Man Made Live Rock poll?

[lapdog2020]

Would you ever put Man made live rock in your tank if it was fully cured and cheeper then what your buying now?

Tell me why you wouldn't!

and/or

Tell me why you would!

Is there much of a diff. Between the two.

[hillegom]

I vote NO
Would you put an imitation fish in your tank?

[lastlight]

I have doubts about the porosity and genuine appearance of man-made rock. I only buy rock once I prefer to have real rock.

[Jfish]

I dont have any man made live rock in my tank or have I had any experience with it. However if it served the same purpose of housing bacteria just as well as the real stuff but at a cheaper price I would use it. Eventually it would get covered in coraline and noone would know the difference. I'd probably mix it in with some real stuff if it didn't look that great but if it was easy to stack and aquascape with I wouldn't be against using it.

[blacknife]

I made some 2 months ago... tried to make it pretty b ut its still ugly.. and heavier than what i was planing. and the ph still has not stabilized.

i think if it ever stabilizes it will go in my sump but for the DT i vote real thing only.

[Cliff]

I feel the same way as you blacknife. I actually looked into this two months ago. I just thought I would end up with a bunch of different looking / styles of rocks. I was also worried about the longterm effects of the cement in my tank.

[Dez]

I feel that they have their uses. I have a bunch of cement in my tank. I have made some man made rock for the purposes of hiding large "Y' fittings and nozzles in my aquarium. I feel that it looks more natural than seeing piping in the aquarium. Many people that have come over and have seen the rock in person has been fairly impressed as you can't tell the difference once you have the variety of stuff grown and living on it. I have seen no negative effects in 15 months. After all, frag plugs are man made rock. They have all been encrusted over and hidden not in my aquarium.

[BlueTang<3]

I feel that they have their uses. I have a bunch of cement in my tank. I have made some man made rock for the purposes of hiding large "Y' fittings and nozzles in my aquarium. I feel that it looks more natural than seeing piping in the aquarium. Many people that have come over and have seen the rock in person has been fairly impressed as you can't tell the difference once you have the variety of stuff grown and living on it. I have seen no negative effects in 15 months. After all, frag plugs are man made rock. They have all been encrusted over and hidden not in my aquarium.

I will go with Dez on this I never even noticed his mad made rock in his tank he did a great job of it. As for the frag plugs I make all my own plugs now. The only thing to worry about is phosphates leaching out.

[blacknife]

Mine might look ok once i get it in the tank but i change the water in the bucket of rocks every few days and the ph is off the chart on my hot tub test strips im using... although it has started to slow down.

I am sure most of the commercial products come pre-cured. I would also consider trying again but with perlite in the mix as well to increase the porosity and lighten it up a bit.

And dez's outputs do look pretty natural.

[lastlight]

I was mostly referring to a tank full of the stuff. I think Dez mostly has live rock and just made some fancy cement covers for his closed loop. His was very well done and yes his tank looks incredible.

[Cugio]

If you can find white portland cement then sure. The grey portland cement we have just throws it off. It takes a long time for the salt rock to dissolve and cure. I wasn't pleased with my final product as the oyster shell look did not even compare to compare to actual live rock. Then again, that was just the recipe I used.

[Rymah]

when i have the time to set up my pico im acctualy going to try some.. i found
http://www.cerameco.com/

and they seem pretty legit. from what ive herd from people that acutally have bought from them they acctually work..

plus they have some awesome designs... i hate aquascapeing...

its deffinatly not cheaper though... its basically base rock when you get it and you have to seed/cure it yourself.. i was quoted 150-200$ for 30 lbs.

[Aquattro]

I think it's selling yourself short for long term aesthetics of the tank. You can buy dry rock fairly cheap and even used live rock at a decent price. I'll have a bunch of rock that I'm selling shortly for $3/pound, just because it doesn't fit in with my landscaping. For that kind of price, why bother with a bunch of cement and the work involved making it?

[donlite]

I purchased some from down east. I paid for the the more expensive ones with lots of live coral on them. They said it would be ok to ship to calgary via post. I paid about 150.00$. When I opened the box there was very little coral on it and it was all dead. It looked nothing like on the web site. Win some lose some, Don:sad:

[mark]

depends on the type/maker. Seem some DIY that looks great, other that look like total cr*p.

If buying though (not trying DIY) for the price would say look for true LR or LR that has dried out for sale.

[Skimmerking]

I made about 100 lbs to this day it porous and full of life

[SmallFry]

I've already made a batch for my new build, and am trying to cure it, which is taking a while - water still goes off the scale of my pH test in a day, though I am using warm/hand hot water to accelerate the leaching process. This is after two weeks seriously trying i.e. a water change every day. I don't have a great idea of what's going on because my test kit only goes up to 8.8 so no actual pH, just how fast it goes up..

A far as I have got with the adventure, the plusses are that it's cheap with no pests, and you can design your own aquascape right from scratch rather than make do with what you get in your box(es) of rock.

The minuses so far are the fact it's probably heavier, and the curing process is a pain in the ass..

Assuming that it gets the filtration job done, which a lot of people's experiences say it will, then the really authentic look is a luxury in my view, whereas lighting, for instance, is not. I am under no illusion that my rock will look just the same as 'real' rock.. I'll be using the savings to go the LED route which will (hopefully) ultimately save me money and be less damaging to the environment.

If I had unlimited funds, for sure I'd have good dry rock as well as the LED lighting, but in the real world I have to make my choices..

[SmallFry]

I vote NO
Would you put an imitation fish in your tank?

I wouldn't have imitation fish either, but they would match my imitation sunlight, imitation current, imitation food and imitation seawater.. :mrgreen:

All depends how far you're comfortable following the same argument I guess...

[Delphinus]

I have a cave rock in my tank that was made by shaping it around a hand in a nylon disposable glove. The idea is neat and finally after about 8 years or so I have a fish who loves the spot (my trigger) for sleeping but otherwise nobody (fish-wise) really cared much for it. It took a long time to get covered in coraline and look natural, like maybe 2 years or thereabouts compared to the usual couple of months for a typical reef rock.

I dunno. I certainly see nothing wrong with a mixture of rocks when done nicely and they've been awesome, but I've seen some rockwork that was exclusively DIY rock and either looks contrived or covered in hair algae. So it seems to me the potential is for it to be an epic win, or epic fail, or any point in between.

I understand some DIY rock nowadays people are using rocksalt to increase the porosity of the rock .. interesting. I haven't seen any made like that in person though.

[Marlin65]

I wouldn't have imitation fish either, but they would match my imitation sunlight, imitation current, imitation food and imitation seawater.. :mrgreen:

All depends how far you're comfortable following the same argument I guess...

Thats funny well said.:lol:

[wingedfish]

I understand some DIY rock nowadays people are using rocksalt to increase the porosity of the rock

this is how I built my rock a couple months ago. I molded it in the garden dirt. it's very porous. presently it is in my tank and looks nothing like "real" rock. I won't comment on weather or not others should use it. I like the price and the fact that I didn't rape a reef for it.

[Stones]

I ended up ordering a pillar and a few flat pieces of Aquaroche ceramic rock from a US vendor when setting up my 225 last May. They pieces themselves are made from clay rather than cement and they look great now that they are starting to get covered with coralline algae. However, they are also the only pieces of rock in my tank that have been plagued by hair algae.

I soaked the pieces in RO/DI water for close to 4 months, changing the water out every few weeks to hopefully leach out any residual phosphate. My tank has tested 0.00 ppm phosphate with a hanna phosphate colorimeter since the get go so I believe the nutrients are bound up in the rock and are not leaching out into the water column. Either way, I don't know if I'll ever be able to get rid of the hair algae on the ceramic rock since my fish show no interest and manual pruning is alot less fun than it sounds.

If I had to do it again, I don't think I would use man made rock despite all of the amazing shapes and sculptured pieces that are becoming more readily available to the hobbyist. Drilling live rock and inserting acrylic or PVC rods along with the conspicious use of zip ties in my opinion can also create shapes and structures that are equivalent to some of the ceramic rock being manufactured.

[plutoniumJoe]

When I first got back into the hobby I was and still am very impressed with the Garf project. I was also on a budget (Oh how things change). I made rock using a variety of techniques including adding acrylic shavings and pasta to increase coralline growth and poricity.

I put the rock in the toilet water collection areas(not the bowl collection area) so that it would get fresh water several times a day. At first it did not look natural in the tank but over time it was difficult to tell what was natural and what was made. I used mainly for structural bases or places where I needed tunnels. I was able to get some pretty good deals on rock as things progressed and now have more than I need but have kept some of the original man made rock in places that are less visible.