonly sold live rock. It is typically boulder shaped rocks with dominantly purple algae. It can be somewhat dense, but its low price makes up for the extra weight.
Cured price: $5 lb
Uncured price: $4.50 lb
Box price: $4.00 lb
100lbs or more boxed: $3.75 lb
Our Live Rock System
When live rock arrives at the store it is scrubbed, rinsed in saltwater, then placed in a 100 gallon container with a protein skimmer and ~3000gph of waterflow. We keep our curing water at about 1.02spg mixed using Instant Ocean salt and RO/DI water filtered by a unit from Spectrapure. The rock is lighted by a single 175w metal halide hqi 10K bulb. Depending on the condition of the rock we bring it up to our main systems for sale after 1 - 3 weeks when there is no signs of ammonia or nitrite in the curing water.
