"Complete" solutions vs Build Your Own?

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Aristotle

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Feb 16, 2005
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Reston, VA
I've seen several sites now that sell "complete" reef solutions. The one I found, out of Florida, cultivates live rock in open water (that they have ownership of) and ships the rock, sand, and inverts to you via air freight all still submerged in buckets of water. That sounds like an excellent deal, and I'm betting the freshness of the material makes for hours of fun/anxious moments identifying various hitchhikers and seeing what goodies or oddities you might have gotten.

But do these kits take the fun out of setting up your aquarium from scratch? Choosing live rock from various locations for diversity, picking out the inverts that you are most fond of, and so on.

I'm still months away from needing to order anything, but I'm still wondering if I should be looking for people selling these all-in-one kits or if I should be scouting out individual sellers.

*edit: Sorry. I just saw that there is a separate reef forum. This probably should have been posted there. Sorry again.*
 
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OrionGirl

OrionGirl

No freelancing!
Aug 14, 2001
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Sheila
Post is just fine here--it's all part of starting out!

I bought piecemeal, getting live rock from several different places. This costs more though--compare up to $12/lb for rock, versus less than $5 from an online vendor! But, it really just depends. Lots of people have purchased packages and been very happy with what they got. With any good rock, you're going to get a lot of hitch hikers--some good, some bad. I don't know that one method is more fun than the other--the primary difference to me is the ability to pick the specific shape of rock that I want, but that's not a big deal for a setup, more for adding to an existing aquascape. Even with the packages, you can still add more inverts--I'd encourage you to start out with a smaller package than you need, and plan on supplementing it as the tank matures.
 
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Oliver

Oliver
Jan 17, 2005
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Perth, Western Australia
it all depends on what you want. The best thing to do is to get cured live rock, which means it has already cycled and this gives a much better chance of having less hitchickers, trust me, you want a minimum of hitchickers, crabs and mantis shrimp etc are a pain in the butt.
 
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Aristotle

AC Members
Feb 16, 2005
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Reston, VA
Thanks for the insight. I've found a couple of reef specialty stores in my area, so I might go with cured rock from one of them if I can get a decent enough price or find nice enough rock.

I can probably afford a little better quality of rock, since I don't intend to have as much in the tank as a full-on reef aquarium.
 
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