Do you like man-mdae purple live rock but don’t want to buy it from your fish store? A Purple Reef is a new outfit making their own “bio-active” artificial rock for reef and marine aquariums and instead of selling through stores, they sell it direct. The spec sheet for A Purple Reef’s man-made rock is nearly identical to the other purple rock maker – hand made rock of a calcium carbonate base, artificially colored purple, cured in freshwater and placed in saltwater holding to colonize with beneficial bacteria to kickstart the aquarium biological cycle.
Where Real Reef’s rock appears to have a semi-glossy purple candy shell, the rock from A Purple Reef seems to have a more pastel and varied appearance with a range of color found over the rock, as if it was air brushed but surely that’s not how APR has colored their rock. APR man made rock costs as little as $5 per pound when purchased online which includes shipping. It’s kind of hard to gauge the quality of the porosity and gnarly-ness of APR rock since there is a lack of pictures of their product but if they keep at it, we hope to see more specific examples of shelf and branch rock like we’ve come to know and love from the wild stuff.
