DIY Live Rock

Yeah, it does. It's funny, because when they lay a very large building, it can be decades before the concrete is fully cured. It takes a couple weeks to be nearly full strength.

Don't forget that once it's pretty solid, you need to cure it in buckets with water for a while until it doesn't affect the pH of the water.

You did a good job of getting it to look like limestone, btw.

 

I think crushing them up more would look better. The roundness look to man made, if its compacted enough, the salt may leave a smooth section. I have couple of patches like that, from press it down to much. The more random jacked up looking chunks of salt will leave a kool hole. IMO looks like its on the way up! the ugly peices go in the sump or under sand ;D

 

Thanks blackraven. I was pretty careful not to damage the one piece I have. I've already got it soaking in water. I let it set in the sand for a couple days before moving it over to the water.

 

I should be able to see better how good it looks tonight. This morning I peeked in on the rock this morning before going to work and it looks like most of the salt has already disolved. I didn't get a chance to pull it out and really look at it though.
If it looks good, I'll probably do the next rock like this....but I will try some with the salt crushed up more!

 

Its all trial and error. Till you get what you like. for me I didnt use salt, I used other things like cardboard and soda cans/ bottles to make weird shapes and holes. Try some crazy stuff and you will be surprised.

side note I was looking at my rock a couple weeks ago and found a drinking straw that we never fully pulled out of the rock. And its in on the base pieces, and I really like the aqua scape so I am hoping something will cover it up...8)

 

small update for today....
I pulled the rock out of the water and the salt was all disolved. It looks quite a bit better but does have some unnatural look from the curved portions of the salt pellets.








I will crush the salt more next time. maybe use slightly less. I won't really have time to make more until the weekend :-/ lol

 

It's been a while since I last posted an update, so I got some pics today to show how things are going.

As of last week, I was up to 4 rocks.


I used the same mix for all of these, 1 part cement, 2 parts crushed oyster shells, 3 parts salt. it's a little hard to tell in the picture, but the newest rock I made ( on the right) is quite a bit better looking than the others. I'm still not happy about how fragile the rocks seem to be...pieces break off rather easily.

 

3 days ago I made this last one. I started with the normal mix, maybe just a little less salt and I crushed the salt into smaller pieces.

After I used up the cement I had mixed up, I decided I wanted this rock to be bigger, so I mixed up some more cement, this time with even less salt....maybe only one part.

I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out. It looks a lot more natural than the others. The other thing I've noticed is that it seems a lot more solid, I mean pieces are breaking off left and right on the first rocks. I think on the previous pieces there was so much salt that after it disolved out there were a lot of really thin pieces of the cement and so it wasn't very strong. This one hasn't even spent any time curing in water yet and very little broke off it at all.






This is the second time I used a cardboard toilet paper roll to help make a cave. I also used this method on the third piece I made. It seems to work well. I make sure to crush it a little bit so it's not a perfect circle...that wouldn't look too natural!






Also this last piece is noticeably heavier, probably cause there's more cement and less salt
I'm not too happy with the pictures, it looks a lot better in person ;D

 

thats is looking good! love the cave

as it cures more and more the little peices stop breaking off

 

good job, now its just the waiting game for the curing process.