<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8140480#post8140480 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Sanjay
I am not a big fan of the bare bottom look, so the tank will have some sand in it. I am thinking of some ways to keep the sand contained so it stays out from under the rocks and more towards the front of the tank. One idea that I have that may work is to glue in some 90 L channel PVC to the bottom to create the sand barrier.
I am also thinking of create a rubble zone with all the broken up live rock peices.
Any other great aquascaping ideas that you have come across ?
sanjay.
I was thinking aragacrete wall as well. I did this in a 40B to create a SSB and DSB terraced areas within the same tank (I love Jawfish) by using 4" strips of acrylic, and bonding them into 'L' shapes, then filling in the 'L' with aragacrete. The bottom and back are acrylic, but the front looks like a rock ledge. Then you can simply scoot the rock strips around as desired w/o massive scraping because the bottoms are acrylic. To cover up the top of the acrylic, I was sure to let some of the aragacrete spill over the top. I should have some pics of me making them somewhere here... Ill look tomorrow if you are interested. The final results look great. I use a mix of 1 part portlant to 3 parts 2-5mm arag, to 2 parts fine crushed coral.... looks like LR when I am done. I used to use southdown, but thats too fine and leaves the aragacrete bright white since I use Portland Type 3 for better curing. I wouldnt even worry so much about curing in such a large system though... after a week or so of curing, I doubt a few terracing strips would do much to your pH. The cool thing about the aragacrete is that you can make little 'cups', frag mounting holes, and flat parts for corals... or just let the whole thing get covered in GSP... either way it looks great. You could keep all your sand up front for looks, with the fake walls, and leave the back BB.
Or, if you dont like the terracing idea as much (it doesnt really do much to really keep the sand from getting blown around... its just a retaining wall), you could sub large parts of the sand bed with aragacrete plates. Pretty much large (like 18"x36") 1-3" thick plates of textured aragacrete that can get covered up with sand, but if the flow exposes one, at least its not bare glass. The problem with this is that it doesnt really keep the sand up front. Perhaps the best idea is a combo of the two... plates and strips... hey, wait... thats a trough! Some fake-rock troughs would keep the sand up front, and keep the glass from being exposed.
These probems are why I just said 'screw it' with a small desktop 5.5g nano I made and made two walls (covers the overflow baffle) as well as the whole bottom out of aragacrete. Its not bare bottom reef, its not sand... its a stone bottom reef!
If you need something fast, I know someone nearby with a kiln that does calcium rich white clay rocks and fires them in a kiln... identical to Tunze rocks. They are also high in iron, so they get covered in coralline within months and look like LR. Best of all... there is no curing time like with aragacrete. Perhaps for something like this... some strips/plates of ceramic would be nice.
Let them take it off and tell them to give you an hour or two to put your rocks around and then tell them to go ahead and do what they were suppose to do (joking).
