Noah Body wrote:
would it be alright for me to send you a very high quality picture
of the rock to get your opinion?

Hi Caper,

Much as I'd like to help you evaluate your rock, I'm just about certain
that I can't. Two reasons:

1. However it looks to your eye is pretty much how it's going to look
photographically. Unless you can bring a microscope to bear on it any
life present would almost certainly be invisible at this point.

2. I'm really not all that knowledgeable about how tropical live rock
should look. My interest and any small expertise I might have center
around cold water aquariums and their inhabitants. The nature of the
cold water hobby is that virtually everything is collected rather than
purchased and, at least at present, most of that collecting is done
locally such that any specimens, rock, or sand can be moved from the
wild to the aquarium in an hour or two - totally different from the
tropical situation.

My personal opinion agrees with Susan and Wayne; your rock is, almost
without doubt, far more 'alive' than it looks right now.

You may be able to speed things up a bit by inoculating your sand bed
with some sort of detrivore kit in the faint hope of migration between
sand and rock. Here's a list of suppliers that was recently posted on
another forum (IOW: I haven't got a clue if any of these places is any
better than any other):
http://ipsf.com/

http://inlandaquatics.com/

http://billsreef.safeshopper.com/

http://www.essentiallivefeeds.com/

http://www.garf.org/




Optimistically yours,

Alex