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DIY Styrofoam/Drylok Aquarium Shale Wall Background

76K views 142 replies 11 participants last post by  Deeda 
#1 ·
Hi Everyone.

I've been working on a background for about a year and a half, and should be ready to install it in my tank soon. This background will be for a 75 gallon US Native stream/river tank, and I wanted to try and build a biotope that you might find in one of our local rivers, all of which have shale formations along the river bank. I also wanted to create something that I haven't seen before, so my intent was to have the faux slate stratification at a downward angle. Since much of my research came from this forum, and many of your paved the way for guys like me, I figured that it was time to give something back and show you not only what you've taught me, but what I figured out on my own as well, and we can finish this project together.

The background was carved out of styrofoam boards, then each glued at a 45 degree angle or so when they were done carving. I measured as I built it up. the gap behind the foam board and base were filled with spray foam and river rocks (to reduce buoyancy). I used Gorilla Glue to bond the styrofoam boards together and also used plastic popsicle sticks to help stabilize and bond them. On the left side, there is a PVC pipe that goes down into the background with an intake that I made for the intake tube of my canister filter. There is a removable section of carved foam covering it that allows me access to clean and clear the intake of debris. The part that sticks out of the left side hides the intake.

The pics and video below show what the background looks like today. In the subsequent posts, I'll show how I constructed it. Hope you all enjoy it and thank you for all of the posts of your backgrounds that helped me!

View from the left side:


View from the right side:


Video:


The paint is the second coat of Drylok, tinted to resemble the base rock color of our river cliffs. The first coat was just Drylok gray. I will be stippling lighter shades of this color a few times to make the rock less monotone and more realistic, and then finish with light color highlights. Construction steps to follow in the next posts. It may take me a few days to get this thread going to the point we are today. But, I'll start with my first steps.
 
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#127 ·
Time for an update. The roots and wall are holding up well. In the video and pics, you can see that a pinhole opened up a bit after my last algae cleaning, and some of the plaster leaked out. Apparently, I missed a spot when I applied the clear coat epoxy. It doesn't seem to affect anything and hasn't dissolved in the tank at all, as far as I can tell. The fish are doing well. I'm going to pull the roots out and plug the hole with epoxy or perhaps Gorilla Glue super glue. I have to pull everything out for a big cleaning anyway. Other than that, I thought that I might as well let you know how the tank is going along.

As you might suspect with a new tank, I had an algae invasion, or outbreak, or whatever it's called. It wasn't unexpected, especially given the high bioload. About two weeks ago, I also cleaned the algae off of the wall, roots and rocks, in addition to a large water change that I'll mention again below. I also cleaned the canister filter, being careful as to not hurt the biological filtering ability of the system. As you can see, it's back.

To combat the algae, I'll be performing another large water change this weekend, complete with more physical removal of the algae. I also planted Vallisneria americana to try and out compete the algae for nutrients. I think that will help, assuming the plants take to the tank. The lighting is adequate (Fluval planted light), along with plenty of nutrients with the heavy bioload, which should help the plants grow and thrive.

I lost a few fish since I stocked the tank, mostly some of the smaller blunt nosed minnows, although one hung in there and is growing. All of the adult fish, except for one black nosed dace, are doing fine. I had to battle ich, and that was the main reason for the fish deaths (4 total fish died). I treated them for three weeks with aquarium salt by raising the SG to 1.003. The ich seems gone and hasn't returned since I stopped treatment by making a 90% water change. The fish still scratch occasionally. I may try a treatment of Prazipro, thinking that they might have flukes that survived the salt treatment, or some sort of other unseen parasite. This leads me to a question...do fish still scratch at times when they are parasite free? Are they really ever parasite free?

Now for some pics followed by another video...

