The Ultimate DIY Rocks!

Wow, two posters posting pictures in one day. Anyone want to make it three?
:lol:

Nice job, KingHokus, and thanks for posting pic's. I've found that the salt really darkens the grey cement at the beginning (noting your almost black rocks), but that it slowly returns to a more natural cement grey during the kure.

Thanks for sharing :D
 
i put some salt in a big bowl and plopped come cement on that then i added more salt to create holes and caves and whatnot. then i just kept plopping it in layers. about 50 lbs of rock used 80 lbs of salt mostly in making the shapes, not so much mixed in to the mix. although my first batch has a hefty amount of salt in it. we'll see how that turns out.
 
And that is why I stopped casting in salt. Granted, I could reclaim about 70% of the salt to be reused, but it really started to add up. That and the salt would wick the moisture from the rock and most of my rock would be bone dry in a few days. which isn't good for the cement.
Now that I have practice, I get better control and use a lot less when I use damp fine grain sand.

So anyway, I got the Hankscraft Humidifier today. Works great, but as we thought, it puts out a cool mist, not hot steam.

I won this last night:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=200212511748

Again, this is an item that could have had better "marketing". These are bringing around $75.00. The seller has also had a ding from a recent transaction, but overall the sellers rating is good. This is another item I'm pretty sure I can get a bit more for than what I paid, if it doesn't work for my purpose. I certainly will be able to make my money back, I'd think.
I'll try it as it is, to see if it can heat the freezer to 150°F, and then if it can, work on giving it a larger capacity...

Wish me luck :)
 
Hey Leebo :)
MLR was around long before Travis thought to try water softener salt, without too many issues with porosity. Salt does make great voids, but the right mix can accomplish the same type of porosity without using salt.

First, the drier the mix (to a point), the more porous the resulting rock tends to be. I try to mix my mud so that it almost doesn't stick to itself - when I mush a handful in my hand, it sort of holds, but starts to "loosen" too (just a bit), forming lots of crevices and natural tunnels.

Second, perlite or crushed coral will help add porosity because of their own natural pore structure. I like perlite because of it having relatively little weight (displacement) and being cheap. Crushed coral is more natural to our purpose, but very expensive and makes much heavier rock.
 
perlite eh? i guess i missed that one. i used to use it in my indoor tomato growing days but i dont remember what the texture is too much. i just know they are little white balls that hold water great.ahh, that would make them good for bacteria. i guess i answered my own question.
but, does it eventually degrade in the rocks? I guess i need to go research perlite a bit more.
I did have another thought, what about pulverized limestone as an aggregate? i've seen several posts of people using it as a sandbed. its a ton cheaper than arag sand. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=889622
 
Is silica an issue with the perlite(silicon)?
If crushed coral was same price as perlite , whould you use that exclusively?..sry , just curios. I would like to steer away from the salt in the mix too!
 
Perlite is considered inert by most scientist, so silica is not a problem. It will not "degrade*", as it is basically puffed silica glass. Testing in pure muriatic acid had no effect on the perlite - the acid evaporated and the perlite was fine. TDS of rinsed perlite also showed nothing.

If price weren't an option? I dunno. At first I would say yes, I would stick with the crushed coral, but after using the perlite, and seeing the neat texture it leaves on the surface of the rock, and how the rock is lighter weight when made with perlite, I really like perlite...

Nothing wrong with the Paverstone Limestone sand. The only thing about it is it does have a lot of quartzy material in it, and it can be very difficult to find (seems only the larger HD stores have it). Basically it is the same sort of limestone that the chicken grit/scratch that I use is - but mine has a guaranteed calcium content, and this won't.

* Ok, everthing, given time, will degrade. This should not degrade within your lifetime...
 
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i need to go back and re read this thread. it seems like im missing a bit of info. :) now you tell me of chicken scratch? geez thats even cheaper than sand. i can get that today at the same place as the perlite. i assume there is a certain type to look for?

I really need to be doing homework....gah!
 
KingHokus? Have you read the "Super Long Post"? Almost everything that you say you've missed has been touched on in the SLP...
Found on the first or second page of a new split, and every so often after that.
 
i thought so, but apparently it didnt sink in. im on my way back there right now.

fast forward 10 minutes..
somehow i totally blanked out the first half of that post. thanks for the reminder.:beer:
 
Yeah, no point in testing pH until the salt is gone, which can take a while if the water is cold. I have 2 "bricks" that I made last year of the Salt Rock - they were cast into a 1qt Half & Half cardboard container (so around 9"x3"x3"), and packed solidly, but lightly (if that makes sense). These got set aside and sort of forgotten about. I found them in the recent garage clean-out and decided to see how long it would take to leech the salt out, with no special measures; no heat, no movement - much like most folks end up doing it.
3 weeks later and salt is still leeching from them. I've been pretty good about changing the water - averaging a change every 3-4 days. I estimate another 2 weeks will be needed just to get the salt out. Next week, when these reach a month old, I plan on cutting 1 in half and seeing if there is still salt in it, and how much there is. I'll post some pictures either way.
 
at the end of week 3 (i think) my ph is still above my test kit. (8.8 is the max) no salt though, that was gone in the first week. i have a small tinkle pond pump circulating the water and the sun heating it.
on a brighter note i found bags of crushed oyster shell and perlite. unfortunately no forms of limestone or chicken mix yet. im still looking though.
 
I've had 4 rocks sitting in buckets on my back porch all winter. We have lots of rain so it does WCs for me. I would estimate they have been soaking for 5 or 6 months. pH is still over 10 :(
 
Hey Kinghokus :)
Limestone sand and Calcium Carbonate grit/scratch sand might be more difficult to find. I can't find limestone sand locally (which is sort of stupid as we sit on some of the largest limestone mines around), but can get the carbonate sand at the "real" feed store - the places real farmers go to get their stuff.

A side note on Oyster Shell...
I went to pick up some more as I had run out, and all I could find at my regular places was this new OS that is made for "Automatic Feeders". This automatic feeder stuff if for the birds. :rolleyes: Very powdery, with only maybe 10% being of the regular sized particles. This stuff will end up making really dense rock, I'm thinking. Both places I normally go said that this was the only thing they could get (and one place said it has been 6 months since they've been able to even order it), which makes me wonder what happened in the Oyster Shell World. I have one more place to try for getting the regular shell, so wish me luck. I just thought I would pass that along so others don't end up with crappy shell - be sure to check the bag to see if it says "For Automatic Feeders" and if it does, don't get it.
First Southdown, now OS???

Impur, that sort of stinks :(
A couple of thoughts.
Winter is a cold time, and if the kuring bin water freezes, leeching pretty much ceases. Granted, where you are at, you probably never actually froze over, but even if the water didn't freeze, the temps are cold enough that very little is going on in the bin as far as leeching goes.
Ditto for salt - if you used salt in the rock, it has to come out before leeching will finish, and salt won't come out very easy if the water is cold.
And the rain water for kuring is great, however, unless you had frequent torrential storms, you probably never had an actual "water change", but more of a "top-off". Most rains we get here only fill the bins about 2 or 3 inches (which is why I've got a barrel under a leaky section of gutter), and unless the bins are overflowing for a while during each rain (to spill off the old water), that collected rain isn't really going to do much for the kure process.

Honestly - add heaters to your kure bins, folks - especially if you've made salt rock. Heat can speed the whole process up exponentially, which equates to a faster kure.
 
unfortunately,a heater isnt an option for me. i have to rely on ol mr sun. but it will be 100*+ here before too long and I have my kuring tank wrapped in black plastic.
 
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