Originally posted by Magic_Carp
well i tried the rice thing, and it sucked, it didnt do anything, just made the water worse, and it didnt disolve right away i dad to scrub them off, i didnt like doing the rice thing.
I use 4 parts Southdown sand, 2 parts crushed coral( you can use crushed oyster shells too, like me, but it looks really fake, and oyster shells raise the PH longer, so you ahve to cure it longer) and 2-3 parts portland cement.
i do that and it works great, for my mold i have cc, sand, oystershells, PVC shavings all mixed up, i just use 6 parts of the mold mix and 3 parts cement.
You want it to be messy, and wif you want to make a 3D figure, your going to have to make it first, and build out the front, let it harden for a day, then flip it over and build up the back, alot of the times your going to have flat rocks if you dont do that.
And just "slop" it on, i do it in layors, i add a layor of mix, them cover some in sand and make little tunnels of sand, then add another layor and do it again, them when it cures the water washes away the sand in the middle making nice big hole.
usualy if you have a drier mix, i add about 2 parts or less of water, and this makes my mix dryer, and mix a lot of air into it, it will make little holes for pods and worms. i like my mold to be mostly sand,with some PVC for coraline to grown on, and CC, but i like to use the CC in my mix, not my mold, you want the outside to be sandy, it looks alot more realistic to me
its not hard to make the rock, just hard to make it look real, but its really fun, and dont expect your first batch to look to good, it took me a while to get "good" at it.
I have some pictures of my rocks if you would like to see them
I like to see the pictures, and thanks for the tips ob making it. I am going to start building my canopy to day for my 46g bow front. I bought those metal halides from the person you told me to get them from, the same ones you got but I got the 175 watt metal halides with 13k bulbs. I was gonna get the 250 watt metal halides but I didn't want my tank to overheat. I am buying a icecap 660 ballast in a few days and i'm gonna get 4 25'' 75 watt vho bulbs actinic for my supplement. I was gonna go with 36'' bulbs but my tank is only 36'' long so I wouldn't be able to take the bulbs out without un screwing the endcaps.
