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Our 40g Island waterfall
hey everyone:)
so since we shut down our last tank ive been after denny ( aka reefwars ) for the last year to set up another display tank. with our frag systems still running and work busy for us both we just didnt have any mojo :) near the beginning of summer dennys co-worker and friend wayne ( aka wayner ) was planning to set up a small frag tank for himself to prop some sps , he made it all the way to the lighting stage then realized he doesnt have frags lol the offer was there to buy a small stylish shallow tank and included a already made stand and light :mrgreen: so we bought the setup with no real plans in mind and brought it home the following weekend. me and denny talked about what we wanted to do for the design and we agreed we would do another theme tank and just needed to settle on a theme. my last tank was a nano waterfall tank where water flowed over three panes of glass into a moat so i wanted to do something along the lines of a waterfall theme , denny wanted to do the island volcanoe theme he had always liked. so we met half way and settled on a tank that would house a vertical structure in the center of the tank that rose out of the water and on top of the tank in the back corner we would build a water fall. this is to be a mixed reef with all our nice zoas around the islands water edge and select sps pieces and lps etc to fill the rest of the tank:) fish ...TBD so it began....... the idea is to have water lines which are fed via the return pump to feed the waterfall and to have a few lines that ran over the island. the water that flows over the island ( 3 outputs ) will collect into some basins in which we will grow some corals in :) we will try to keep this updated and log as much as we can as this will be a pretty interesting build:) so here's what we got , we are actually already running with fish and corals but we will start this from the beginning as all good stories start:) next up ....the set-up:) enjoy!!! ruth:biggrin: |
ok so now thew theme has been determined we needed to figure out how we are going to run this idea:)
so heres what we came up with:mrgreen: tank specs: 36 x 20 x 14h rimless aquarium polished edges external overflow on back panel drilled for herbie silent overflow 1 x 3/4" returns on the back panel right side of overflow black silicone black acrylic back panel stand: 2 x 4 construction painted black ( skirted later) stand dimensions: 36 x 20 x 36h sump: 32 x 20 x 16h - its full custom built from concept ( obviously) and designed by me and denny we maxed out every last inch of space available so its a bit of a jig saw puzzle lol drain entry from display chamber 1 x 7" filter sock section refugium section skimmer section return section ATO compartment custom built in dosing chambers ( ca/alk/mg/vinegar) equipment: t5 6 bulb tek light bubble magus curve 5 protein skimmer 2 x 150w eheim jager heaters jebao dc12000 return pump 2 x koralia powerheads (2 x jebao rw-4 wireless on order) kamoer 4 channel doser tlf 150 reactors x 2 ( gfo/carbon) tunze osmolator 3155 here are some tank pics once we got it home from wayne and plugged in the lights:) http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psc9f825b8.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psd2f7b057.jpg |
Uh oh :) this should be entertaining;)
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That tank dimensions WoW.
you know you can build anything you want with Pukani and friends from fijireefrock.com check it out as I am sure there is at least a rock or two you might like to use for this crazy but neat idea of a water fall in the middle of a molten volcano.with your guys wakoo ideas... |
More pictures!
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thanks eli! when its all said and done all good projects start from a great foundation , in this case we went with the pukani its shapes were perfect and we couldnt pass it up:biggrin: eli was nice enough to let us sift through the rock late one night at a last minutes notice and helped us pick our pieces , he supplied us with the cement and information for the design not to mention the actual stones:) he didnt even think our idea was stupid lol this tank has fijireefrock written all over it lol up next: our pics on how we made our structures , the rock we chose and a few tutorials on how we finished our design and made it all come together:) |
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This tank has me rethinking how I do reefing :razz:.
Beauty in person, excited to see how the zoas grow out. |
Haha now that's what I am talking about...thinking outside of the box :) thanks Levi!! .we are really pleased with how its coming along, all our collector zoanthids will be beautiful once grown out and the system has matured :)
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Ive literally wanted to do this for years!! One of my favorite tanks out there was the famous volcano tank. Really looking forward to this!!
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I'm pretty jealous of the aquascape , one of the coolest tanks I have seen just on the set up alone .
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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.
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the finished product is def pretty sweet:) |
Photos or it didn't happen.
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Even though I've seen it in person :lol:.
