live rock delivered with no smell will there be die off?

[barbtrave]

I just received 80 pounds of live rock from Live Rock .com and there was no bad smell at all. Will I receive die off and stink like people talk about or is this almost as good as buying cured rock? I Have live sand 40 pounds in so , a 75 gal tank and used distilled water and had my tank at the salt level of the live rock at delivery.

 

[lando]

Do you know what the transit time was? LR from them usually shows up in great condition. There will be some die-off, natually, but it will be minimal. You can expect a small ammonia spike, if one at all.

 

[BillyZ]

the smell some encounter is the life forms rotting. Unfortunetly just about any LR that is shipped will have _some_ die-off. What you've received has probably faired pretty well. Somet hing still probably have died they just haven't begun to stink yet

wait... you said,

had my tank at the salt level of the live rock at delivery.

was you LR delivered in water? Thats new! I can't imagine what that cost for shipping! if it was shipped in water then you may very well have very little die off at all!

 

[barbtrave]

The rock arriveed in 24 hours. It was shipped in water and lots of cloths that were saturated. The rock arrived with tons of pink growth and green better looking then I've seen in the fish store.

 

[143gadgets]

What type of rock did you buy from them?

 

[Brad]

or is this almost as good as buying cured rock?

Way better, IMO. In a perfect situation, the rock would go from the ocean directly to your tank and require no "curing" whatsoever. It is only when the transport time is so long...that there is such significant die off on the rock.. that you need to cure it to deal with all that death.

The final challenge is to have a tank in place that can support life (fish, LR or whatever). You could take LR directly from the ocean, but if you place it in an uncycled tank, you're going to produce a deadly cycle regardless. An uncycled tank is deadly to the LR, just as it would be for a fish.

LR will always eventually function as a good biological filter, no matter what it went through along the way. But there isn't much point in paying big bucks to have LR rushed to you if you only want it to function as a biological filter.