DIY Live rock

[triga22]

Well after being asked/volunteered on Tuesday I have finally found the time to post up this thread. The main reason fro me making my own live rock was the cost. Live rock can run you $7-$12 a pound and I could make all of the shapes however I wanted for about $3 a pound. There are multiple recipes out there but I am not sure which ratio I used. The ingredients I used were crushed up oyster shells(Used to feed chickens), water, and concrete. Some people have used crushed coral as a substitute.
Basically you start off by mixing your water, concrete, and water. Get a big rubber made tub and fill it with about a foot of damp play sand. Make your rock molds in the sand and then put another inch or two of sand on top of that. You could make two-three layers of rock. I did two. Let it sit there for a couple of days until the rock is hardened.
DIY Live Rock is very basic so if you were to add it into your tank your pH would skyrocket killing your animals! Not good. So you can use the same tub if you like, take out the sand and put the rocks back in it. Fill it up to the top. Change the water every 2-3 days and do that for about a month. it does depend on how much rock you are curing. Mine took about 6 weeks to be right enough to add to my tank.
Here are some picture of the rock I made and the rock a year later.

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[triga22]

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[triga22]

Those pictures of my tank are somewhat old. I will try to get more recent pictures of the rock. Enjoy!

 

[lorenk]

Tyler, nice work!

I have the ingredients but haven't done it yet.

Did you not use Salt as well to make it more porous?

 

[gwhiz]

Another alternative to salt that I've heard is to push soda straws or coffee stirrers through the 'rocks' while they harden (cap one end of the straw first) to make channels in the rock. I made a test batch a while back but didn't do this. I would if I were doing it again.

Another thing I did while I was making rocks was to fill some egg cartons with the mixture. It's great for mounting frags--looks a little more natural than the frag plugs and the extra weight keeps frags from getting knocked over as much.

 

[triga22]

Loren, I didnt I have seen many people shove stuff in their rocks. But me being the first time It was really a test. If I do it again now that I know how I will make it more porus.

 

[jade76]

Well done!!

 

[triga22]

Thanks

 

[olds350racer]

Great looking DIY rock!
On a side note...
It was my understanding that salt will inhibit the curing of cement. I've made it with salt before and it seemed to make the rock VERY brittle once cured. Maybe I was using too much salt... my first batch was so porous it was floating! Has anyone else tried salt?

 

[jade76]

racer..from my understanding the brittleness from the rock sometimes occurs when too much salt (all though some is needed) is mixed deep into the cement as opposed to embedding small pockets of it.

 

[jtshack]

Tyler, it was great meeting you at Tony's - I'm so glad we got the chance to talk! Thanks for putting this thread up. I think I'm going to give it a try. I want to try to do what Glenn ("Ramone") did with the balloons to make a cave of sorts. They were awesome looking in his tank and gave a great area for smaller fish to hide out. I'll let you know how it works out and post my results...

Thanks!! :thumbs:

 

[triga22]

No problem. It was great meeting you as well.

 

[crew]

there are a few ways you could make it porous..

balloons would work, pockets of salt would work, once they dissolve in the water you get nice holes... straws would make the rock to uniform in my opinion... what if you used larger grain salt to make it more sponge like...

you could also try putting candies in the rock that will dissolve out of the water... gummy worms i imagine would work well

 

[jtshack]

dawgdude;178498 wrote: The best thing I found for making a cave was a rubber glove. I blew it up and left a few little holes where the fingers were and you can tie off some fingers too.

Hadn't heard of the rubber glove method...that's a good idea. Would make it easy to pop frags in the holes too if they weren't too big.

 

[spike]

Here are some pics of past rock work. The cave and the rock with the cany cane have only been in my system about 5 weeks. Not much coraline growth yet. The last pic of the round one had been a base rock in my 75, also one of the first I ever made.
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[triga22]

Wow, the rock looks great!

 

[ckwatson]

I am going to be upgraded my tank in about 4 months. Can some one or a couple of people post links to site they ued or post there methods for making rock. I would like any ideas on making it as porous. More info on the salt. amount to use. some one said if you using too much can mess with the curing proses and make it brittle

 

[gwhiz]

http://www.garf.org/">http://www.garf.org/</a>

Click on How to pages (on the left) then Agragocrete. You'll find a number of links to different methods, shapes etc...