Cultured live rock.......

[alexmir]

I know that live rock is one of the most important things that aquarists put in their tank, And i am one that does have live rock in their tank.
It seems that if someone could create a technique for creating DIY Live rock that looked very close to real live rock, that it ould be very easy to just put a couple thousand lbs of home made live rock that looked natural into the water near a reef, leave it for 6 months, and then just sell that for cheaper, and more biologically friendly than ripping apart live rock formations in the wild.......
I know there are mixtures for DIY live rock, but i have not seen any that look VERY close to the real thing, but it would work amazing for base rock.

 

[spiderwoman]

One of our reef club members makes aquacultured LR. We bought a good 90 lbs from him in January and I'm going to put it into our 150. It looks OK, not great, but OK.

 

[renogaw]

Someone in my reef club made his own rock and you cannot tell the difference between my live rock and his cultured after coralline and corals take over.
i'm slowly collecting materials to make my own rock for my 20 gallon. i just need the concrete and oyster shells, i have CC and sand to try different recipes with.

 

[spanko]

There are companies in Florida that are doing the culturing of rock just like this, however I am not sure they are making their own rock. If you google Tampa Bay Saltwater you will find out about this.

 

[alexmir]

The only problem with it is that all the rock i have seen does not look natural, It would make great base rock though.

 

[nuro]

i actually purchased aquacultered rock for my tank and while i was very hapy with the growth on it, it was not very natural rock. instead of being very porous with planty of hiding spots for marine life it was basically slabs of heavy rock.

 

[renogaw]

it wasn't made properly then.
i'll be making mine look quite natural (caves, crannies, etc) while having room for frag plug pegs

 

[spiderwoman]

The rock that I bought looks fairly natural and is definitely porous. It's going to be interesting to see how quickly it starts coloring up.

 

[scopus tang]

I'm pretty happy with the stuff I purchased, but it was definitely base rock quality. Not heavy slabs, but very porous and full of caves (my gold coral banded shrimps are seldom seen, cause they can travel from one side of the tank to the other through the rock). It took a good 4 months before I started seeing things like mini featherdusters showing up on the rock. Overall though I think its great, and I'm glad I made the decision to use man-made rather than nature rock. Here's a link to my reef tank thread if you want to check it out.
https://www.saltwaterfish.com/vb/showthread.php?t=320108