On Mon, 18 Sep 2006 15:53:54 GMT, George Patterson
wrote:

Wilbur Slice wrote:

I've bought live rock and live sand from Tampa Bay Sal****er in
Florida on two occasions. They grab it from the ocean and I think
they might store if for a couple days in holding tanks at their
facility, but then they box it up in the morning and put it on a
flight to Minneapolis, and that afternoon I go to the airport and pick
it up from the freight desk and take it home and put it in my tank
less than 24 hours after it was taken from the ocean (or from their
holding tanks).

Nice web site, and the procedure they describe sure sounds better than the one
from Fiji. The rock still spends a fair amount of time in their holding tanks
before they consider it ready to ship; according to their site, anywhere from 3
days to two weeks. They claim to use fluidized bed filters and protein skimmers
on their vats, which I suspect is not done in Fiji or Tonga.

I just ordered 40 pounds of Tonga from another place, but they backordered it. I
need to check shipping costs from Tampa; this may be the way to go for me.



The only think I didn't like about their rock was - it had some Mantis
Shrimps and some hairy crabs hitching a ride, and those suckers were
hard to catch.