Dave asks "Was my TBS rock porous?"

Cearbhaill

Cearbhaill

Reads the Gribble Report
Mar 22, 2003
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A little off topic: Toni, when you broke up your rock, how porous did it seem?
Click to expand...

This is a whole new topic- and a long story.

I got boulders from TBS. One rock took it's own oversized box and must have weighed 55 lbs. You saw my silly attempts at aquascaping- I was having a helluva time. I aquascaped and aquascaped- hurt my elbows badly from all the weight going up and down/in and out of my 90 gallon tank.

At one point I took the most humongous rock outside and took a sledgehammer to it. I fancy myself a strong woman- and I could not make a dent. I swung and swung, grunted and groaned until I half expected my neighbors to come see what I was beating to death- finally I gave up.

It was so bad that I was complaining on Reef Central about it and Richard from TBS saw one of my posts. He took it upon himself to ship me another 100 lbs totally free of charge! I did not complain to him or ask for it- he simply found the posts on his own and volunteered. The free batch of rock was light, porous, and I received several very nice shelf pieces.

This is why I tell all new TBS buyers to ask specifically for what you want. They really want to make you happy- you just have to tell them how.

Now- I need rock rubble to augment that in my refugium, so I ask the husband to bust the rock up for me. He is strong, and often swings a sledgehammer so he is no slouch- he even had trouble. After he finally got it broken up enough to suit me we looked at the one rocks innards- it was composed of some sort of black quartz looking substance. I kept the pieces to use whenever I need them, but must confess they are still lying out in the yard.

Whether this one rock is representative of TBS or just an odd rock I can't say. As I said some is porous and some is not- you just have to ask if you have specific wishes. Trouble is lots of folks buying from TBS are newbies, and we don't know what we want until we receive the wrong thing.

I need to post new photos- since I got the T5 lighting I cannot get the white balance right on my camera and I'm such a perfectionist I hate to post imperfect photos.

Plus I've added some softies before my first six months are up- something I vowed not to do. I am so ashamed.
 
Thanks. I remembered your RC post, but was too lazy to go hunt it down. I was just wondering, because it has been getting a bad rap for being nonporous. The Reef Invertebrate book by Fenner and Calfo spends several pages ranting about how inferior the Gulf rock is (with no actual data to back up their claims :shake: )

The stuff I have is full of holes and crannies, but I have never broken it to look inside.

Thanks.
 
I thought the page re this in Fenner and Calfo were pretty reasonable. Fact of life - if you do use fossil reef there is a reasonably high chance of nonporosity - porosity is the exception rather than the rule for fossil reef material (says the resevoir engineer)
 
It may have been. Just seemed like they lumped all aquacultured rock people together. If you believe their website, it looked like TBS put a lot of effort into finding rock that was reasonably porous.

As an aside, what is it about fossil coral that makes it more dense. Does stuff percolate in and fill the cracks?
 
Pretty much so. If you get any fluid movement at all (which is likely) remember the whole thing is soluble and can either drop in and out of solution and 'weld' as pressure is applied or removed, or any percolating fluids will also tend to stick it together.
Also the natural trend is for any aragonite to reform as calcite if there's much pressure applied. I feel it unlikely any calcaerous gravels made from crushed fossil reef would be aragonite.
The exception to this is some recent or well preserved calcaerous 'sands'. These can have very high porositys, but also tend to be incredibly crumbly, and effectively unconsolidated.
Also bear in mind that the porositys can vary quite a lot within a small space of ground - nature of fossilized reefs.
 
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