About Us
GulfLiveRock.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, marine theme parks, major international pet chains, 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 seed 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 a 25 foot Dusky that we use to deposit and harvest our live rock with. Once we harvest the live rock it is brought to our main facility located in Tampa, Florida and it is stored in our 1800 gallon holding system. 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.
