kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff

[kien]

The time has finally come. This is probably the one aspect of any build that is on everyone's mind before they even get started.. the aquascaping! It has kept me awake at night for many many moons now (that and the whole worrying about leaks and flooding). So many great examples out there. Do I stack, epoxy, rod, zip tie, spray?? Do I do an apple stand, bonsai tree, mounds, lagoon ? Lots of stickies and napkins with funny looking squiggles on it that may or may not resemble live rock were sacrificed. Here's how it went down.

I decided to break up my aquascaping into 3 sections. Each section would be aquascaped in a fashion that I saw appealing from other examples and my past history with rock work. It ends up being a little bit of a mash up but I liked the end result.

The first grouping, closest to the overflow is a stacking of rocks with bridges and caves. I call them, the Caves. However, I didn't want to just stack the rocks like I did in the past. For one, I never did like the idea of putting live rock right on the glass. I know its fine and everyone else does it but that's not for me. I also wanted to stand the base rock up in more interesting stances rather than relying on their widest most stable side. Okay.. so how to do that? First I needed an anchoring system for my base rocks. What I came up with was the use of acrylic frag plugs, plugged into the bottom of the rocks, with the acrylic plugs glued to a sheet of acrylic that would sit on the glass. What I needed to do first was to make a some what level surface for my frag plugs. I simply rolled the rock around until I decided on which part of the rock I wanted to sit on the ground. If that part of the rock wasn't perfectly flat, I just took a chisel and made it flat(er). I used an acrylic sheet to test for flatness as I chiseld away.



Once I was happy with its flatness I choose 3 points where the frag plugs would go and proceeded to drill the holes for the frag plugs.



Note: If you ever try drill live rock, take it slow! Start out with a smallish pilot hole, then work your way up to your final hole size/drill bit. If you start off with your largest bit right away chances are you will end up fragging your live rock.

Once the hole was drilled I tested the hole to make sure it fit my frag plug snuggly.



Then I proceeded to do the remaining holes. Once all of my holes were drilled and plugged with the frag plugs, I lined up the acrylic sheet again to make sure it was still level/flat. It wasn't so I simply made some holes bigger and and filled them with epoxy to straighten the plug. At this point the plugs simply sit into the holes, they are not secured in the holes in any way. I wanted to be able to place the rock onto the plugs later after I had put the acrylic base sheet into the tank first.

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Once I was happy with the fit I put gel glue (loclite from home depot) onto each of the frag plugs and place the entire structure onto the acrylic sheet where I wanted it.



I had to hold it in place for a few seconds to let the glue dry enough so that I could then lift the rock up from the frag plugs, leaving the frag plugs behind.



I repeated the whole process for the 4 legs of my main support legs for the Caves.







Next I had to decide what the upper structure of the Caves was going to look like and how to attach them. Again, I didn't want to just lay or stack rock on top of the base rock. What I decided to do was to make acrylic dowels of various lengths. These are dowels made out of a 1/2" acrylic rod (hallow).



The upper rock was light(ish) so I didn't feel like I needed an entire rod inserted into the rock. Once I knew where I wanted a piece to attach to, I drilled a hole into each piece that was the size of the dowel. Inserted the dowel and set them together. For a little extra security I used epoxy and/or zip ties to fasten them together.



Finally, once I was happy with all my varous sub structures I put the sheet of acrylic into the tank and then started to position all of the base rock onto their corresponding support plugs. I'll admit, it was tricky to line up the holes again.

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[kien]

And here they are, the Caves.

[kien]

Next up was the middle section of the tank where I wanted a bonsai tree like structure. I knew that this pieces was going to sit funny and be very top heavy so i didn't want to rely on the previous method for securing rock to the acrylic sheet. Instead I just picked out the largest and heaviest rock I had in my collection and used it as my base rock. I then epoxied and zip tied various flat pieces together to make the arms or branches of the tree.



Here again I am using an acrylic dowel to help secure an arm of the bonsai tree.







There are two arms in total with a vary large flat tonga piece that sits on top. Huh.. I thought I had taken a picture of of the entire structure but I guess I didn't. I guess you'll have to wait until the full tank shot to see it. Sorry, here's a shot of me drilling live rock, enjoy.

[lastlight]

Thanks for the step-by-step I really like how you've secured the rocks to the acrylic base! Where do people get their acrylic from? I need a bit to make a filter foam tray to sit before my return pump...

[kien]

Finally, in the last section I wanted to make a lagoon with low(ish) terraces that hovered over the sand. One criteria here is that I did not want the appearance of a heavy base rock supporting the terraces. Instead, I used a slab of tavertine as my anchor and drilled holes into it where I would insert very long and thick rods to support my terraces. If you've never seen or worked with tavertine, it is a very very dense and heavy rock! They use it to build buildings! I would then cover up the exposed acrylic with rubble epoxied to it. The tavertine is a tan colour that perfectly matches the sand bottom.



