Sunday, March 8, 2009
:: Foam-Rock Wall ::
Basically to construct your wall you need 7 simple items:
01. Egg crate or light diffuser panel you can find at your local Home Depot or Menard's.
02. Great Stuff Foam spray insulation "red can", foam is inert after curing.
03. Base rock
04. Zip ties in a variety of lengths
05. Epoxy Finishing Resin (z-poxy)
06. crushed coal, sand and argonite.
07. cement drill bit and drill.
It is very simple, but you will need patience. 1st decide what you want to construct. My wife and I did the right side and a section of our back wall. I measured and cut the egg crate, then zip tied it together and re checked my measurements. Then I drilled holes in the base rock and zip tied it to the egg crate. The next step was to foam around the rock work. After this was complete we let it set up over night to fully cure. Once the foam is fully cured it is inert and will not pollute your tank. We then mixed up epoxy and brushed an area at a time and sprinkle a mix of sand and crushed coral on the epoxy. The epoxy does two things. First it acts as a UV protective shield for the foam and secondly it allows you to adhere the sand to cover the foam. Once you are done with the epoxy and sand you will want to shake it off and do a few rinses. Let it dry and check to see if you missed any spots. If so just go back and do some touch up.
When we went to install it we ran into a few problems, moving the 4" sand bed was a mess and created an awfully big sand storm in the tank. We had to use a knife and nippers to adjust the height of the foam and egg crate. Once we finished, we were just able to catch the top of the egg crate under the lip of the trim on top. I used a few clamps to hold it in place and put the largest piece of Live Rock on top along with sand. Now all that is left is to wait for the sand to settle and start re aquascaping. If you have any questions, fell free to ask.
My inspiration came from a post on Reef Central. The guy did an amazing job. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1300282
Today my wife and I installed our 1st DIY foam/rock wall background. We have been working on our wall for the past few weeks and put the final coat of epoxy and sand on last night. Gave plenty of time to let it cure overnight and installed it this afternoon. The old addage mesure several times cut once came into play. We had to make some minor adjustments to the foam and all in all it went in pretty easy. We finished around 3 pm this afternoon and right now I am waiting for the sand storm to clear in the tank. We are hoping that none of our smaller fish swam into our carpet anemone during the sand white out. Hopefuly the sand storm will clear up by bed time so I can arrange some rock.
Our 75 has been up and running now for approximately a year. I added an over the tank wet dry filter to a sump last week. I chose to position the sump above my tank due to the limited space in my closet area/fish room. The plumbing was pretty straight forward. With the addition of a sump I was able to remove my HOB refugium and protien skimmer, giving my display tank a cleaner look. My new sump/refugium holds approximately 15 gallons of water and is fed by a Maxi Jet 1200 with a gravity feed back into the display tank. Inside the sump I have 2 different sections. The 1st section has a few different types of macro algae; Cheato, Caulerpa, Mangroves and cultivates a pod population. It also house my protien skimmer. The second section has a few pieces of Live rock, corals, a 2 inch live sand bed and a phosphate sponge.
Here is our 75 gallon reef after an upgrade from a leaky 65 gal tank. Our 65 gallon developed a small leak in the front bottom along the trim. Well my misfortune ended up with a $15.00 difference between a new 65 and a 75. Unfortunately Underground Aquatics was out of 90 gallon tanks, so a 75 it is. The filtration consists of a custom built do it yourself, hang on the back refugium.
This has 2 benefits. A place to hide some equipment and a safe place to culture pods and grow macro algae. I have no mechanical filtration, all my water is filter naturally by macro algae and the live bacteria that grows on my Live Rock. As time allows I will post simple "DIY" do it yourself projects that I have done to my reef as well as explain how to maintain a reef tank. As well as go into detail on what equipment and live stock I have.
I have been maintaining a saltwater reef tank for the past 9 years. I originally started out researching setting up a reef tank from few sites such as Reef Central and Nano Reef. I took the plunge and purchased a 11 gal Via Aqua all in one aquarium. Over the years as with anyone in this hobby moving up in tank size is always a must. The reason being is that a larger reef is easier to maintain due to a larger volume of water. Plus with this hobby you never go smaller. I now maintain a 75 gal reef tank with a 15 gallon over the tank sump. I have decided to share my piece of the ocean online as well as post easy and simple do it yourself "DIY" projects.
