12 years coming, my venture back into reefs.

Looks real good. With style is the only way to come back, congratulations!

 

So I finally finished my foam rock wall... it took a lot more time than I thought it would but I'm happy with the results.







I still have to epoxy and coat the foam stuff on the left rock island.





And I hooked up my RO/DI unit and started making water.



TDS before and after... It must be working =)





Tomorrow I'm going to finish plumbing the sump and get her full of water... I can't wait!

 

Great start.....congrats on comming back.

 

dang.....i wish i had a nice spot to put my tank.....how did you make the rock wall???? i love that idea....mind if i use it?? and i love your sump as well....this idk, but is there an advantage of having your sump covered? besides stuff not being able to fall in it....as for the "pile of rocks" i actually like that look when its all up and running as long as you have caves which obviously you do.....i can imagine it with coralline all over and it will look awesome....nice job!! thank the wife for me, haha

 

Nice job! I'd love to know how you did the rock wall also! I am so following along on this one.

 

Thanks for the complements guys....

The rock wall thing is pretty simple and there's about a million threads covering it on this and the other reef boards. I'll give you the condensed version.

You need eggcrate, great stuff foam, dry live rock, epoxy paint, sand or crushed coral and some zip ties

First cut some eggcrate into sections that fit your back wall, zip tie it together for the places you need to "box off" like the overflows.


Then take a hammer and bust up the ugly pieces of dry rock you have into smaller pieces.... Take a can of "Great Stuff" foam and start covering the eggcrate (remember, less is more because it expands to about 3-4 times the size when dry)
Push in some pieces of dry rock in random places and let it dry for about 3-4 hours, go back and foam any open spots in the eggcrate and let it dry for a day or two. Remember not to cover the overflow slots with foam.



Then once you have all the wall pieces done and cured (a couple days) fit them into the tank and start trimming because they grew bigger.



I forgot to mention that some of the foam will have expanded through the eggcrate, just take a cheap steak knife that's a little flexible and start shaving it smooth (I'm still apologizing to my wife for this because I had some wet spots inside the foam that ruined the knife)

Then coat it on the back with epoxy paint, when that is dry (2 days) flip them over and start painting the foam in small sections (don't paint the rock if you use any) and while the paint is wet, use a spoon to cover it with sand or crushed coral, I used crushed coral because it came in my tank when I got it but I switched over to black sand so it was sitting around in a bucket doing nothing.

Once the paint it dry (I waited 24 hours) flip them over to remove all the excess sand not stuck to them and then take your wife out to dinner for getting sand all over the basement carpet while she is still mad that you wrecked the knife ;D

I wish I had taken pictures of the actually "sanding" but I forgot.

That's pretty much it... Now you just need to silicon them to the back glass because they'll try to float, mine are cut to they fit tightly into place and the euro bracing in my tank will hold them in place.



I hope this helps or at least inspires you enough to go through hundreds of threads about foam walls until you're confident enough to try it yourself like I did.

 

Nice tank and setup! Almost looks like you built the house around the tank, not the other way around.

 

Thanks for the complement... I was really lucky that this tank fit in that spot because when I finished the basement that spot was meant to house a 48x24x24 tank with a few inches on each side for cleaning.

 

That looks freak'n amazing! great job!

 

i like it alot!! i think i know what i am doing on my next tank rock wall.