Dutch Reef Rock is a new aquarium company that specializes in making artificial reef aquarium rock in a wide range of shapes and sizes for all kinds of reef tanks. Handmade artificial reef aquarium rock is nothing new and many companies have been making them in the US, France and Indonesia for many years but one thing that stands out about Dutch Reef Rock is just how many different shapes they have in their catalog of sustainably produced reefscaping material.
The shapes offered by Dutch Reef Rock encompass more than 30 different styles which fall broadly under base, shelf, and bones (branching) rocks with a wide spread across each of these different categories. If you’ve ever seen or at least remember natural live rock bins, even though these rocks came from the wild they generally fell under base, shelf and branch rocks but even with these natural rock shapes you would be hard pressed to find thirty rocks that are noticeably different from each other since many of these would be rounded and lumpy from the process or harvesting and shipping.
These rocks are made of reef safe material, of course, and they are constructed in such a way that they inherently have a wide range of large and small pores to encourage colonization by beneficial bacteria and other microscopic reef life. Not only are the shapes of Dutch Reef Rocks highly varied, but they each have a very pleasing, heterogenous surface that isn’t solidly colored but is instead peppered by a very attractive mixture of pink, purple, grey and white which among the best coloring we’ve seen on hand made reef aquarium rocks.
Dutch Reef Rocks appears to have gone live sometime last fall so there aren’t yet many examples of reef tanks using their wide range of shapes and sizes but if the price is right and competitive in Europe, we are confident that DRR will be very popular with our reefing friends across the Atlantic. We hope to see Dutch Reef Rock make its way to America someday but in the meantime we are just stoked to see such a thoughtful catalog of reef aquascaping rocks that are sustainable with no impact on natural reef environments.
