Hello all
I'm interested to know if anyone has ever made any live rock. I've heard that you can use cement and crushed oyster shells and make it into any shape that you want.
Considering the cost of live rock in my area at $10/Ib, I would need a bank loan to fill my 100gal. tank.
yeah rob & a few others have. im sure if you wanted to go that route they can give the details.
how much is dry rock? exact same pieces as live except you cycle it yourself.
building your own can be cool, you get that mental picture in your head translated into your tank. How ever, like anything, draw-backs exist. curing/leaching time alone is enough to put me off. couple of months can go by to become inert. Its also weight, displacement, poor pore capacity (gota love the english language- thats a tropical fruit ) unless of course you like sticking thousands of needle holes into it when its molded...lol
Not to mention i have seen very few examples created 100% that look natral.
The most ive been tricked visually is when someone has used it in conjunction with dry reef rock & used the agro mixture to create structure of the reef.
i agree with veriann. i have made my own rocks. we made 250 lbs for our last tank. the concept is a good one. i never thought they were porous enough and they weighed a lot. the time waiting for them to cure is a bummer too. but if you want to give it a try then garf is a great place to look. look at their howto movies as well and there is a short video of making aragocrete arches to give you an idea of how they do it.
I started the hobby with $10lb rock, luckily I didn't buy very much or I'd be broke and out of the hobby. I have purchased almost 100 lbs worth online and have been happy with the results. Granted you have to be patient and wait for it to cure, but the savings is well worth it.
I have never used Marco's, but I have never heard of any one being unhappy with him either!
I know GARF has a how-to, but I've heard mixed results....
I used 90 dry base rock in my nano, and today I have no idea which pieces were the actual LR anymore. There's a guy in my local club that makes DIY rock that has gotten great reviews. He sells it in the nice high end LFS here and did a lot of custom work in their Deltec dispaly tank. He recently did this in his new 220:
Images reposted below
I could point you in his direction. If you have questions, he may be able to help.
Where there should be pictures or links, what I see is a Reef Central logo with text at the bottom stating "Reef Central and Reef Keeping Magazine do not support image hot linking. Please visit our sites to view our content"
Do y'all see this, or am I being black-balled here?
I am very much not a computer type (use a mac so i can just turn it on and it works!), so I've never heard of hot-linking. I just Googled it. Apparently it's when you put an image from someone else's website on your own by linking it, and effectively using someone else's bandwidth (I've heard this term, but I'm not sure what it is, except that it's expensive) Certainly stealing bandwidth is bad, but does linking to a friends image on another forum really the same thing?
Alright, this has nothing to do with DIYlive rock (which I also don't know anything about), so I'll shut up now. Sorry for the intrusion.
the rocks were a fun project. they just didnt turn out how i planned them lol. mostly my fault. it takes some practice. i think if you added some plastic cuttings or lighter media to your mix it would give you more surface area and lighter rocks. i have read of some doing this. and i have bought rocks from GARF that were pretty nice. i just dont think they were as porous and light. the coralline does cover them making them hard to tell from the others. they are more cost friendly to do yourself.
) unless of course you like sticking thousands of needle holes into it when its molded...lol 
V-series Productions 
the time waiting for them to cure is a bummer too. but if you want to give it a try then garf is a great place to look. look at their howto movies as well and there is a short video of making aragocrete arches to give you an idea of how they do it.
