thoughts on making aragocrete more porus...

[Ram_Puppy]

my buddy brian (buckykatt) and I recently did a test run on making aragocrete rocks.

I have been trying to wrack my brain and figure out how to make these things more porus, and I am sure there has got to be a way to do it by mixing an incgredient in that will dissolve with the curing process.

We allready took Tim's (I think it was tims suggestion from a long time ago) to mix spaghetti in with the aragocrete mixture in order to have tubes in the rock when the pasta 'cures' out of the rock over the 6 weeks of soaking... but my mind has been running over other possibilities.

We have allready bought some baloons to blow up and make 'macro' caves that will have small openings, sort of a 'pod' heaven. put the baloon in the aragocrete, cover it, let it dry, pop the baloon and pull it out, instant cave.

and I just recently thought about putting bits of pasta in a coffee grinder and chopping it up to the consistency of coffee grounds, that I think has some serious potential...

but then I thought, what about on a more 'nano' scale... what about putting bakingsoda in, or perhaps sawdust (it would have to be from non-treated lumber) that would all decay (or dissolve) and become vacuous spaces within the rocks...

I am wondering what your guys thoughts would be on this, any negatives to something like this? contaminates?

we are curing it by letting the rock sit in a trash can of water and we change the water out every couple of days... if the pasta decays slower than we expect, I thought about doing the final curing stage in salt water and spikeing it with bio-spira and maybe a little amonia to get the process rolling. We didn't document our test run with photos cause I couldn't find my camera, but since I have that now, when we start up again (in a few weeks, Christmas shopping and scuba certification courses are getting in the way! ) we will definatley take photos.

If anyones interested, the mix we are using right now is:

2 bags of southdown
2 bags carib sea special grade
2 bags Sea Chem silver coast (crushed sea shells)

for giggles we also through my old sand bed in, that alone will probably fuel bacterial growth!

in the next round, for sure, we will be using:

Baloons, intact sea shells, and probably some mollusks from the HEB seafood counter)

in addition to the process of using the spaghetti, we use some clay modeling tools to 'sculpt' the rock, and every now and then throw in some of the dry mix (without concrete in it( so that it can 'wash out' and a more unfinished appearance.

any thoughts on this you guys can give, would be awesome, all criticisms and ideas to make this project better would also be welcome!

[Richard]

I saw a thread somewhere where the guy said he got the best results from using rock salt. Said the only trick was to mix the aragacrete without the rock salt dissolving. Of course he didn't say what the "trick" was.

[Ram_Puppy]

I think I just found that on reefcentral:

orlenz

another thing that helps with porosity is rocksalt, it disolves better than the pasta too, for big holes they have salt pellets that work good too.

also found:

I've poured sand in side of rock as i'm making it like a sand filled jelly donut and after it cures i drill a few holes in it and and sand pours out then you have a nice cave. hollow rock.

twist paper up real tight like a bread stick and use it as you pour your cement.(don't use writing or news paper) only paper towels or toilet paper. if can't get the paper out use a wire brush.

^-- Assuming I probably shouldn't use ultra charmin for that!

[Ram_Puppy]

good point, I wasn't thinking about the baloons for porosity, more for places for pods to hide away from the fish and breed. also, any holes like that that I make would be downward facing as the only rock I am making is that which will cover my PVC framework.

[Instar]

If you get the cement-sand mix % right for the volume and use a coase aragonite or shell, it will aleady be porus because the "cement" only "glues" the pieces together where they touch each other. In places where its too wet, too much cement sand, it won't be porus so you can control the consistency and porosity by the way you make the mix regardless of using pasta, bread rolls or pretzel sticks to make larger holes.

[Ram_Puppy]

thanks larry! I appreciate the input! I tend to err on the side of caution and will probably use the rock salt just in case..

BTW, I am hopefully moving the old tank out of the way to put the new tank in it's place this week, so if you want to start setting up those holding tanks, it probably wouldn't be to soon. I won't complete the plumbing for the new tank until next week as I just ordered a check valve from marinedepot and it won't be here till wednesday, but all in all, were probably lookint at Dec 10 - 15 as the date water will first go in, then it's all sand settling and other stuff...

[ou812pezz]

I use a different mix that works fine and is a lot cheaper. It's 5 parts portland cement, 20 parts chicken scratch(ground up oyster shells)4 parts sand, 1 part cut up plastic airline tubing. To create pockets, use sand as a filler .(leave a spot open so the sand has a place to escape) Then I take a piece of airline tubing and sculpt holes and dents into the surface. I also cut long pieces of tubing and push it through the rock while it's wet. Cover every thing in chicken scratch. After it hardens I pull all the tubes out. It leaves a very natural looking rock with dimples, crevasses, tube worm like structures and holes through out the rock. I have pics if you're interested. The chicken scratch makes it very porus considering it the major part of the mix. hope this helps. I've even made some branch rock with this recipe.

[ou812pezz]

here's a link if your interested in what the first batch looked like
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/photopo...00/ppuser/1760

[::pete::]

As it started to set you might blast it with some water from the hose. It should give it a more natural appearance.

[Shark_Bait]

I have made a batch of rocks using GARF's recipe. Which has the spirials of plastic. If you drill through acrylic or PVC or really any type of plastic you get those spirials. They worked pretty good and by using different drill bits got different size spirials.
Maybe someone here --------^ (~pete~) has a buch of those spirials that he doesnt know what to do with them.