Buying Fiji live rock from online vendors

Has anyone bought LR form online vendors? If so what vendor do you recommend. I have heard that liveaquaria.com, marinedepot.com, and saltwaterfish.com are all good. Does anyone have any experience with these vendors? Since I am new to the hobby, I want to ask how hard is it to buy the pre-cured live rock and finish curing it yourself? Is it as easy as the vendors make it seem. Trash can with saltwater, powerhead, and several water changes a week for 2-3 weeks. I hope it is this easy, as I will save myself a lot of money buying the LR online and curing it myself as opposed to buying the cured LR from my local FS. Thanks for any advice!

yeah and a heater other than that it is that easy though it will reak that would be the dieoff, when it smells like the ocean a fresh clean saltwater smell your curing process is complete I have not purchased online but I have seen results of people who have purchased online you cant go wrong with liveaquaria, though some others on here have purchased online you can wait for them to chime in hope this helps.

Dear MoeDDS,

I have purchased 90 lbs from my LFS and 50 LBS from Oceanpro Aquatics, Inc. . I was real disapointed with the rocks I received from oceanproaquatics. I especially asked for small pieces and no "bowling ball pieces" as I originally purchased 90 lbs from my LSF, and small pieces would of helped me a lot!!! When i received my rocks, I opened the box, and ended up with 4 bowling bowl size rocks, and 2-3 small pieces. I was pissed off!!! Plus the rocks did not even look that good. the one from my LFS looked way better, plus i got to "hand pick" the ones that i wanted at my lsf. Theones with nice shapes, holes and corraline.... Maybe I just went to a bad place... can not really tell about other online vendors.... As jelleyman said, he had a good experience with liveaquaria.com I originally wanted to purchase my rocks from there but they would not ship live rocks to canada.... So This is my experience on it... If you ask me, lets say you want to buy 100 lbs. I'd order 50 lbs from live aquaria and wait til you receive it. See the type of rocks you have and sizes... And buy the rest from your LFS to complete your aquascape the way you want....Or take the gamble like I did.... and I ended up beeing real disapointed... Especially that i asked for NO BOWLING BALLS size rocks, and that s all i got....

As for the curing process, I just cured 140 lbs of live rocks and it wasn t that bad.... Just make sure you have a good skimmer, and make sure you will clean the collection cup several times a day... Whatever will end up in your collection cup will definetely small like dead bodies!! So just make sure you clean it up and you should be fine....

And you said that you are starting a new tank??? Why clean it in a garbage can??? Why not just cure it in your tank if it is a new tank with no fish in it yet...?? I personally cured it in my tank with 2 skimmers, water heater, and 2 power heads, and everything went really well....

Anyhow, hope this helps!!! Good luck !!

I am new to reef/coral tanks so please take what I say with a grain of salt...

But like SB's expereience it sounds risky to get rock when you don't know what you are getting especially shape wise.

Do you have a place moe where you can pick out live rock? Or is Fiji LR rare?

I already have fish and invertebrates in the tank, therefore I can not cure it in the tank. I like the idea of ordering a batch first to see what I get and then deciding if I want to buy a second batch or get the rest from the LFS. Thanks for the tips.

If you order your rock from saltwaterfish.com you get free shipping on all orders over 175 bucks. Thats where im planning on ordering mine from.

If the rocks you get are bigger than what you wanted, you can always break them up with a drill/hammer/chisel.

I agree with bitter break em down to the way you want them it wont hurt the rock and you can get creative that way cave ledges/overhangs. Just my oppinion hope it helps

Thanks for all of the suggestions everyone. I think I will order a batch and see how it goes.

I would too.