Blake has agreed to do a DIY workshop on making and curing live rock for the June meeting at his house. I pretty much insisted after our travels to north Arkansas last week. We got to see some cured live rock that Keepers of the Reef had made and it was really impressive. I had always thought that making your own live rock would produce heavy non-porus lumps of cement but quite the contrary. The rock is very light and very porus with the benefit of being able to make any shape that you want. It takes some time to cure the rock and lower the ph but the benefits in cost and conservation far out way the need for patience. I am as excited about this workshop as I was the phyyto workshop that Norman put on for for the March meeting. I hope that everyone will turn out to see and make some rock and consider using man made live rock for there next project. I was a big sceptic but as they say "For once I was blind - now I see", I think you will too if you give it a shot.
I remember reading about making your own on the GARF website. It looked like you could do some really cool things. I am pumped about this workshop! I have a spot in my tank that I would love to custom build a piece of rock for.
I am planning on making some rocks, so they will be cured and ready to put in your tank by the time of the meeting. You can also take home the rock you make. But a word of warning... BIG rocks are very hard to transport before they are cured, and you have to move all the sand use to make the mold. If you want to make a "larger" rock, you need to let us know because we will need more material and possibly a bigger container to work with, and you will probably have to leave it here to set for a week before it can be transported without fear of breakage. I was thinking we could make smaller rocks, no bigger than an open hand or fist. This will be a lot of fun. Messy but fun.
Chris came to Cabot to get a coral, and we had a chance to slap together some more rock. April and I mixed up some rock and molded my two plastic rock boxes full. Chris didn't want to make any because of his finger :roll: , so he took pictures... Here is a rock when we finished molding it and covered it with sand: Putting more sand in the box and wetting it, so it would hold it's shape: Still trying to get enough water in there to wet the sand: Another thing, if you want to make bigger rocks, pickup a plastic box like I have above or a wash tub like the white box you see above. Remember, the bigger the box, the heavier it is, and you have to take it home with you! Please let us know in this forum if you are going to BYOB (bring your own box) so we can account for that by buying more sand.
This is the first party I have gone to where BYOB didn't mean I was going to get hammered. I will be bringing a box.
About the same size as your Rubbermaid one. Where is the best place to get sand locally? I want to pick some up for my own use and I need some for a tank. I have been using Aragamax Select, is that what you are using?
The reason we are concerned is, the majority of the stuff you will have in the boxes is sand for the mold. I would not recommend bringing three 30 gal containers and then try to get them home. I would do some here and then some at home so you don't have to carry all that back with you. Hopefully Chris will chime in soon. We may have to up the cost a little for the workshop if you want to do MASSIVE amounts.
Just kidding, wanted to see what you would say. I just plan to do a couple small rocks to learn how to do it. I know it will be fun and interesting. You can relax, I'll go easy on you.
We can make quite a bit of rock. I just don't want anyone to get frustrated about the process by over doing it the first time and ending up with lumps of concrete, instead of nice shapes. I really recommend everyone start out pretty slow with this and make a few small rocks, working up in complexity slowly so you don't waste a lot of material on rocks you will never want to use. BUT remember, if you cure that rock and seed and age it in your tank/sump, someone could use/buy it.
James contacted me the other day about putting acrylic shavings in the rock, which at first I thougt "Why go to the trouble". But after reading the benifits of increasing the rate or coraline algae encrustation and lighting the rock even more it really sounded like a cool thing to do. So I will do some routing with acrylic over the next week or so and James said that he would go with me to ACI Plastics to support each other when we try and explain to them why we want to collect the acrylic waste of the floor of there warehous. :?
Just to bring this up again... We need to know if you will be bringing your own box. Please nothing excessive. I have plenty of small boxes, for making a nice sized rock.
