I’ve had the 24L nano tank running for a while now but have never been truly happy with it. Time was short while setting up so everything was more ‘thrown in’ rather than taking the time to get it ‘right’... the joys of having fish waiting in a bucket I guess!
So far it’s in this state where the dragon rock works and the tree attempt kind of works too, just not together in that smaller tank as it messes with the perspective as well as my OCD!
After spending the afternoon fishing a load of fresh baby RCS out of the tank in preparation for giving the livestock a holiday, I decided to have a play with some of the eleventy million spare bits we have hanging around.
First off, before trying a ‘legitimate’ scape I thought it would be a good idea to use a tray to mock everything up on to help get an idea of scale. I even ended up even adding some cardboard around the back two edges so I knew for sure how much room I will have to play with which I’m sure that will come in handy later as I have half a plan...
After swapping the 125L for the 200L we have a good few pieces of dragon rock sat surplus so decided to start there. After playing around with a few different angles, the rock found a position which worked and supported itself.
Due to the positioning on the desk, the tank will be seen both from the front as well as the side. Planning the tank to be viewed from both directions is going to play a major role so I have used chalk on the tray to mark areas for plants, substrate, sand and sea.
The larger piece of dragon rock has so many holes in it the thing is almost hollow, which lead me to the idea of feeding a pipe through to make an underwater waterfall as another feature for the tank. As the dragon rock is highly compressed clay, it is easily cut and drilled so fitting an outlet for a waterfall should be reasonably simple, maybe?!
To help get an idea of where was best to drill I again used some chalk to test a few possible drill spots to see how the chalk dust would fall best without getting stuck in any other parts of the rock. After a few tries I found an area I was happy with so drilled a small hole using a battery drill, increasing the bit size until it matched the pipe as well as making a recess in the back for the feed pipe to sit which I can cover up later with the small pieces of rock and some planting.
... it was all going fine until the rock dried out a little too much when using the largest drill bit. Thankfully I was able to reattach it with a little superglue for now. Eventually I will use the smaller pieces of rock to build up the larger pieces in the photos to hide the powerhead for the waterfall, then mould everything all into one easily removable object, hopefully!!
That’s probably more than enough for you all tonight, I now just need to wait for a few other bits to turn up now before I can do much more...... beer o’clock then!
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will definitely be an interesting project!!
