Homemade liverock

[Che]

Anyone make their own liverock at home?

I have made some and am just wondering what techniques other folks have used,

I went with a pervious concrete recipe, where i added 3 parts peastone to 1 part cement. 
I made large rocks, and a 3' background with screened openings for power heads.

Results: the water was able to flow through all the structures but the peastone didn't have enough surface to surface contact, there was too much gap so it was structurally unsound for the background (it broke instantly). The large rocks I was able to brush off most of the loose stone and debris. I cycled it in some tubs for 2 months, and then added it into my tank.

It looked super unnatural and caused a major algae bloom. so it was trashed.

I feel like other mediums might work better, the smoothness and roundness of the peastone was the downfall for this one. 

This summer a new recipe will be attempted so please give me some ideas

[gabor129]

I also made some rock! I used large sand, well very small screanned rocks actually, Portland cement, and water softener salt! I used almost 1:1:1, but just went by looks for the mixture! My first attempt I made a few small rocks to try this out! After the mixture dried for a week, I put the rocks in the toilet reservoir for 4 months. (The wife still don't know about it!) During this time, withe the water flow in the reservoir, the salt melted and washed out from the rock. I ended up with very light rock that was so full of holes that I thought there will be star rural problems. However they were good! I also had some algae problems with it, but it cleared up after four months or so, I think it has to do with the cement!

The next time I did it, I made a single rock that was going to be the whole structure in the tank! For washing out the salt I took it to East Pike Creek and hung it in the stream in a fish net! This was at a friends property, so I figured all will be well. Boy was I wrong! Someone liked my net and decided they needed it more than I did. I never found the rock, and got so discouraged I never made another one!

[Che]

like the salt idea, I might try and use a large quantity of rock salt and kosher sized pieces and use it to fill in areas for frag plugs. I think the cycle times on these homemade rocks is tricky. I remember testing the water and having it come out fine, but there is probably some other minerals in the cement that linger causing the algae blooms. ones my tests aren't picking up.

Also anyone trying make sure the PH is good before adding a lot of it to a established tank.
Well, time to start filling the tubs.

I'll post links to recipes I find while searching.


www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-CcotpNTBk  this guys video had nice results, i'm going to try this