Using travertine for substrate instead of none or sand.
 

Hi all, I did a search for this question but there is such a huge amount of threads to go through. My question also differs slightly rather then just using or not using, I was wondering if I could use an alternative.

We have decided to do the background on our 260 gallon with 4"x4" travertine marble, since one of the LFS said it is nice and porous much like live rock. They also sell it for a small fortune and this stuff was free for us. It is untreated, and we are to treat it with an inpregnator after installing it for our clients. It closely resembles the colours of the live rock, and so far looks pretty darned awesome. It is laid on a brick pattern and looks very natural since the marble has natural distress cracks, holes and chips along the edges. I was concerned it would look too man made, but there will be a huge amount of live rock stacked up against it anyways. It looks like a wall from a sunken ruin under the ocean.

I have a bunch of 1"x1" travertine left over from a job, and was wondering if we could glue it down to the bottom of the tank with aquarium safe silicone, just like we have done for the back ground. There would be no gaps for grout joints, and they would be butted up together tightly. I had planned to cover it with substrate, but read about all the difficulties and pains of keeping it clean. I know this personally due to caring for my 55 gallon, and cannot imagine syphoning a 260g that is 30" tall not including the stand.

I am not a fan of no substrate, but can appreciate and love the fact of not having to syphon it, since it is my job and I hate it. It takes time and effort for a little 55g, so a 260g scares me to think about.

If I do not like the look of the travertine on the bottom, at least I do have the option of covering it with substate. It is the same colour anyways, so it would not have to be super thick to cover any hard to reach spots.

Any opinions or insights on this at all? Again this untreated marble and must be sealed after installing it for clients to keep moisture out. Of course I would not be sealing it, and would be leaving it in it's natural state. The tank will not have anything but water cycling for at least eight weeks or more if needed. The water would be tested regularily to make sure things are good.

Thank you in advance for any help or insights that you may have.

I siliconed live rock to the back of my tank without any problems, and I have read that marble tiles are reef safe. Some people use them as frag plugs.

I use 1"x1" tiles for frags with no ill results. I don't see why you couldn't use it in larger quantities.

Thanks!!!
 

I appreciate the answers. I did read it was okay to do so, but it is always better to ask real people. I am glad that so far it seems great. My husband is still putting the marble on the background and using his tilesaw to cut liverock into the wall. This is the most fun I have seen him have using his skills. No mortar or grout, just silicone and and a saw. This whole project has been a long time in the making between me being hospitalized after I bought this thing, and many false starts or just no time...

Thanks again.

Some pics would be nice
 

I would love to see some pics as to how it turned out if you have the time.

Great idea.

+1

Here are a couple of pics from my camera phone. This is just the start of the project for now. We are still on the fence with the bottom of the tank. I put a pic of the 1"x1" and then the 12"x12". On the back there are some live rocks that have been cut on the tile saw for shelves and such. It is not complete yet. So far we have used three tubes of silicone, and have the overflows to clad in travertine as well as the bottom (if we do so). My husband is no where near completed so he will be mad that I posted pics so soon...

I can't get all the pictures on here since it is exceeding my quota. They are all the same size so I have to take a look at it. I am not computer savvy. I just opened a flickr account let me see if this link works.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30861436@N08/?saved=1

The Alcan box just cracks me up! Looks really cool so far!

It was just the right size to hold stuff up, or I would have had to stand there for a couple of hours:mrgreen:

Its amazing what little things we can find that we use in our hobby.

PS, I accidentally deleted your PM, could you re-send it please?

Looks great I like it.:smile:

Catherine are those the same tiles you are using to mount frags?

Well with my research on this fantastic site, I think I am going to use substrate under the live rock, and have the 12"x12" travertine tiles on the front part for ease of cleaning. My husband started playing with the 1"x1" travertine squares to build dividing wall to hold the substrate back from the marble. It is looking good but I am thinking that perhaps I should take some broken pieces and build the wall with that to compare the look. The little squares will be much easier to silicone together, but I have the day off, so I am like a kid with Lego. Nothing is siliconed yet (ran out and have to drive into Calgary for more), and some of the travertine is wet which shows up darker in the pictures.

