pics of my DIY rock for the Monster! Big Pics warning
 

So here is some shots of the first attempt. In the 2nd pic you can see where this piece will sit in the tank. The purpose of making them against the glass was to save some room in the tank and have more open sandy areas. The tank is going in a wall to viewing from the side will only be had in the tank room. The sculptures will also sit about 3-4" higher then they are in the pics as they will be sitting on something to support them at the top of the sandbed.
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Here is the 2nd sculpture that is going on the otherside of the tank. This piece is a little more porus as I used a little more oyster shells in the mix than I did on the first one. Both are in the cleaned bathtub for the next month and a half or so for curing and I am changing the water every 2 days.

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This pic gives you a great idea of how porus you can make the rock.
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Wow cool. Very realistic. You can make a fortune selling these. Culture them into live rock and sell them for $6/lb. :)

Hmmm. Well along with my frag farm maybe I will have a rock farm too :lol:
each piece weighs aprox 35lb.
Thanks for the complements. They turned out better than I figured they would.

looking good....how much fake rock vs live rock are you going for? what kinds of lr?

Um, OK, now I'm concerned about how much weight you're going to have in that tank and can it hold all that weight?

Work of art in progress, Jon!

The weight should be fine, Sam. Jon's pieces are quite flat, and when you think about it, the natural LR that we buy sits on a very few points, and have much higher "point loads", which we load up even more by piling more pieces on top.
I've also seen 180g tanks completely full of LR, curing.

Mitch

looks like you didn't have problems getting the bottles out. nice one!

Yea there's a funny story behind that. the first piece I made I used glass canning jars for the caves. I thought I could just slide them out :lol: yea right! I hade to smash the glass and then get it out.
On the second piece I used empty seachem calcium plastic containers and after about 8 hours(so the cement is not completley solid yet)you can just slide them out.

Sam. With the 3/4" bottom I don't have any worries about smashing the glass. Thick stuff!

Mictch. Thanks!

Well Sean I am adding these two pieces on each end of the tank and then I figure I will not have to add much more then what's currently in the 90g.
I may go buy some pieces of TUFA just incase I need some more rock but I do not plan on purchasing any more"live rock". I think the 150lbs that I currently have in my 90g will be enough to seed any other rock I add in the tank. I like to think my initial $700 investment in rock from Wai's 2 years ago is enough for me. Unless I get a 1000000g tank :roll: i don't think anymore is in my future.

DIY LIVE ROCK
 

HOw long do i have to keep the rock in the tub with the oyster shells for. And it it ok to use lots of macroni in the rock for the pourous along with

TUFA rock: My wife has a recipe for tufarock and was wandering if its the same as making the Rock like yours is the curing tiem the same..

FWIW when I ripped my tank down and re did all the rock I cut a number of peices of pvc to length just about the same depth as my live sand, I put the pipe on end so the other open end was up and simply put the rock on that. My thoughts were that it would allow sand dwelling life to move under the rock with out causing it to fall AND it took all the sharp points of the glass.

I gather this is aragocrete you are making? If so I would love to hear details of how you did it, I have the cement but just haven't gotten around to trying it yet. I read that if you cure the rock for a few days in open air then give it a vinegar bath and rinse it off, that will usually cure it for use.... any truth to that?

FWIW when I ripped my tank down and re did all the rock I cut a number of peices of pvc to length just about the same depth as my live sand, I put the pipe on end so the other open end was up and simply put the rock on that. My thoughts were that it would allow sand dwelling life to move under the rock with out causing it to fall AND it took all the sharp points of the glass.

I gather this is aragocrete you are making? If so I would love to hear details of how you did it, I have the cement but just haven't gotten around to trying it yet. I read that if you cure the rock for a few days in open air then give it a vinegar bath and rinse it off, that will usually cure it for use.... any truth to that?

When i did my DIY LR a year or so ago it ook about 5-6 weeks of curing to drop the PH to desirable levels. Air curing and a vinegar bath isn't going to do it. This stuff forms a crust in the curing bin for the first 4 weeks.

