My 57g Rocky Rebuild.

I promised a look at my tank eventually, and here it is. The tank has been up for a few months, but since I have a record going back to the beginning, and since I just got here, I hope you all don't mind if I give you a look from the start.

Nicky and I just bought a new house that comes with all sorts of benefits, like more space, a nice back patio...



and all sorts of other bonuses. The downside and the upside is this. I had to break down the old tank and I took the opportunity to rebuild it the way I want to. I want something light, airy, and full of corals rather than rocks. In order to accomplish this, I felt like I needed to make my own rock. The methods on the site are all great, but getting something tall and light in a moderate sized tank required a little experimentation. My first attempt, foaming the center of a structure...



Was an abysmal failure. So was the second, coating a pvc structure in foam then cement mix.



The third attempt was to build a mold our of foam and pour the rock... here is the process.











The result is good enough to use, but there were some problems along the way. The primary being that the foam did not release anywhere near as well as I had hoped. It had to be laboriously scraped off.



But the result looked good.

 

Wow! very clever!

 

So into the tank it went for a few weeks of freshwater bath to get things tank safe. As you can see here, there is a layer of foam still stuck on that took a LOT of scrubbing to get off.



For the second effort, we tried to coat the mold in wax to help it release...



The result was a bit of a mess, the mold released slightly better, but the wax was a complete pain to get off... I'm still not sure its all gone.



The rock on the other hand, is perfect.



Add a bit of base rock to fill things out and here they are after soaking for 5 weeks.



Add a few mangroves because I like them...



Set up the sump with some extra base rock to help with the filtration since the tank itself is a little light on it...



Put on the light and here it is!

 

Its a minor upgrade, but here is the new pendant for the mangroves. It looks a bit out of place with the viper, but I'm planning to switch to pendants for the main tank lighting and expect it to look more sensible at that point.



And here is the tile backsplash. Ever expected to hear that in a reef forum?







I don't have a pick with both sides done yet, but they are. Finally, below, a few initial corals...







and plus or minus some growth, that's where we are today...

 

Ok I'm really impressed

 

Why thank you, I'm rather proud of it so far

 

I like it!!!

Nice work.

 

Excellent work congrats, this is going to be fun watching it mature

 

Spectacular!

 

Servillius

those home made /DIY rocks are well worth the obvious effort you went through to create them IMHO

The one with the branching flats, looks fantastic and what a great location for coral placement in future

Steve