Complete Nano On Ebay?

[Spinal]

This has a nice how-to; but I'm a firm believer in experimenting!

http/www.athiel.com/lib10/rockmaking.htm

I like his little picture with "rock types"; but I think I'll be adding one or two types to those! (tower, inverse cone and hollow-clump(by putting a few inflated gloves then clumping the cement-mix around them - the fingers will make small caves and access holes, while the "palm" will make the center hollow)

Michele

 

[Musho3210]

maybe use salt crystals as the pourous maker thingy.

 

[Dorkhedeos]

maybe use salt crystals as the pourous maker thingy.

Rock salt would be perfect

 

[Spinal]

I was reading of someone using salt; but I have a concern with it; nominally that Cement won't set well in acidic water - it will cure well, but it wont set. i.e. You need to "mix" cement with "sweet/fresh" water, and then you can cure it in salty water(but ideally this wouldn't be salty - acidity speeds up the curing, but also makes it more brittle). If not, you risk getting a very brittle mix.

Back to the topic - if the salt doesn't dissolve in mixing, it would work PERFECTLY! If it does dissolve while mixing, its suddenly made a batch of SeaCrete (I'm trademarking that! © ) totally useless. I'm still waiting for my 25kg bag of oyster shells; now I'm ordering some Arag-Alive and some plain aragonite.

I had an idea last night while tinkering with my tank - long thin rocks to hide pipes (I'll take a pipe, cork both ends and then cover it in SeaCrete) and powerheads hidden/embedded in rock! Why cover and hide a powerhead when it can BE a rock?

Michele

edit: Just looked for rock salt - the cheapest seems to be the one used on roads. Short of randsacking my local gritting bin; ay idea where I can find this in smaller quantities? I've found companies selling 1T bags (135£) and 10x25kg bags(£125) but no-one selling a single bag...

Michele

 

[Musho3210]

wax? Then maybe just bake and boil the rock to melt the wax out of it?

 

[Spinal]

wax? Then maybe just bake and boil the rock to melt the wax out of it?

I really like that idea! If I use bees-wax, even if some if left in the rock, it shouldn't dissolve in water! Another option I thought of was calcium tablets; they should be hard enough to not dissolve at first... problem is, they aren't exactly cheap

This will be an interesting tank! I'm tried sticking as much as possible to FW because I'm not really at ease with corall reefs being harvested for fish, rocks and marine creatures... I agree that its hard to breed marine life in captivity, and even harder to do so economically... but as a scuba-diver I do feel that wild life is best obsserved in the wild.

I will do my best to complete this tank totally with captive-bred creatures... Which might be hard, but I'm going to try! I realise this will exclude 80% of fish and 90% of corals but hey, I'm weird

Michele

 

[Musho3210]

it will exclude like 95% of the fish but not corals, there are many many many aquacultured corals now, most branching lps, almost all photosynthetic softies, the sps aquaculturing is a home owned business now... Just talk around with local reefers and get a few frags from them, anemone? No problem, the bta is commonly split, clams? No problem, they are reproducing them in mass quantities, so dont worry about not getting aquacultured corals. You may need to get held back on the CUC though, those are rairly tank raised simply because they are so common in the wild and there numbers are fine, and raising them in captivity is quite hard.... But ive seen a few aquacultured shrimp here and there.

I dunno about the UK but its quite easy to find here in the US, aquacultured live rock, like people who do what your doing and making rock, then dumping in an ocean near a reef, that rock comes covered in life, then it is sold.

 

[Spinal]

it will exclude like 95% of the fish but not corals, there are many many many aquacultured corals now, most branching lps, almost all photosynthetic softies, the sps aquaculturing is a home owned business now... Just talk around with local reefers and get a few frags from them, anemone? No problem, the bta is commonly split, clams? No problem, they are reproducing them in mass quantities, so dont worry about not getting aquacultured corals. You may need to get held back on the CUC though, those are rairly tank raised simply because they are so common in the wild and there numbers are fine, and raising them in captivity is quite hard.... But ive seen a few aquacultured shrimp here and there.

I dunno about the UK but its quite easy to find here in the US, aquacultured live rock, like people who do what your doing and making rock, then dumping in an ocean near a reef, that rock comes covered in life, then it is sold.

I've found it fairly hard to find aquacultured rock here! The one place I found has it as "eco-rock" and is imported from California... it also costs twice as much as normal rock! (I'm guessing its because tropical oceans are hard to find around here )

Question: is CUC clean-up-crew?

 

[Musho3210]

yup