# making my own liverock



## im_a_clownfish (Sep 19, 2005)

Hi All!

I want to make some of my own liverock, and seed it with other liverock I will by from my local LFS. I've found that making my own is much cheaper!

I've found some good links, below, on how to make liverock:

http://www.freewebs.com/fishwish22/rock making page.htm

and

http://saltaquarium.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.athiel.com/lib3/arago.htm

HOwever, one site says to cure the liverock for 8 weeks with weekly water changes before putting it in the main tank, or too muchcalcium will leach out. The other site says to cure it in water for a few days, the cure it in vinegar for a while. Does the vinegar take out a lot of the calcium so you dont have to leave it for 8 weeks?

Any other suggestions for making your own liverock? or any other good links?

I'm also wondering how many pounds of liverock to use. They say 1 pound per gallon of water, but I am also told a pound of liverock is not very much. Any way to relate size/weight of liverock? Ie, is a pound about the size of your fist, etc? I want to have a fair amount of rock in the aquairum, but not too much that it takes up all the room or displaces all the water....

Any advice? Thanks!


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## Stix87 (Jul 28, 2005)

hey whats up. Im going to start at the btm and move up. As for the amount of live rock per gallon of water, there is not a set minimum or max. It depends on your personal taste and what your fish and corals will prefer. Some people have fish that require many hiding spaces so they add alot of live rock to make caves with. My 55g only has 24lbs of live rock so far and im going to add 10-15 more pounds to make a few more caves. The only fish i have that requires a "cave" for shelter is my royal gramma. My clown fish doesnt need caves, he never uses them, but i did get him a colony of mushroom coral and one rock anemone to play on. find out what kind of fish your going to get and design the tank around their needs. 
You could do it the other way around and make the tank your way 1st then choose fish, but then ur going to be limited to the fish that can live well in that habitat. You mentions u'd like a fair amount of live rock, some fish need more open space to swim in so u'd need to keep the amount of live rock either low in lbs or low in height so the fish gets their swimming space.
As for your question, what is the size of 1lb of live rock, that depends aswell. if its solid then it'll be smaller, it may be long and thin, it may be hollow and big. out of all my 24lbs, one rock alone is 15lbs but it has 3 different caves going through the live rock, my other chunks of rock are just small rocks that i stack and connect to make caves and whatnot. I suggest getting smaller peices that u cna connect and stack. the other stuff about curing i cant help with.
I hope somewhere in my long responce u'll find anwsers


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

garf.org has some stuff about making rocks from "aragocrete" and how to make them good to use.


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

I've made agrocrete rocks, although I haven't cured them yet... too busy to do water changes daily.


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## im_a_clownfish (Sep 19, 2005)

Does anyone have any pictures of their liverock with the quantity? I'm still puzzled as to just how much X amount of live rock is.

Trying to gauge how much I should get for my 65 gallon tank at first, especially because I will be making my own later.


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

I don't have pics as of right now... but I have a recipe,
1 pt portland cement
1 pt argonite sand
4 pts oyster shells (for chicken feed at fleet farm)


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

By argonite he means aragonite.
If you look up the recipie for aragocrete rocks on GARF you'll see that it also takes some odd bits like plastic shavings to increase porosity. However you make it, make sure it's porous or you're just making useless bricks.


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

aragonite yes, missed the a in there. The shells create quite a bit of porosity, I'm fairly impressed with mine, although I haven't thrown it in the tank yet... It seems to have a lot of small places for stuff to get into.


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