I guess now is a good a time as any to let the cat out of the bag. Way back in the beginning I had made a decision to go bare bottom. Well, after staring into my 150 for the past few weeks and then seeing the aquascaping come together I decided that I truly am not a bare bottom kind of guy. Sure it looks cool, but I think sand looks better, more complete and natural. The decision to put some sand on the bottom helped me to put all the pieces of my puzzle together. For example, I can now hide those acrylic panels that I glued my live rock too and I can partially burry the travertine slab so that it blends in with the sand.

Anyway, here's one of the terraces drilled.



And here they are built up.









Note: When dealing with live rock you have to work quickly. What I had on hand was a tub with heated salt water from the tank that I could use to dunk the rock into every now and again to keep them moist. Unfortunately this made for a very messy rock building session.

[kien]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Thanks for the step-by-step I really like how you've secured the rocks to the acrylic base! Where do people get their acrylic from? I need a bit to make a filter foam tray to sit before my return pump...

I got my acrylic panels from Home Depot (sump panels), and Rona ( base panels for aquascaping). Same stuff and pretty much the same price. It's just that sometimes they are out of stock.

Acrylic plugs from Red Coral :-)

Acrylic rods from Industrial Plastics and Paint

[Midknight]

Totally love the way your doing this. Gives me a lot of ideas also.

[mseepman]

Again, some great ideas and excellent detail in your photography. Keep sharing those ideas with us!

[kien]

It is probably safe to say that moving/changing tanks is the most hated task for any aquarium hobbyist. Typicaly you set out with some sort of a plan or process. You execute it and then somewhere along the way there are hiccups, some bumps, bruises, sweat, tears, perhaps a little blood, and a few colourful metaphors thrown in for good measure. I have moved tanks many many times now, and each time I made note of something I learned that worked well, or was an EPIC FAIL. This tank move went quite smoothly as a result. Here's how it went down.

1. First I mixed two 33 gallon tubs of salt water. I heated and circulated this water so that it was the exact same temperature as the Old tank. That's a totally of 66 gallons in tubs. There was another 25 gallons in my premix Brute tub in the basement on hand and a full 55g of RO/DI water just in case. You may have noticed this tubs in some of the build picture.
They're sitting next to the display tank.

2. After fishing out some of my live rock to build the Cave structure I then proceeded to pump out water from the Old tank into the New tank.



3. Once I had enough water in the display tank (probably about 5 inches of water), I put a heater into the New tank and made sure it was heated. I like to run 77 degrees F. I also put in a power head to circulate the water in the New tank.

4. With 5 inches of water in the new tank I had enough water to move some corals. Using a tupperware container large enough to hold a coral colony with some water I placed colonies one at a time into the container and transported them to the new tank, making sure that they were never exposed to air. I know that they are fine with air exposure but I figured the whatever I can do to minimize the the stress of the tank moving the better!

5. I repeated this process until I ran out of room and then proceeded to pump more water into the New Tank.



6. Once more rock was exposed in the Old tank I took them out and worked on them (aquascaping) for the new tank. (see previous posts on aquascaping).

7. I repeated steps 4-6 until everyone was moved from the Old tank to the New tank. By now the Old tank was empty and the new tank was half full of the Old tanks water. Slightly cloudy. No one was very happy but none the worse for wear. I did not do all the aquascaping as i went along. For example, the last arm of the Bonsai and the Lagoon rocks I just left sitting at the bottom of the tank to be worked on later (after all the water was filled).

8. At this point I proceeded to pump in water from the tubs of premixed salt into the New tank. Slowly. It was like a water changed to them. Although a very hefty 50% water change. The tank was a little cloudy but it cleared up pretty quick.

9. Once the water began to overflow into the sump I turned it on and away we went!

10. I then transferred the refugium from the Old sump into the refugium of the New sump. Mostly just sand, live rock rubble and a ball of chaeto that doesn't seem to want to grow very well for some reason.. mental note, need more chaeto.

The next day I put my old 48" light fixture on top of the canopy. I am still waiting for my new 72" light fixture to free itself from the evil clutches of Canadian Customs. I also cleaned and added a dusting of sand to the tank. The sand clouded things a big.

Well, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. I don't have any pics of the full tank yet because it looks really funny with the 48" light fixture. The new fixture should be here any day now..

In the meantime, here are some shots of the sump in action.

The skimmer skimming..



The 'fuge fuging..



and the sump sumping.

[kien]

Two full days have passed now and everyone is doing great. Corals, SPS, LPS, zoos are all open, fish are swimming eating, exploring. Here's a crappy led moonlight night shot until I get a proper shot with the new lights in.



see how funny it looks with the old light fixture on it ? :-)