acrylic rods ? where?

[skyedolphan]

OK I am tired of fighting the battles between fallen rocks and a few mojanos that keep creeping up and the darn button polyps I put in the tank 5 years ago that I have never been able to erridicate
I am tearing the SPS side apart this weekend which means
1) there will be plenty of frags as alot ofmy corals are encrusted on different rocks
2) I am wanting to secure the rocks as best as possible so have heard of others using acrylic rods
3) if cant find acrylic rods are cable tiesOK to use for long term?

 

[dedfish]

Any local plastic and acrylic shop should have rods. Proabbly have scrap pieces for cheap. Try looking up 'Plastics-Rods, Tubes, Sheets, Etc.' in your yellow pages. That's the heading I found my local acrylic supplier through.

 

[FishyIdea]

I read a tip on RC that you can go to Home Depot and buy those hexagonal rods that are used to open blinds for cheap and they work really well for this purpose. You just need to figure out the drill bit size that works with the rods you buy.

 

[Brimc]

If you cannot find them local try www.usplastic.com and go under extruded. The prices are very cheap.
-Brian

 

[wrassefan]

Dawn, I think I have some still from when we changed mini blinds....let me check and I'll pm ya' later.

 

[FishyIdea]

If you buy from usplastics, like I did, i'd get rods at least at pencil thickness. I went for the thinist ones, which are essentially acrylic noodles. Not too good for building tall structures.

 

[RichConley]

dawn, you could try those plastic hangars, and cut them up. I've seen people on RC doing that.

 

[NateHanson]

For my acrobatic rock arrangement I thought the mini-blind rods at home depot might be a bit light, so I ordered 1/2" from USPlastic. They're pennies per foot.

If your structure is basically sound, and the rods are just meant to keep things from shifting though, the home depot ones or simply wire ties would be fine.

In my experience wire ties are fine long term, and I know a few people using them permanently (as I was until I broke things down)

 

[skyedolphan]

ok gonna hit HD well actually lowes tonite and see what I can find
really plastic hangers? kinda afraid of the coloring in them for long term use no?
thank you everyone for your help my rock will be basically sound as i am going to do a layering/one sided pyramid structure for the SPS side to maximize grow out room I figure if I am going to bust up encrusting colonies I do not EVER want to have to do it again it has taken me a year to get to this stage since HMM... this time last year we tore the tank apart to drill and add sump and did quite a bit of damage to the corals them ...next time this tank comes apart IT WILL BE FOR GOOD!!!!!!!!!! or a much bigger tank

 

[Greg Hiller]

The annoying thing about plastic hangers is that they float. You could also buy cheap plastic rigid tubing (most LFS's carry it) and cut that up.