rock bondage

jjspati

jjspati

Member
does anyone have a good idea on how to bond rocks. right now i have a round nest of rock i made about 3/4 of a foot high, thinking that my fish would enjoy hiding or sleeping in. its really just taking up space in the tank and the fish never go in. i want to pile them up higher i guess maybe in a column formation. or just have more gaps inbetween the rocks so the fish could easily move in and out.
i tryed the clay. personally i think it was the biggest waste of money. im thinking of drilling i fine hole through the rocks and putting a flexible metal wire through to help hold the peices together. any objections to this or add ins? any other ideas?
 
G

glazer

Guest
I would not use the metal rods at all! Unless it is pure titanium or stainless steel which would be rather spendy and then I still wouldn't do it.
By clay I assume you mean the two-part epoxy sticks? Not sure why that wouldn't work for you...
I built a whole wall of rock once by doing as you suggested... I drilled holes through the rock and used acrylic rods to stack everything onto. Rods were epoxied into square pieces of Lexan to act as a stand. It worked great, plus being nothing was cemented together it was easy to slide all the rock off the "sticks" when rearranging and eventually breaking the tank down.
 
jjspati

jjspati

Member
ya i did mean the expoxy sticks. i just had hard time using it. in order for it to hold, i had to hold it together with pressure for like 10 minutes or so. i guess it would have been easy if i used flat rocks, but i wasnt. it just didnt stick together for me. i was trying to sculpt a larger rock using many little pieces.
but that ecrylic idea sounds good. were did you get a rod made of that? HD?
 
G

glazer

Guest
I got the plastic rods and lexan sheets from a plastic distributor here in Chicago... years ago though, I know they didn't have a website, in fact this was practically pre-internet. They may have one now, the company was called "Advance Plastics".
If you do a search for plastic mfg's & distributors I am sure you will have no prob whatsoever finding an online dealer for the rods. ( punched in "plastic rods" on Google and it came back with like 4000 sites!...lol)
The epoxy sticks do take like ten minutes to harden... you shouldn't need to clamp it though. Just mush a piece onto a rock and squish the next rock down on top of it, that's it. You can even do this underwater. I made the mistake of making this big bridge thing in a cichlid tank.... couldn't get the d@mn thing out past the center support later on! Had to end up taking a hammer to it...lol(the rocks I mean)
 
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