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I agree and think that I can do this in the following way: I'll make my own rock out of cement, salt, and oyster shells
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I made a bunch of DIY rock myself when I first started in much the same way. I used crushed oyster shell, sand, and portland cement. I wouldnt do it again, and I'm now slowly replacing it with real LR. My reason for wanting to get rid of it is it seems to be a preferred substrate for nuisance algae, more specifically green bubble algae it also tends to collect alot more detritus than real LR possibly because it is much more porous. I was able to create some really nice shapes though. Mixing the ingredients in different amounts will make the rock more or less porous. So alittle experimentation may get you something better than what I made. Awhile back I read somewhere here that crushed oyster shell may also be a source of phosphates so you may want to keep that in mind and use aragonite instead.
Also I would not use salt in the homemade rock, its going to eventually dissolve raising your salinity, and your rock will most likely crumble.
What kind of rock do you find naturally down there in Maryland? Up here its all solid like granite, quartz, and other non porous rock. If I was to create a biotope aquarium from local caught stuff I would use local harvested rock as well, and look for other means of biofiltration/nitrate reduction like a DSB.