man-made live rock

by **silverdollar** on Mon Feb 15, 2010 10:24 pm

Hi guys,
just want a few opinions on man made live rock, seahorse aquariums are selling it and highly recommend mixing it in with your normal live rock because its lighter and more porous and comes in more interesting shapes, is it as good as natural live rock??

by **tubastrea** on Mon Feb 15, 2010 10:33 pm

How much is it per Kg?

I think to make this stuff the basic recipe is cement, rock salt, loads of crushed shells and a bit of patience.

by **silverdollar** on Mon Feb 15, 2010 10:51 pm

ye thats it but they have it in their display tanks and its perfect, not sure on price

by **billy ocean** on Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:27 am

If its porous it will seed from the existing live rock and will become live itself in time I have seen documentaries on artificial reef building and after a year it resembled a true coral reef with lots of inhabitants. I see no reason why it shouldn't seed and become live in time.

by **Anthony** on Tue Feb 16, 2010 6:08 pm

I would love to see this catch on.
It would be great to say that one day all live rock is man made and not taken from the ocean.
There is also no reason why we cannot use only tank grown Corals either. I think I have contributed to a fair
few Coral reef tanks myself. :whistle:

Fish breeding will be next.

by **brady1** on Tue Feb 16, 2010 8:58 pm

i seen this stuff in seahorse to and it looks amazing...

apparnatly this is made in places where the live rock normally comes from...this is because they make it then attach special id tags and they actually throw it into the ocean and leave it there for a number of months...therefore it gets seeded naturally..

they then retreive it and ship it to us... the id tags being used to prove that they put it there in the first place...

this stuff is suppose to be better the real live rock as it is more porous and weighs less meaning cheapper to stock your tank...

really does look the biz