Has Anyone Ever Made DIY Live Rock?

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I've been kicking this idea around myself for a while now. I like the idea of aquascaping with rock I've made myself. The artistic possibilities are off the charts. Using DIY rockscapes you can create anything you can dream up. So I've been doing some research lately. Cement type mixes seem to work pretty well but the drawback is that it seems to take a ton of curing time before they can safely be put into an aquarium.

I'm not that patient. LOL I've run across an idea though that I think I'll be trying at some point. Dental plaster. This stuff will not leach anything into the water once it's cured. It's pretty good stuff and I've run across threads on other forums where people have tried it with success.

The funny thing is I work in a denture lab and use the stuff on a daily basis and it never occurred for me to try it until I started researching DIY rocks. Working with the stuff isn't too difficult but I need to do some testing. There are several grades of the stuff and cost goes up with it so I'm not sure yet just how hard this stuff needs to be. From our supplier we it's about $40 for a 50 pound box of the lower grade stuff and about $70 for the higher grade stuff.

Working in the lab with this the plaster is fairly well cured after about an hour but it does seem to harden the longer it sits so when I get around to trying this I'll probably wait about 24 hours before throwing it into the water. I've read reports where using cement can take up to a month or two but even if I waited a couple of days that's still weeks better.

Something to think about.
 
i have made it. made about 200 lbs for $50. the problem is leaching out the lime. the bigger the rocks the longer it takes. use white portland cement, crushed oyster shells(rinsed), and rocksalt. you use wet playsand to make molds and caves. it is easy to make but like i said the lime leach takes lime. small pieces put in the back of the toilet so you change the water when you flush, for large pieces find a stream or river. i put mine in a river to 3 weeks in milk crates to the water could run through them.
 
jtietz said:
i have made it. made about 200 lbs for $50. the problem is leaching out the lime. the bigger the rocks the longer it takes. use white portland cement, crushed oyster shells(rinsed), and rocksalt. you use wet playsand to make molds and caves. it is easy to make but like i said the lime leach takes lime. small pieces put in the back of the toilet so you change the water when you flush, for large pieces find a stream or river. i put mine in a river to 3 weeks in milk crates to the water could run through them.
Click to expand...

Back of the toilet, that's brilliant!

Sent from my SGH-I747 using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
 
Dental plaster is pretty creative. I wondered that myself. The only drawback I could see is that it inst very poros. But you could form any shape with it.

Im curing a bunch of holey rock (AKA Texas Holey rock) into live rock. Will use it as base rock, some say it dosent look natural but I think it does and the fish will enjoy all of the holes to hide in.
 
I've used agrocrete to make a custom rock wall covering the back of my old 110 gallon tank. I used portland type 3 cement and crushed coral/sand. I also made a few different shaped pieces as well.
 
If you go to your local landscaping company they have lava rock in bulk ... that and some 100% clear silicone and you have a great reef
 
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