Full tank shot:


Left side, showing the faux roots and current sources (spray bar top left, and circulation pump located behind the roots):


Right side, showing the newly planted Vallisneria americana:


And, finally, a video showing everything and showcasing the fish:
 
#128 ·
I shot this video of my stream tank with a slightly different angle. I'm really pleased how it looks, especially showing the current and surface agitation, giving the tank a pretty good representation of what a small stream shoreline eddy might be like... I hope y'all like it.

 
#129 ·
I thought that I'd shoot some pics from different angles of the stream tank and share them with you. Sometimes, I like sitting on the floor to view this tank. I seem to get more up and close to the fish. Also, when viewing from the floor, this angle allows you to really see the flow and current in this tank, how similar it is to a shoreline stream eddy.

Left side looking through the roots...not a lot of room to see the other side of the tank. But, it's interesting when fish peek through the roots to see what you're doing.


This one is from the left side looking toward the other end of the tank:


Same angle, but focused on the tank center where the fish like to hang out the most:


Middle, looking back at the left side to the roots:


Looking back from the right front of the tank toward the roots on the left side:


And finally, a view from the right side through the Valisneria to the roots:
 
#132 ·
Thank you Steve and Dee! I'm having a lot of fun with this tank.

The faux rock wall and faux roots are holding up nicely. I think that it's important to follow up over time so anyone that worries about this process can see that you can get results. One year with this build will be the milestone of durability. I don't anticipate any problems.

Thanks to you, Steve and some other folks on this forum that contributed DIY rock wall builds that provided a fantastic research base for me, and great suggestions in helping me figure out how to do this. You all are the pioneers that make it possible for everyone else. I really appreciate that.
 
#133 ·
I went fish collecting a couple weeks ago, and the fish that I collected went into QT for 2 weeks. I treated them with salt for the full period, and during the last 3 days, one dose of Prazipro. All of the minnows, shiners and dace collected survived QT OK and were added to the display tank yesterday.

I also collected 4 tessellated darters. One jumped out of the tank, one disappeared and I couldn't find it, and one died early on. The last one died the day before he was slated to go into the display tank, and was eating and apparently happy up until then. So, I'm bummed about that. I added 4 satinfin shiners, 3 blacknosed dace, and a bunch of bluntnose minnows to the tank. I also fished a local small stream for smallmouth bass on Sunday, and brought home some plants and snails. I collected wild Valisneria and water stargrass, and added those to my tank. I "cleaned" the plants with a mild hydrogen peroxide/water bath for 20 minutes. The snails just went into the tank,so I hope that I didn't introduce any villainous hitchhikers with them.

I found 2 species of snail, one very common one that looks like a pond snail. It seemed like if you looked at one section of chunk rock, you'd see over a hundred of those snails. The last time that I added snails like those, the darters in my tank hunted down and ate every single snail. This time, they seem to be ignoring the snails altogether. I also added a bunch of ramshorn snails. Maybe the darters will leave those alone because they are a bigger snail.

I got the snails to help with algae control and maybe as an additional food source for the darters. My stoneroller has done a nice job of keeping the tank pretty tidy, and he's getting big. I know he eats a lot of algae because I see him grazing often, and he poops out algae all the time. And, the plants that I had in there took off and I think that has had a huge influence.

I have a green sunfish in the tank as well, but his days are numbered in my tank. He's growing quickly, and seems to be starting to take interest in the minnows, and not in a kind way. It's almost a feeding response. In the past, since I got him, he merely chased fish away from his staked territory. Now, he has that evil eye toward the smaller minnows, dace and shiners. I will donate him to the local aquarium or give him away.

Anyway, below is my video tank update. Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFbJgX1 ... NPh4AaABAg
 
#135 ·
Thank you Dee! Yeah, I didn't mind a little bit of algae. I didn't do much other than add a couple new characters that love the algae more than I do (central stoneroller and live plants, and just lately, snails). It is amazing though, because every now and then, the algae makes a comeback, then, it dies back, and so on. I guess that is basically what happens when we try to create an ecosystem in a small glass box...instability and change, where we have to adapt.
 
