pricey. thoughts?

[Psychosis]

Here you go GHill. Take this idea to Facebook, claim it's your own, and laugh at all of the people using 8x8x4's on egg crate stands like chumps. My gift, no charge. Can't speak for czy and eyes, but what evs.

[Horerczy]

This hobby is all about sharing.

[Maniu]

Where did you pick this up for $39 shipped? I think these are great for people who want a minimalistic scape but still have good filitration.

eBay

[CrazyEyes]

My baffles are actually 1.5" apart, only because I measured both wrong. Turns out it may have been a good mistake. I think if you had your taller baffle cut down so it wasn't going all the way to the top of the sump, in the event the block clogged it would just go over the top of the baffle. But I'm sure with a little regular blasting with a turkey baster you'd be good to go.

[Maniu]

Pretty sure it could work

[patback]

I use the first section of my baffles for filter floss. It anything, I think sticking this rectangle in the second part of the baffle would be the best place. All water would be forced to flow through it (okay, not all but you get the point. )

[Horerczy]

It would be interesting to measure the loss of water flow through the block by putting a pump on one side and flow meters on either end of the block.

[Maniu]

It would be. IDK about lost of flowbut I can tell you that ALL the water did go thru the block without backing up. It was however distribute throughout a large area of the block (faucet into a round cylinder, sealed at contact point with the block). Eventho water flow came from a single source of about 3" round, water menaged to soak thru entire block proving that pours are interconnected and do not restrict the flow. Howeve, I would imagine that some periodic cleaning would be necessary to maintain unrestricted flow. Overall, I am very impressed how much water it can hold. It took an hour to drain all (most) that water out and even after several hrs it was still moist with some water dripping.

[CrazyEyes]

I think for $67.99 with free shipping I'm going to have to buy an 8x8x4 and cutting it up into 4 8x8x1 pieces and put them between each set of baffles, a guy local to me had one of the 8x8x4 blocks and about 150ish lbs of Pukani in his 300DD with whatever size sump and the tank was perfect. I think an 8x8x4 block mixed with about 50-60lbs of Tonga fusion and Florida rock from reef cleaners will do great in my 75g/40B tank.

[farkwar]

Considering the quality of Live rock today...

 

The artificial stuff starts looking just fine.

 

I just bought 15 pounds of premium bali alor and fiji nano rock from Premium Aquatics.

 

I should have saved my money(and i spent $80 for shipping). Looks like shit Ron at aquaCON would sell.

 

But hes probably selling chunks of asphalt sunk in salt water for a week by now, selling that as primo cherry.

[Horerczy]

They have some neat ones sized like marineland rite size cartridges. That would have been awesome when i still had an emperor 400.

[CrazyEyes]

I have a HOB on my 10g and I just noticed they had the smaller ones made for hob filters. So many options and ideas.

Considering the quality of Live rock today...

The artificial stuff starts looking just fine.

I just bought 15 pounds of premium bali alor and fiji nano rock from Premium Aquatics.

I should have saved my money(and i spent $80 for shipping). Looks like shit Ron at aquaCON would sell.

But hes probably selling chunks of asphalt sunk in salt water for a week by now, selling that as primo cherry.

Dude that sucks, is this rock that was shipped to you?

[Maniu]

I think for $67.99 with free shipping I'm going to have to buy an 8x8x4 and cutting it up into 4 8x8x1 pieces and put them between each set of baffles, a guy local to me had one of the 8x8x4 blocks and about 150ish lbs of Pukani in his 300DD with whatever size sump and the tank was perfect. I think an 8x8x4 block mixed with about 50-60lbs of Tonga fusion and Florida rock from reef cleaners will do great in my 75g/40B tank.

that's what I was thinking. Buy the block and cut it to size. It is very soft and def easy to cut.

 

[CrazyEyes]

Just checked out Aquacon, that shit looks terrible.

[Maniu]

Considering the quality of Live rock today...

The artificial stuff starts looking just fine.

I just bought 15 pounds of premium bali alor and fiji nano rock from Premium Aquatics.

I should have saved my money(and i spent $80 for shipping). Looks like shit Ron at aquaCON would sell.

But hes probably selling chunks of asphalt sunk in salt water for a week by now, selling that as primo cherry.

That's why I buy my LR from LFS. I hand pick what I want and usually get a pretty decent deal

[CrazyEyes]

that's what I was thinking. Buy the block and cut it to size. It is very soft and def easy to cut.

Yeah, I was like hmmm I could buy 4 8x8x1 blocks then realized how easy this stuff would be to cut. Being real porrous I'm sure it's real easy to cut.

[Horerczy]

It would be a fun venture to see if the 8x8x4 really promotes anaerobic zones for nitrate consuming bacteria.

That's why I buy my LR from LFS. I hand pick what I want and usually get a pretty decent deal

I wish my LFS carried decent rock. They're terribad for that.

[CrazyEyes]

It would be a fun venture to see if the 8x8x4 really promotes anaerobic zones for nitrate consuming bacteria.

I wish my LFS carried decent rock. They're terribad for that.

Terribad, pretty neat word. I have to admit, there is so many amazing stores around here that picking out really nice live and dry rock is way easy. I've seen basically everything around here, Marco, Fiji, Florida, Tonga etc etc. Only thing that bummed me out was, I called a LFS that is about an hour from me and said, "do you all carry DRY rock? Yes we do, it's $4/lb. So I drive, go to look for this "dry rock" and the dude goes, well it's not dry dry, it's just not fully live yet. But it was still in their big live rock tub.

 

 

And it looked like crap imo, it was basically just big heavy round dense unporrous bolderish shit.

[patback]

Yeah, I was like hmmm I could buy 4 8x8x1 blocks then realized how easy this stuff would be to cut. Being real porrous I'm sure it's real easy to cut.

Go slow. Easy to cut usually=easy to break.

[CrazyEyes]

Go slow. Easy to cut usually=easy to break.

Good call, probably something I'd want to do with a handsaw.

[Horerczy]

A simple jig to insure a straight cut would be favorable. In my experience easy to cut means it will guide the blade directions I don't want to go. Or maybe i'm just really bad with a hacksaw.

[Maniu]

A simple jig to insure a straight cut would be favorable. In my experience easy to cut means it will guide the blade directions I don't want to go. Or maybe i'm just really bad with a hacksaw.

I'll 2nd a simple jig. As long as jig material is harder then material you are cutting, blade should be able to guide itself thru the block in straight line

 

If you have access to skill saw/chop saw or table saw, it would be a lot easier tho. Would have to use the stop block for jig or fance and cut it from all 4 sides since blades are usually 10-12"

[lnglostsurfer]

I just saw this stuff and thought it would be neat to lay down a 1" thick layer on the bottom of a tank instead of a sandbed. That way you could have a super minimalistic scape and still have a ton of filtration. You may even be able to do a dusting of sand on top just to hide the cracks. It should stay in place in a high flow tank too because it would settle down into the porous blocks a bit.

 

Just another thought about how to use them...Pretty cool looking product though for sure

[farkwar]

That's why I buy my LR from LFS. I hand pick what I want and usually get a pretty decent deal

 

I would too. But all the local live rock ive seen looks miserable too.

 

The days of real primo live rock appear to be over.

[CrazyEyes]

I'm gonna have to take some photos of the LR some of the LFS around here sell in store. Not sure what you all consider primo lr but some of the stores around here sell some really nice stuff.