Anyone had much luck with man made live rock?

[Aidan123]

I was looking into making some as a cheaper alternative to £12 a kilo for the real deal :P

Has anyone had success at making it?

Any advice will be greatly received

Thanks!

[nazgul1979]

From what I understand (and anyone that knows more about this than I do please correct me if I'm wrong) a good portion of the live rock available is man made. It's made as dry rock by using various methods (such as mixing crushed oyster shells, porcelain cement, and coarse rock salt) then dropped offshore onto a site leased by someone and left for years. They rotate out the rock, cure it (hopefully), and sell it to the public. That way, they don't disturb the natural environment. Aquariums are a fairly popular hobby and if every piece of live rock in the hobby was taken from the wild there'd be massive damage done to the ecosystem. As we know, humans don't harm the environment at all... we're very careful about preserving our natural resources.............................
Anyways, we do something very similar when we put a bunch of dry rock in our aquariums with a few pieces of live rock. We're basically doing the same thing as if we dropped a bunch of dry rock in the ocean and went back to get it a year or so later. It wouldn't be "dry" anymore but, instead, would be teeming with life found in the sea. This is what I've done for both of my aquariums as it's much cheaper than buying live rock at 7 US dollars per pound for an 80 gallon aquarium...
This is a link for a video on how to make dry rock at home. Either buy or make dry rock, buy a few pieces of live rock, add it all in and be patient...... soon enough you'll have all "live rock" in your aquarium!
Hope this helps as this is the first post I've written acting like I know something and trying to help someone. If I'm wrong about anything then there's plenty of people here that will correct me and point you in a more knowledgeable direction!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFPebEdEoMA

[fat-tony]

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...rock+salt+sand

Pages and pages of different "recipes" that people have used. With several friends we've done various batches, but can shape to whatever you want. Only real negative is that they can be pretty dense.

[chbix]

I tried to make some, but my mixes were either too fragile or too thick/dense. Also another problem I had was that I could never get them to stop leaching

[dkeller_nc]

If I'm interpreting correctly, your in the UK. Doing the conversions, the price that you've found for LR is about $8.50 USD/lb. That's extremely reasonable for true indo-pacific live rock.

If you are a beginner, I cannot more strongly recommend that you start with natural Indo-Pacific live rock. You can also start with Florida aquacultured live rock if it's readily available in the UK - this material is natural rock that has been setting on the ocean bottom for 20 years.

I would advise you to stay well away from man-made rock. It simply doesn't have the porosity that natural rock does, whether that natural rock is so-called "dry live rock" or natural live rock. Some of it is made with thorite (or "hydraulic" cement) that contains a large amount of alumina-silicate minerals, and neither the aluminum nor the silicates are ideal for a marine reef tank.

It is, by the way, untrue that responsibly harvested natural live rock is highly damaging to a reef ecosystem. On the coral islands of the Indo-Pacific, many hundreds of thousands of tons of it are harvested every year to build roads, buildings and breakwaters. Usage for the aquarium trade is absolutely tiny in comparison, and the material is typically harvested from the surf zone, not the reef.

The reason that it isn't as available as it once was has to do with CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). Island nations that supply living coral for the aquarium trade have quotas for the maximum amount that can be shipped each year. As far as CITES is concerned, a piece of live rock counts the same as a living coral. Because living coral is far more profitable than live rock, places in the indo-pacific with collection stations, airstrips and mariculture operations choose to fill their quotas exclusively with coral rather than live rock.

[Aidan123]

I do have about 7 kg of live rock currently, but with my intended move up to a 65 gallon tank...which would cost several hundred pounds...I was just aware of my budget