Marinus,
As a cultivator of live rock in the Texas Hill Country and because you asked, I have provided a link and a discourse on where the limestone comes from for diver collected live rock in the Gulf of Mexico.
Tampa Bay Saltwater and Gulf Coast Live Rock have offshore leases 10 miles west of Tampa Bay. Florida Live Rock is 30 miles west of Tampa Bay in a water depth of 50'. All threer diver owners have been in the business for 25+ years. I consider these men enviromental pioneers. They add to the enviromental diversity of the ocean bottom of what used to be flat sandy bottom. I have done business with all three men with tremendous satisfaction. Contrary to what one post on this thread said, the rock is on bottom for years. I prefer uncured live rock for the extreme diversity that it carries on it.
Here in follows the history of one vendors live rock.
About Us
Gulf Live Rock.com is one of the leaders in the aquacultered Florida live rock industry. We offer invertebrates from the Gulf of Mexico, live sand, and the finest quality live rock available in the industry. Gulf Live Rock is unquestionably the most beautiful of the live rocks in the world. Our live rock can be found in public displays, live fish shops, tropical fish wholesalers, public aquariums, research facilities, universities and private aquariums all around the country. We are one of the few aquaculturalists permitted by the federal government and the state of Florida to grow and harvest live rock specifically for marine aquariums in the gulf of mexico.
We have around half a million pounds of live rock under production on our federal live rock lease site located 10 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico's EEZ zone. We use a natural calcium carbonate rock called Bryozoan facies to build our lease site. This rock is basically prehistoric coral and reefs that are dug up in south Florida by construction sites, farmers, pool makers and rock quarries. Remember that most of Florida was under water thousands of years ago. If you look closely many rocks contain visible prehistoric marine fossils and shells. This rock is extremely porous with many nooks and crannies for fish and inverts to seek refuge in.
We hand pick every piece of rock to ensure that it will make a beautiful piece of live rock. Most of our rock was dumped several tons at a time by a crane off of a large barge on our lease site in the summer of 1996. So you can image how much marine life has grown on it over the last 15 years. We also have a newer section on our lease site that we add rock to periodically. This ensures that we will have quality live rock for the years to come. The rules for depositing rock have changed science 1996. We now have to deposit the rock 100 pounds at a time in baskets which have to be lowered with a rope to the ocean bottom by hand. A diver then arranges the rock by hand for the best possible growth on the bottom of the ocean. These new rules require a lot more hard work, boat gas and man hours.
We own and operate two boats that we use to deposit and harvest our live rock with. A 22 foot famous craft (The Blue Bullet) and a 25 foot pro line (A Little Bigger). Once we harvest the live rock it is brought to our main facility located in Tampa, Florida and it is stored in our 1500 gallon system. In 2012 we acquired a Marine Life Divers License for the state of Florida (1 of 50 available). It is kind of like a liquor license. You cant simply get one from the state. No new MLD licenses will ever be issued by the state. You have to buy it from someone that already has one and they are not cheap. This license allows us to collect live tropical fish, eels, inverts, live marine plants, soft corals, sponges and tons of other cool things for the saltwater aquarium. We set up a large collecting and holding facility located in Marathon key, in the Florida keys. We also added a 25 foot parker and a 17 foot cat to our collecting fleet. We have helped set up thousands of salt water aquariums, so if you need help with yours please contact us. Thank you for choosing our company for your live rock and other aquarium needs.
