MY DIY rock

Eleven official languages, Oh Dear! I have enough trouble with only one

There is no real defence against hair algae that I am aware of, it's something that you will probably have to suffer through for a while. The only thing you can to is to monitor the Nitrate and Phosphate levels.

Seeing as how you are doing NSW changes I would test that water for Phosphates, it only takes a very low level of Phosphates to feed algae that is already present. If you do find any trace at all I would change to using a good quality salt mix for the short term.

I also have temperate snails and periwinkles in my tank They do a great job, except they seem to spend a lot of time on the outside of the tank On the walls, on the floor, on the furniture LOL

John

 

[quote author=JohnO link=board=DIY;num=1041887819;start=30#30 date=09/05/04 at 15:32:22]
Eleven official languages, Oh Dear!  I have enough trouble with only one [/quote]

ME TOO.

Here comes grumpy admin to say start a new thread.
(EDIT: JUST WANT TO KEEP THIS ABOUT DIY ROCK. )

Thank you kindly.

 

Hi John
My email address is [email protected]
Drop me a line sometime..
Mike

 

Mike,

I'll try to send you an email tonight, just to keep Mr Grumpy pants happy

John

 

You have to change the thread if you want to talk about the phylum of old grumpy pants....

 

hm, after seeing that I probably won't be collecting my own rock I thaught I thaught, I make my own.
but after reading all this I'm not so sure anymore
if I understand this right then it takes about 4 months to get "ugly" rock in the tank and about a year for live rock?
that's a long time :0

 

You can make and cure it in probably 4-6 weeks if you do a lot of water changes. I'm just slow!

It did take a long time to make it 'live' but I think part of this was due to the NSW which had low alk and calcium. Took me a while with dosing to get the hang of it.

Regardless it does take a while. I really like mine now though.

 

could you post a pic?

 

Awesome

 

Just thought I would put my 2-cents in, just made a couple of rocks, it looks like they are going to turn out great!! We used white cement, oyster shells, crushed and tumbled coral with small shells in it, some larger various type shells, and of course sand, which was the hardest to find...Alaska doesn't have any sandy beaches, all of the beaches have quicksand type silt that usually claims the lives of a couple of zealous fisherman every year. So we were forced to buy the sand, we ended up buying a white 70-grit silica based sand, which is somewhat of a concern to me. I know that it is dangerous to use in a tank, but would it work in the rocks??? It is encased in the mixture, I would like to hear some other opinions on this.
We were fortunate enough to score a large electric cement mixer this summer (garage sale find $20) so mixing was easy, we then used small balloons and rubber gloves to create tunnels and caves, we also mixed in some water-softner size salt pellets, that will dissolve in water, and create nice sized holes. As well as some smaller rock-salt size salt which will create smaller holes. We were able to find many different sized styrofoam containers to make molds with at the LFS, I found out that they just disposed of them, and they were more than willing to let me take as many of them as I wanted.. AWESOME!!
I will post some pictures of the end product, we are also going to try etching the finished rocks with muriatic acid, to see if that will give it a nice etched look.???
If you have any ideas or concerns let me know. I am new to this, my friend has been doing it for years, but some of the methods we are experimenting with on this batch are just that...experiments.