I'm pretty jealous of the aquascape , one of the coolest tanks I have seen just on the set up alone .

so before the island we did the waterfall:)


for the waterfall we entertained the idea of buying an already made structure and simply modifying it to work in a reef , well that didnt work as none of what we seen online was going to work , so denny has a background in stone work and figured you know what we will just make it ourselves lol

so while we had our tank home we went and picked out some rock for the waterfall , the idea was to buy a thick piece of shelf rock shave the back to a perfect 90 degree angle so it sits flush on the rim of the tank in the back corner , with the shelf rock we wanted to create a basin in the lowest part so that we can put some corals in to grow. then we would build up and then down after the main plate/basin was created.

problem........


all the shelf rock is either very flat or doesnt have a already made basin in it


kinda like this:

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7bb9c2b9.jpg


http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psfb92ee9f.jpg

so we broke out our 4" angle grinder and diamond blade and went to work making our own stone basin and working from there.


here are some pics of the cutting to make a basin we had to do......was dusty stuff :)


we had to make a plywood tank template to make sure when we got home it fit the tank perfectly:)

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...pse9999a7c.jpg

some grid lines up and down and left to right then snapped off the slivers with a flat head screwdriver , once it was all removed we used the saws blade and scratched back and forth untill it was all smooth.

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4ec04949.jpg



placing the basin inside the tank.....yeah that was to much work and then we had to find a way to make it sit up there permanently ( cant have it break under its own weight right)

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psf4f5f140.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps999f0a32.jpg



this was the dry sScape we finished with that night and was to be the starting point on the waterfalls overall design:) we had one main output in the front and then i made two emergency outputs on the left and right side slightly higher just in case a snails sits on the waterfalls main output and clogs it and water flows over the back side....couldn't risk that lol

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psa1d90a29.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psb1e2a3bb.jpg



brought home and a quick dry fit before we sealed it all and made it one piece:) still is a bit shaky!

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps5ab57818.jpg

top down of the raw rock after being cut out, still alot of work to be done on this before its running:)

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps45519cb7.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psd7b64e36.jpg



next up: the island design!!


enjoy!!

ruth:mrgreen:

very cool idea it's going to look sweet with the water spilling over.

thanks brett:)

the finished product is def pretty sweet:)

Photos or it didn't happen.

Even though I've seen it in person :lol:.

so it did happen lol :)

were getting there slowly hehehe:)

the island:)
 

next up we started to work on our island , we didnt want to use multiple small rocks to build the structure we were hoping to find either one large one or two large ones joined together.

to get the look we wanted we ended up with two large rocks , out of the box they weren't exactly a perfect fit but had the right profile....just needed a little trimming:)

out came the old saw again and we started cutting to what we wanted:)



problem was neither rock had a flat bottom to it so one had to be trimmed in order to fit comfortably on the other rock :)


http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3c9436b9.jpg



about this much had to go :

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps97d58a6d.jpg


http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps616ebbdf.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2d8908e3.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps22dd99b2.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps00505617.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps514d34d7.jpg


repeat as necessary:)


getting there:

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps40c8227b.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7b6db908.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psebb4b366.jpg

brought it home for the final touches and a quick idea of how it looked in tank:mrgreen:

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3ddf8809.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psecf7b954.jpg



lights:


http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps0aee97dc.jpg

nice straight alley in the back:

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps8c9dd34c.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps332f21f2.jpg

http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps686e3174.jpg

Denny you should have like a slope coming from the rock mang to high in the middle like a rock face sloping down BYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY:biggrin: