Look what I made!

BlazinNano · Mar 22, 2010

Look what I made.....

This is a actual cave/arch. Fish can swim through it

inactive · Mar 22, 2010

Those are sweet man!

justindville · Mar 22, 2010

Will they float??

Troylee · Mar 22, 2010

great job... what are they made out of???

BlazinNano · Mar 22, 2010

No they sink like a rock.....
100% ceramic fired at 1800 degrees
I have always made my own frag plugs and disk but I got bored so I tried something else.

soccerbag · Mar 22, 2010

Very cool. Time to put them into action...: )

XCrunnr36 · Mar 22, 2010

Those are awesome! going to need to see some in tank shots!

BlazinNano · Mar 22, 2010

soccerbag said:
Very cool. Time to put them into action...: )

Yeah I need to. I know where I can put a couple of the small ones but don't know if I have a place for the big ones.

Troylee · Mar 22, 2010

hmmmm.. are you gonna cycle them before using?? i have noticed in my exp. with ceramic plugs that they tend to grow algae leading me to believe they leach po4... is it true im not sure but i remember a thread floating around with this exact question and he was doing experiments with them to see...his intial findings were yes it did leach....
as long as you cycle them i think it would be fine if not they might leach a whole bunch of po4....i have to find that thread and bump it and see the conclusion of it...

inactive · Mar 22, 2010

troylee said:
hmmmm.. are you gonna cycle them before using?? i have noticed in my exp. with ceramic plugs that they tend to grow algae leading me to believe they leach po4... is it true im not sure but i remember a thread floating around with this exact question and he was doing experiments with them to see...his intial findings were yes it did leach....
as long as you cycle them i think it would be fine if not they might leach a whole bunch of po4....i have to find that thread and bump it and see the conclusion of it...

I also remember this.

Bugg_zy · Mar 22, 2010

Those look really cool!! I have just been glueing small chunks of LR together but I like your designs.

BlazinNano · Mar 22, 2010

troylee said:
hmmmm.. are you gonna cycle them before using?? i have noticed in my exp. with ceramic plugs that they tend to grow algae leading me to believe they leach po4... is it true im not sure but i remember a thread floating around with this exact question and he was doing experiments with them to see...his intial findings were yes it did leach....
as long as you cycle them i think it would be fine if not they might leach a whole bunch of po4....i have to find that thread and bump it and see the conclusion of it...

I remeber that thread as well. From what I have noticed is this. I have frag plugs that I have made and I have frag plugs from other people and other stores all in the same tank. I have noticed that the egg crate in my frag tank will grow algae, some of the other plugs I have will grow algae. The disk I have made have never grown algae. I don't know if it the ceramic I use or what. I do not use clay. I know some times people use clay. The stuff I use is actually called Slip. It is like water when I first get it. You can not even make a ball of it at first. I have to pour it into a 5 gallon bucket and use a cup to scroop it out. I then pour a slab on a mold and let some of the water evaporate. Then it is workable. Once I got these made it took a almost 10 days for the water to evaporate out of them before I could even put them in the kiln.

Now I have had these is RODI water for about a 36 hours just because I need to get the air bubbles out and dust off. I am going to test the TDS because I have never made something this big.

Troylee · Mar 22, 2010

Rite on man... Keep us updated.. I hear that egg crate leaches po4 but I find that hard to believe myself being it is plastic.. They sell acrylic egg crate but it is pricey... I think the white just atracts so much light it blooms with algae myself... I'm not a chemist so I will prolly never know lol...