Can you make your own live rock?

[Montipora]

Just a quick question about an Idea I had while visiting your city...I see alot of rock around here used for landscaping and it looks like the live rock we use in our tanks...Do you guy ever buy this base rock and create live rock with it in your sump?

If this is so...how much is it and where can it be bought?:rolleyes:

[RicksReefs]

most of fla. is a prehistoric reef bed,
but one of our main exports (besides
citrus) is phosphates.i made the
mistake of using it (was told it was
reef rock),& i battled heavy cyano for
3 years till i pulled it out,now i'm down
to the errant patch or two.just not
worth it IMO.

[Montipora]

Wow...no kidding...

[scubadude]

You need to freshwater cure it for a month or so to leach the phosphates out of it, as Rick unfortunately witnessed. You can go to any stone/rock sellers (usually found in some nurserys) and buy limestone rocks but I would try to pick out the most porous ones. Ill go one step further for ya....make your own rock by using crushed coral, or oyster shell, and aragonite sand and portland cement. I have done this many times and have had NO problems whatsoever as long as I FW cured the rock first. Here is a page on one of my websites that has the recipe and pics of some of the DIY lace aragocrete rocks I have made

DIY LR (http://mywebpages.comcast.net/tents3/diylr.html)

Also if you have lots of time then go to www.garf.org and search for aragocrete and you will find lots of info there too.

BTW the greatest thing about DIY aragocrete is your imagination is the ONLY limitation....you can make all kinds of shapes, and sizes....I have even made multiple pieces then glued (or should i say concreted) them together.