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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:
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next up we had to seal the waterfall to hold water in its basin as well to make sure it didnt leak through the back and onto the floor , as much as we liked the all natural stone look seeing the water seep through the pores had me worried about if the waterfall backed up or if we may have missed something when planning , so we decided to seal it from the bottom and backside :)
good ol fijicrete to the rescue ( fast setting mortar) to seal the stones and then we used spray foam , 2-party epoxy and silicone to seal the outside and finish off the top off the waterfall :) after making our cuts i realized this wont hold water lol http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psd7325360.jpg hmmm...big hole here...that wont do either lol http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps59dc68c0.jpg the lip of the waterfall , as well the emergencies on each side(less noticable) http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...pscd9aa37f.jpg the underside of the rocks.....see this wont hold water at all lol http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psd08e1a1b.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psa3d5b3b6.jpg |
fiji crete:
http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps38a8515c.jpg a can for mixing: http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps16bbca5d.jpg some water: http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...pseda7860d.jpg very technological mixing spoon:) http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...pse12b3c35.jpg top portion of the waterfall also needed to be sealed:) http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psb93fe1ce.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psa888efa3.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7da6c608.jpg |
time to get messy:)
http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps8a3dd515.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psf941ba76.jpg consistency of peanut butter:) http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4e6805cb.jpg |
like icing a cake:)
http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps8363b1df.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psf5a0ab6f.jpg dont be afraid to get your hands in there:) http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps0a5db842.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps9f193e5f.jpg afterwards a little shot of water and then smoothed out with my finger to get full coverage and make sure theres no pinholes in the mortar:) http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps71b46d78.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psb68e7e94.jpg |
while that dried we got to work on the water channels for the island , since this rock is so porous we decided to use some vertex 2-part epoxy to create our water channels and focus water where we want it , as well to build our basins/pools that the water flows in to later:)
stinky stuff but molds well and doesnt dry nearly as fast as that fiji crete lol http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps861058f7.jpg poke it right in there: http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps432a4eb4.jpg looks ok? http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psccd1cad4.jpg basins at the bottom:) http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps75372975.jpg |
gonna look awesome when its done!
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I like it ,I really like it:rockon:
Cannot wait to see the end results. |
it was nice to have two months to work on dry rock vs live thats for sure ,we actually had a lot of fun doing this build , took all summer but its coming together nicely:)
our build is also on RC if anyone ventures out that way:) sposing you all want to see the finished product eh?:mrgreen::mrgreen: |
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ok more coming today!!! maybe even make it to the water stages...excitin stuff!! |
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little peeved the misses may get a TOTM before me though:( |
next up now that our fijicrete was dry was to build the aterfalls platforms
we used a mix of expanding foam , epoxy and fijicrete to complete it all:) http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps26451d39.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4cb4c23b.jpg had to seal all the outside as well:0 http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps6b26f7cd.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps80012700.jpg then coated the inside with fijicrete to hide all the foam and epoxy as well create a stone look:) http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psb7ef4b46.jpg |
Very Nice!
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more coming today!! |
sump design
ok so we had to design a sump , this is right up our alley and we got to work and drew something up
these were the plans we made: http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psad04547b.png http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps91a7bcbb.png http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps5f0543df.png http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps9f665e6f.png http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psad5ee3f5.png http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps688cbfa9.png http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps897bf447.png basically our down pipes from the external overflow are plumbed into the chamber marked drain entry form display , water then flows over the baffle and onto a 7" filter sock try , when the socks are running normal water flows under the next baffle and when they clog water flows over the notch and into the fuge , after the socks the water flows through the refugium and then into the skimmer section , through some bubble traps and into the return. we have added a small ATO in the back corner as well some dosing chambers for vinegar, alk , cal and mg:) there is an acrylic cover for both the ATO and dosing chambers with holes drilled for lines:) will post actual pictures of our sump and how it turned out next:) |
and the actual sump all glass:)
http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psdb0e20a8.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...psdd49fbc4.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps05236fdf.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps9015fe74.jpg http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps0594e5a7.jpg under the stand http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2a6692cf.jpg skimmer and reactor laid in place http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/...ps4bea3b11.jpg |
Like the sump, great design.
Is there a reason the skimmer compartment is after the refugium? My sump is the same flow pattern, however I sometimes think the flow through the skimmer then refugium before return could benefit pod growth. Just curious? Rick |
Wow thats a really intricate sump! Nice work.
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i use to see them in my skimmer and reactors constantly so im sure they make it through as they got in there:) thanks guys for the compliments more to come soon:) |
Nice work guys, can't wait to see this up and running. Plus 2 on a custom sump, like how you've set up ato and dosing compartments in it aswell.
Out of curiousity what does a sump like this cost? |
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