Clinton

Re: DIY LIVE ROCK
 

Well I plan on keeping it in the bathtub till the ph of the water dosent rise above 8.0. I have heard of people mixing in pasta but I didnt do that and don't feel that it's nessecary. I think many people that are doing the macaroni thing are making their agrocrete out of just sand, which will not be porus at all.

Orchid guy. yes this is agrocrete I am making.
Here is the process I used. If I don't finish the instructions right away I will finish is soon. I am at work :oops:

So I mixed 5 cups of cement powder and a little bit of water in a bucket. mix this till all the lumps are gone. the cement/water should be fairly runny. I then added 17cups of oystershells to the bucket and about 2 to 3 cups of sand to the bucket. So basically 1:5 ratio of cement:substrate.
Mix this very well till all the cement covers the shells. You will probably have to add more water to the mix. I made this mix the consistancy of cottage cheese.

Once it's mixed well I added a layer of sand to the bottom of my plywood mould. I grabed a handful of cement mix at a time and just let it fall through my fingers. This is where the creativity begins. once I was happy with my sculpture I covered it with sand, reason is some of the sand will stick to the wet cement and give the rock a white appearance instead of grey. I find that I have to let these big pieces sit for about 3 days before I move it. Smaller pieces can be moved in about 24 hours or so. I then took a clean paint brush and brushed the sand off and let it sit for another day and then I put it in the fresh water to begin the curing process.

If you are using a container to make caves like I did then it's best and easiest to take the container out after about 8 hours or so .. after 8 hours the cement is still damp and it will be easiest to take it out at that point.

Did i miss anything?

Sounds good, man that is going to be awesome looking.

thanks will start to make some after my trip to FRANCE for the weekend and people say that the army is crappy . ye haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwww .all bills paid for...

:lol: seeya next week...

asmodeus, I spent 5 years in the Navy, a buddy of mine worked in base traffic in Victoria, he would phone me, Flight leaving friday evening for Aussie with a stop over in Hawaii, wanna go? All we had to pay for were our box lunches both ways, so round trip airfare to Hawaii was $6... there are some things I miss about the forces.

Canadian Man, Did you use regular concrete or the white(expensive) stuff?

Just regular stuff. I may have purchsed the white stuff but I got my supplies from a fellow reefer here in Calgary.

I bought the expensive stuff, the stuff Garf recomends,... $25 a bag... Hope it works... lol

Should, just make sure you mix the cement and water first.

So cool, Jonathan! What a great idea, ok if we adopt it when we get our next tank (hoping it will be around 200 gal).

you bet! I got it from some post on RC. so its not my origonal idea anyway :wink:

Jon, I dry mixed my ingredients before adding the water.

The dripping from your hand is an excellent idea, the final product will be more porous and that is what you want is nice fluffy rock. :D

Looks good, don't for get to build some arches for the fish to swim thru.

I decided to " kick it up a notch " LOL ... and used eggcrate as a support and did both sides and back of my 300 gallon inwall tank with arogcrete ... been up for about 4 weeks now and almost past the diatom stage. Basically have a " wall " of live rock is what I am shooting for. Will see how long it takes for coraline to grom and then build support for live rocks

Cheers

Rasta

That sounds like a cool idea rasta!
Welcome to canreef :exclaim:
I see your in calgary!
What part of the city you in?
I am in sw.

Thanks for the welcome ... followed a link from RC today and found this place ... I am in S.E Calgary ... The " wall " seems to be OK so far ... cant wait to see some coraline on it tho :)

Cheers

Rasta

Cool!
There are quite a few of us on here from Calgary as you may find out in the Calgary Forum. There is alot of knowledge to be had on here and hopefully we can get together sometime so I can see your rock wall and you can check out my set up as well.

cheers

Sounds like a plan ... if I could figure out how to post a pic you could see it sooner LOL

Cheers

Rasta