Ceramic pillars for tank?

[islandcreation]

If there are any individuals familiar with ceramic being used in fish tanks please chime in. I saw a site that sold pillars or even custom rocks made out of ceramic, is there a particualr ceramic you have to use (I really don't know if there is more than one cermic type material so bare with me)? If there is not I plan on making my own pillars at our community center and take a class. The ratio would be 1 to 4 (ceramic pound to live rock pounds) so seeding these wouldn't be a problem. Any other advice would be greatful .Thanks

[ahullsb]

I'm not sure about ceramic, but I'd imagine it's fine. Most of our pumps have ceramic shafts in them I believe. If you search the DIY forum, there is a thread where someone was making some very interesting rock. I can't remember what they were made of, but he was mixing something else into it that would melt away after it was fired. (It was like chocalate chip cookie dough where the chocalate chips would melt away making the rest of it very porous.) Which is the whole idea I think.

[islandcreation]

Thanks for the reply. Anyone else?

[Kannin]

I started becoming interested in pillars when I saw the thread you are talking about. I think that site is called oceanceramics.com or reefceramics.com.

I think I found a better way though. There is a thread in the large tanks section by Tiggsy that gave me the idea and I just found out that this month's TOTM by Energy used it as well... years ago... I am building pillars using an egg crate skeleton with Marco rocks zip tied to it and filling in the gaps with Great Stuff insulating foam. Before it goes in the tank... I will glue sand on the exposed foam... Once coraline covers it, it will look 100% natural.

Here's acouple of photos...

[Kannin]

[Kannin]

Sorry about the blurriness... It was towards the end of the day and I'm sure I had started drinking. I have kids, you see.

[islandcreation]

Originally posted by Kannin
Sorry about the blurriness... It was towards the end of the day and I'm sure I had started drinking. I have kids, you see.

Can you tell me what kind of foam you are using? GREAT setup. Any pics in the tank yet? And what is the approximate weight for that large pillar? Thanks for chiming in.

[Kannin]

In the 2nd and 3rs pics... you can see the back of the can. It's called Great Stuff. You can get it at THD or Lowes. It's for insulating new windows and doors after installation. It fill cracks and then expands to 2 or 3 times it's volume.

No pics in the tank yet. Having a problem with leaky manifolds which is delaying me by a week or two.

The pillars are heavy. After reading Tiggsy's thread... I would say that he used at least half foam and had a problem with his structure wanting to float. He had to trim alot of the foam off. I didn't want that problem so I used as much rock as I could and just filled in the gaps with the foam. I used less than 1 can of foam for both of those pillars. But, I used so much rock... that I started with 128 lbs of marco rocks and realized that I would need more after building the pillars.

[Aquabucket]

Ceramic might be tougher to work with than LR and probably take quite some time.

Pillars are great though. I just finished up helping out a fellow reefer friend of mine and the pillars look great:



Here is a link to the thread:
Live rock pillars.

Good luck!

[bues0022]

I followed the link you gave, WOW!! "Flip that Tank" for sure! the before and after are dramatic. I'm going for that exact same look! Do you ever get down to the Chicago area?? Very nice!