I cannot post the pics here so they are in my flickr account. What do you all think? I am still learning how to use this account since I just started it last night so the pictures are all over the place. Sorry about the mayhem. Any comments, ideas or suggestions would be much appreciated since we only want to do this ONCE.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30861436@N08/

pretty cool but I will withhold my final opinion until I see it full of water and life...
Great potential though IMO.

Well that's not a huge help:lol:

I do wonder what the marble will look like when life takes over. Will it be ugly algae covered and slimy... I am wondering what divider to use since I do not want it to be too man made looking. The background will have a lot of live rock in front of it, so I am hoping the water and rocks will obstruct the joins. With the divider, it will be mostly obstructed as well, but I would not mind if some of it was showing, however, is natural looking or manmade better? These are things I don't want to discover when it is all together.

I know it is different form anything else I have seen, which is awesome for originality, but sucks for taking a risk of being different. It scares me that we have to fill it with 260 gallons of water, the rocks and corals, to see what it will be. The way it is already going, I will be hoping for a Christmas completion, but we still have to figure out what pumps we need to pump the water to the sump that will be in the basement, how to set up the reverse osmosis, and the million other things that must be done.

I just keep repeating " A journy of a thousand miles begins with one step".

all completely personal preference....
as long as you still repect yourself everytime you look at your tank then you made the right decisions.
I have a hrd time believing that the fish and inverts we keep are fooled for a second that the glass cages we confine them to are "natural" so tit's really a personal choice when it comes to your tank.
if you like it, what can anyone else say?:question:

i dont get it, ?? whats the point?? When I dive I dont see a tile backspalsh, is there a benefit???

maybe that IS the point.
you don't see glass walls siliconed around you when you dive either do you?

Travertine is very porus, just like live rock. I was searching the web for background ideas and saw many made made fake rock backgrounds and walls. We own a tile company and have a decent amount of travertine marble left over from a show home. It is free, and is very close to the colour of the live rock formations and such. This tank is huge and I want it to be as easy to care for as possible. The background will be covered by a large amount of live rock of course, but it has to stay in my smaller tank and be bought when we are that far along. The live rock that is glued on right now, of course came with the tank and has been dry for months now. We have two overflows that have to be hidden, but all our plumbing will be in the basement just below the display tank.

I will be gluing more 4x4s that I have broken to the exsisting background to give it more dimension as well. I am going for a look of a manmade wall that has sunken under the ocean that has been overgrown by live rocks and corals. I know fish cannot be fooled by this, but we as humans want things to be convincing as possible. Since this is a manmade tank we might as well attempt to combine the two worlds into one in a sense. All I knew is that I wanted some sort of rock shelving to support corals, provide tunnels, and be biologically functional as well. I know it is a new idea, but somebody has to try. It is hard to find the perfect rock to fit our needs at times, and darned expensive! It is nice to use something that cost us nothing, and try to save costs as well as be original as well.

I guess if Atlantis was found, perhaps it would look like what I am trying to build. I would love a ship wreck, but a tank is too small for rotting wood and rusting metal. It is just something different, nd an experiment. I guess when it all matures and grows and I hate it, we can rescape if needed.

enough rock with coraline glass takes care of that pretty quick.. Just paint the back glass black..

may look cool once coraline algae gets the tiles... Porous may lend a hand to bacteria buildup.. own a tile company , with free tiles is a good isea I guess.. Will be interested to see how it looks with time!!!

Very interesting project, can't wait to see this tank with water and life in it =D.

Good luck!!!!!

That was the original plan, but there is a secondary layer of tinted glass silconed to the back. We had to cut the tank apart to move it out of the seller's basement. The we had to clean the panels and when we did, water seeped between the layers. You can see the evaporated water between the panel now (horrible when the oights are on), and it would be much to risky to try to cut off the tinted glass now. Plus it was awful to cut the glass apart when dismantling the tank, and we only has an inch to cut through. The back glass is seven feet wide and 30" tall. It would be a huge feat to get it apart back there. So... we decided to make a background for the inside instead.