#136 ·
Sorry, I haven't been on the forum in a while. A lot has happened with my tank. I posted a few notes about the status of the tank in the video and a list of the fish in my tank now. I will post a few things here as well as the direction of this tank that I'm heading toward.

My plants died back but are not dead. I see new growth on them. Maybe because my water temperature is in the mid 50's? Last week it was as low as 52. Yesterday, it was 55. The tank is in my basement where I don't have heat. I know that in the fall in the river, most of the weeds die off and then come back the following spring. I don't know if this is happening in my tank as well. The problem with that is that when pieces of the plants float around the tank, they clog my filter intake.

The biggest thing that you'll note is the lack of the roots. I pulled them out so I could get to the filter intake to clean it out. The fish love the roots. The river chub loved to hide in there, and the other fish swam through them often, and the darters perched on them as well. But, visually, they grew old on me. They take up way too much space in the tank, making maintenance difficult.

I also wanted to see more of the faux rock wall. So, I pulled them out permanently, at least as they looked before. I sawed them into two pieces, thinking that I'll keep one half on the left side, and one on the right, to provide cover. I also cut out the middle section. I didn't like it anyway, as the short branch looked like ET's hand. I need to trim back some of the roots at the base to get them to fit into the tank better, where I can easily remove them for maintenance and also have them not take up so much room. Then, I have to seal them to keep water out. They were never completely water tight anyway. If the trimming doesn't work or it becomes too cumbersome to fix, I may scrap them and create a couple smaller versions.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the video. My favorite part is the duels between the feisty male satinfin shiner and the river chub.
 
#138 ·
Thank you Dee.

I found more slate to add in my tank. It will give my fish more hiding spots again, in particular the river chub and the darters. That way, the river chub could avoid the harrassment of the satinfin shiner!!! I added some plant spikes last night, so maybe that will get the Vallisneria to grow back faster. Right now, I"m going through another green cyano outbreak. I think it's winning the war for nutrients over my plants.
 
#139 ·
Sorry for not being around lately. Since my last post, I've added more rocks that resemble my DIY faux rock wall, and tried to blend them in to take away that wall feeling. My plants from last year died off this summer. I've since collected and obtained more replanted them, and now they're growing like gangbusters.

The species on the left side of the tank is water stargrass (Heteranthera dubia) that I collected locally. There's also a little in the center of the tank. To the right side and in the middle is
Valisneria americana. Val grows wild in our rivers but these came from a buddy's tank. I also collected some curly-leaf pondweed (Potamogeton crispus), which is surviving but not taking off like the other two species. The stargrass was almost brown when I collected it, and it's really greened up a lot. Here's a video, and I hope you enjoy it.

 
#142 ·
It's been a couple months since my last update. The wall is holding up very well and survived a deep cleaning with some tough brushes, but it may take more to get it back to the way that I want it. More on that in the video below.

After I went and returned from a vacation, my tank was overrun with cyanobacteria and other algae. My stonerollers were fat and happy though, but, the tank was ugly, so I broke it down for the most part and gave it a major cleaning. The canister filter was clogged and barely putting out any current, so I had to do something. Man, that blackbeard algae is tough to scrub off. It has little holdfasts that are tough. I tried several brushes until I found one that worked to remove it from the rocks, even after I gave the rocks a hydrogen peroxide bath for a couple days. I also soaked my plants in a hydrogen peroxide solution and that seemed to kill off all of the cyano and algae, and was able to rinse almost all of it off. Anyway, I explain more in detail in the video. Also, check out my fancy fish room updates. I hope you enjoy the update.

 
#143 ·
So sorry I haven't responded earlier, I saw your tank update and was planning on viewing your video and promptly forgot about it.

Wonderful job, I actually enjoy the look of the tank more now without the roots though they did add something to the tank. It looks cleaner somehow decor wise and looking forward to more updates as the water clears up and the fish get more used to the new layout.

I love the added pics of the Potomac river and tributary as it gives some background to your tank set up.
 
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