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.
..
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.
..