Me too! :mrgreen:

It looks cool.... it would look really cool in my bathroom :D

I just cant help but smile with the thought if you could get some cyanobacteria leaching back out of the travertine! LOL, not really possible, but I guess life comes full circle? ;)

-Diana

Funny you mention a bathroom, that's what it is from. I have it for my backsplash in this house when we started renovating. I LOVE the stuff, and went through great strides to NOT fill the holes in with grout on the splash. I like the holes and such in the natural stone. The last bathroom I did, I had to fill the holes in with grout which defeated the whole purpose of the look in my opinion.

Isn't cyanobacteria the thick red slimy stuff that I had to syphon off of my rocks the other day? I did do some research on it, know a bit about it, but darned it, now you are making me do more research since I am a newbie...:redface:

Great name BTW... I have the same one. Spelled just like the Princess... I always have to say it since people tend to add extra "n"s or do an "e" on the end. I introduce myself as "Diana" and still get called "Diane". Ten years into my marriage, my in laws got me a birthday cake with "Diane" on it... I had a chuckle about it, sort of.

Haha oh god, I dont even correct people anymore when they call me Diane. There's been people I've known practically all my life that call me that too, lol.

Yeah travertine is a pretty cool stone, its basically calcium carbonate that has precipitated out of the water and been turned into rock, and all sorts of microscopic bacteria and life gets trapped in it and gives it its color (such as cyanobacteria and spirulina and stuff). Not that it could ever come out of the rock after being fossilized, but its kind of neat having rock in the aquarium that contains the same bacteria from millions of years ago that you are keeping alive today. :D

Can't wait to see more pics. ;)

Yeah I just don't bother correcting anymore, since after twenty minutes, they call me Diane again... I always say "like the Princess" since every knows her name correctly, and it is word association thing that I use to remember names of individuals...

It surprises me that travertine is used in showers (I should show you pictures of the last one we did, it is spectacular!!!), it is so porous. However the impregnators I use after it is installed get me higher then a kite. This is particularly bad since I am usually on a scaffold sealing the marble on the ten foot shower ceiling. I love working with natural stone, although it is horrible to grout and seal. There is nothing like it. When it is either wet or has the impregnator on it, the colours and minerals beam through.

Right now I am siliconing broken bits together into barrier walls to hold the substrate back. I am applying more silicone to myself then anything else at the moment. I feel like a kid again...

Yes they are.

I can bring you a bunch of 1"x1" squares of travertine when I pick up food. I will give them to you in trade for knowledge and perhaps a lesson in how to glue frags to them in the first place. I will set some aside from the project, so they are not gobbled up by this project. I am wanting broken marble for the retaining walls, but I think my hubby is going for the manicured look. I am building all my broken stuff now, just to prove him wrong...

Hubby and I have been together so long, but this tank has us bickering just like the first two years we were together...

LOL!

Sure, sounds like a good trade to me!

Consider it yours' then. They are falling off of the sheets which you want anyways. I'll set about 100 of them aside for you.

It's done
 

Well the front glass is on and it is finished!!! I think my husband outdid himself. Here are the pictures of the project.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30861436@N08/?saved=1

Very Cool! You wont ever have to worry about cleaning your back glass. Cant wait to see it all up and running.

Wow, that is awesome! Looks like a display in a zoo!

Any updates? This is one of my favorite builds!

Thanks for sharing,

Kevin

Go
 

wow,
I can hardly wait to see more... clever, clever, clever. Oh and Bragg Creek one of my
favorite places.
________
buy silver surfer

oh wow...
you leave a thread for a couple weeks and wow.
That is one of the most custom custom tanks I have ever seen.
I cannot wait to see if filled with water and when you get the color of corals in there, I think it will be very stunning.
Looks great in the room as well, all in all, a very nice set up.
I shold have before, But I am now subscribed.

almost to nice to put water in