Thoughts on rock...

In my opinion, there are so many great reasons for buying good dry rock vs live rock. With dry rock, you can construct pillars or drill it for acrylic rods to hold your design into place. It's cheaper, generally lighter (you aren't paying for the water weight) and you don't have to worry about unwanted hitchhikers. As a rule, it purples up pretty fast anyway when your conditions are right.
I bought my rock from BRS and think they are great people to deal with. I've seen some awesome Marco rock as well. I think you can't go wrong AJ!

 

Hey AJ when are you ordering this? Maybe I could get some too and help with shipping!

 

Doods. I know you are both planning bigger tanks. Here are my thoughts.....

First, I bought some AWESOME rock from a guy in Des Moines. Brad Collins....he had incredible high end large pieces and let me have my pick at them. I bet he still has quite a bit left. He is in DM. If you are interested I can give you his email and phone.

Next, I have leftover live rock I would be willing to sell. It isn't that great really....a lot of softball and two softball sized pieces....round for the most part. I bet I have 50-75 lbs of it. I can snap a pic and send it if interested.

At one time I bought some from Marco Rocks...I think they were eco rox. They came dry. They were fine but not SHOW pieces, so to speak.

Finally, rock in the sump. The reason I have all this rock is because I took it out of my sump. It trapped a lot of sediment and crap and grew hair algae. Now that my sump is clear I have more water volume and I can easily siphon out the crap on the bottom that was sitting on the rocks. Just my two cents there.

 

I am interested in his info for some very large show pieces.

 

i got some marco from glaspie and i really like it, its very pourus and can take frag plugs easily, i like how it looks, i still gotta get it cured though

 

Well i guess they have free shipping on all dry rock this month, so i may just wait til the end of the week or so. I didnt know u were ordering tonight.

 

Posted By AJ on 08/25/2009 02:02 PM

Posted By RobynT on 08/25/2009 01:07 PM
In my opinion, there are so many great reasons for buying good dry rock vs live rock. With dry rock, you can construct pillars or drill it for acrylic rods to hold your design into place. It's cheaper, generally lighter (you aren't paying for the water weight) and you don't have to worry about unwanted hitchhikers. As a rule, it purples up pretty fast anyway when your conditions are right.
I bought my rock from BRS and think they are great people to deal with. I've seen some awesome Marco rock as well. I think you can't go wrong AJ!
Thanks for your feedback Robyn.  BTW, how's BNARC doing these days?  Marco also now sells threaded nylon rods, nylon washers and nylon nuts for rodding rock.  I thought that was interesting...I have not seen them anywhere else.
--AJ
Would u say nylons better than fiberglass or not necessarily? Either way thatsway handy

 

I used acrylic rods for a good portion of my rock building. Here is a picture to give you an idea that the rocks are not "piled." My tank is a 210 gallon btw.

http://i85.photobucket.com/albums/k75/windhaven77/IMG_5267-1.jpg

 

Here is the rockwork right after I set it up (one year ago.)

I hope this gives you an idea of how you can contruct arches and layouts that you couldn't without drilling or cementing.

 

Wow Robyn thats beautiful! Both the rock work and the tank in general! How many lbs is that?

 

I'd have to look back at my build thread (on BNARC ) to recall the actual #'s of rock from BRS.  I also added some of the rock out of my 90 gallon when I made the move.  The dry rock pretty much filled a grey Brute can as I cycled used water change water in it for a few weeks prior to setting up the tank so that the rock would be at least on it's way to cyclying.
As far as the drilling, it was very easy as the rock was mostly pretty lightweight and porous.  I used a long drill bit (masonry type) the same diameter as the acrylic tube 3/8" I think.   I'd put two pieces of rock together the way I wanted it where it fit well, then I'd drill from one rock into the second rock just a bit.  I would then shove the rod in as far as it would go and cut it off with bolt cutters, leaving an inch or so sticking out.  I'd take a hammer and wack on that bit sticking out and it was enough to really seal the two rocks together.  I had very little breaking issues and found I could get two or three rocks together and use those to stack inside the tank.  I gave me the ability to almost have horizontal arches in a couple of places.

 

Oh, and I only ended up using a maybe two 6' lengths of rod as they go a long way.

 

Could you mark in where your rods were?

 

Buy BRS Pukani for sure.  I just bought 50 lbs key largo marco rock, and 25 pukani and 15 brs eco rox and 5 lbs brs figi.  Lets just say I had to buy another 25 lbs of pukani.  It is way more porus and much lighter than the marco.  you can tell by comparing the piles of rock.  so much more volume with pukani.  I am by no means an expert with years of experience, but the pukani is the nicest dry rock I have seen(not to say marco isn't impressive also).  I took comparison pics too, I just havn't took the time to upload yet.