Tank at 4 months

[tyrisis]

Well it now has been 4 month of being in the saltwater hobby. Little bit of MONEY :roflmao: Little bit of TIME :roflmao: Little bit of convincing the girlfriend that we need this :dual: and the tank went from this........

[tyrisis]

and after going through several stages and an extra 65 lbs of rock from org and some that I made my self it has ended up Like so... :) I still need to place all the corals.. this will be done over the next week.

Tyson :cheers:

[2Oceans]

Rockwork & tank is starting to look good , nice job on the DIY rock! ;)

[Michael_Lambert]

Its looking very good!

What lights you got on there now?

[TJ_Burton]

Looking good Tyson!

[Mckitrick]

Home Made Rock, eh? Good stuff! How long did it take to cure?

[tyrisis]

I let it Cure 4 days under plastic, then 2 months underwater.

Then droped 40 - 50 lbs into the tank and checked the ph then next morning ... Still at 8.1 so all is good :)

Well did not like the rock work like it was... Will post new pics soon .... LMAO...

Have another 100 lbs of oyster shell.... Hmmm Not sure if i will have enough room in my tank...:)

But willl be making that over the christmas holidays...

Tyson

[tyrisis]

Well I Re did the rock again..... and here it is with most of my corals in place.... Just waiting on delivery of my Open Green Brain now....

[Mike]

Looks very nice!

[Mckitrick]

That's great! Hark made some home-made rock and his PH was up around 12!! for the longest time...

What's your magic formula?

[tyrisis]

Well I am sorry to say ... There was no magic formula..

As you can tell by the colour of the rock I used Federal White portland cement and oyster shell....( from what i have read you can use most any cement.. type 1, 2, 3, white, grey , i just had access to this at the time..)

You have to option of using different aggragates ( larger substrats) instead of the oyster shell... or use oystershell in the mix and use the crushed coral for the mould and it will stick to the out side... depends on the look you are going for...

I used a mix of about 4 oyster shell to 1 cement. ( I just used a small scouper nothing special) then just mixed with water to a mouldable consistancy. ( not sure how much just till it looked good to me )

Then i placed it into the mould ( I used oyster shell there too ) covered it with plastic ( to keep the moister in ) and let it cure for 4 days... then into a bucket ( you should have a ph in there to move the water but i did not) I did water changes 1 after the first week then after the second week then every 2 - 4 days ( when I remebered ) untill 2 months had passed.... ( you should at this point do a water change, let sit uncirculating for 2 days, then circulate for 1 hour and then test the ph of the fresh water) :) ( thats what you should do however i just droped it in the tank and hoped for the best... LOL.. My ph is only ever been 8.1 so a little raise might have been good for it but no such luck.)

If you are curing the rock outside in the summer you know you are good when the rock starts to grow alge.

Well this was my first attemt at it and seemed to work well for me, will try sometthing a little different next time... mabe some hollow spots that smaller fish might get into like a maze throughout the rock, have heard of using bendable plastic sticks to mould over and get some kewl effects.

if your looking for more info you could always e-mail me :)

Tyson

[Mckitrick]

What do you think of including PVC shavings in the mix to promote Coraline growth?

Another thing I've heard of when making live rock is to use large pieces of pasta in there so that while you're curing, the pasta disintegrates and makes the rock super porous..

[tyrisis]

I have also heard PCV or ABS or CPCV may leach into your system ????

As for porous The one piece of rock ( bout 2' long 2" thick and 8" wide. you could count the drain time in min.. not sec... :) If you make the mix right with the oyster shell ( not overly wet or dry ) you should get porous enough The pasta would give you the macro pores and more design possibly... ( I think i read the same artical... pressing the shell pasta in to the final product for design)

Pls correct me if I am wrong bout the PVC or ABS...

Tyson

[Mckitrick]

ABS most definitely will leach over time. Virgin PVC however is safe. It's used in Residential water supply applications so it BETTER not leach over time.