Our 40g Island waterfall

[reefwars]

so since we shut down our last tank my wife for the last year has been after me to set up another display tank. with our frag systems still running and work busy for us both we just didnt have any mojo

near the beginning of summer one of my co-workers and friend was planning to set up a small frag tank for himself to prop some sps , he made it all the way to the lighting stage then realized he doesnt have frags lol the offer was there to buy a small stylish shallow tank and included a already made stand and light :mrgreen:


so we bought the setup with no real plans in mind and brought it home the following weekend.

me and ruth talked about what we wanted to do for the design and we agreed we would do another theme tank and just needed to settle on a theme. her last tank was a nano waterfall tank where water flowed over three panes of glass into a moat so she wanted to do something along the lines of a waterfall theme , i wanted to do the island volcanoe theme i had always liked.


so we met half way and settled on a tank that would house a vertical structure in the center of the tank that rose out of the water and on top of the tank in the back corner we would build a water fall. this is to be a mixed reef with all our nice zoas around the islands water edge and select sps pieces and lps etc to fill the rest of the tank fish ...TBD


so it began.......


the idea is to have water lines which are fed via the return pump to feed the waterfall and to have a few lines that ran over the island. the water that flows over the island ( 3 outputs ) will collect into some basins in which we will grow some corals in



we will try to keep this updated and log as much as we can as this will be a pretty interesting build


so here's what we got , we are actually already running with fish and corals but we will start this from the beginning as all good stories start


next up ....the set-up

enjoy!!!


denny:biggrin:

 

[reefwars]

ok so now thew theme has been determined we needed to figure out how we are going to run this idea


so heres what we came up with:mrgreen:


tank specs:

concept aquariusm custom made aquarium
36 x 20 x 14h
rimless aquarium
polished edges
external overflow on back panel
drilled for herbie silent overflow
1 x 3/4" returns on the back panel right side of overflow
black silicone
black acrylic back panel


stand: 2 x 4 construction painted black ( skirted later)

stand dimensions: 36 x 20 x 36h


sump: 32 x 20 x 16h -

its full custom built from concept ( obviously) and designed by me and ruth we maxed out every last inch of space available so its a bit of a jig saw puzzle lol

drain entry from display chamber
1 x 7" filter sock section
refugium section
skimmer section
return section
ATO compartment
custom built in dosing chambers ( ca/alk/mg/vinegar)


equipment:


t5 6 bulb tek light
bubble magus curve 5 protein skimmer
2 x 150w eheim jager heaters
jebao dc12000 return pump
2 x koralia powerheads (2 x jebao rw-4 wireless on order)
kamoer 4 channel doser
tlf 150 reactors x 2 ( gfo/carbon)
tunze osmolator 3155





here are some tank pics once we got it home from our friend and plugged in the lights



[/URLoriginal]

 

[skimjim]

my only concerns are that a constant waterfall will cause lots of microbubbles which leads to highly saturated oxygenated water which leads to:

> major algae
> water looking cloudy with all the microbubbles
> the churning off the waterfall will turn your entire tank into one large skimmer
> some fish will develop illnesses due to their gills exposed to highly oxygen saturated water column

I'm no marine biologist... but i think you might run into problems.

I'd research this all out before putting time and money into a project.

 

[reefwars]

my only concerns are that a constant waterfall will cause lots of microbubbles which leads to highly saturated oxygenated water which leads to:

> major algae
> water looking cloudy with all the microbubbles
> the churning off the waterfall will turn your entire tank into one large skimmer
> some fish will develop illnesses due to their gills exposed to highly oxygen saturated water column

I'm no marine biologist... but i think you might run into problems.

I'd research this all out before putting time and money into a project.

i actually design aquariums and set-ups for a living ( concept aquariums ) so we figured all this out years ago on other waterfall tanks we did the science behind it is pretty simple , water will only create bubbles if it has to free fall with/through oxygen ( think herbie overflow system) , the water from the island is routed back into the island and exits through the center of the rock structure and the waterfall has a step down right into the water level of the tank so it never bubbles

the tank has been set up all summer and is fully running with fish and corals we are just starting the journal from the beginning to show everyone how we created it all


stay tuned more pics and explanations to come!!

 

[Eac7466]

Really interesting

Really interesting

I look forward to seeing how this develops

 

[reefwars]

so before the island we did the waterfall


for the waterfall we entertained the idea of buying an already made structure and simply modifying it to work in a reef , well that didnt work as none of what we seen online was going to work , so denny has a background in stone work and figured you know what we will just make it ourselves lol

so while we had our tank home we went and picked out some rock for the waterfall , the idea was to buy a thick piece of shelf rock shave the back to a perfect 90 degree angle so it sits flush on the rim of the tank in the back corner , with the shelf rock we wanted to create a basin in the lowest part so that we can put some corals in to grow. then we would build up and then down after the main plate/basin was created.

problem........


all the shelf rock is either very flat or doesnt have a already made basin in it


kinda like this:






so we broke out our 4" angle grinder and diamond blade and went to work making our own stone basin and working from there.


here are some pics of the cutting to make a basin we had to do......was dusty stuff


we had to make a plywood tank template to make sure when we got home it fit the tank perfectly



some grid lines up and down and left to right then snapped off the slivers with a flat head screwdriver , once it was all removed we used the saws blade and scratched back and forth untill it was all smooth.





placing the basin inside the tank.....yeah that was to much work and then we had to find a way to make it sit up there permanently ( cant have it break under its own weight right)

 

[reefwars]

this was the dry sScape we finished with that night and was to be the starting point on the waterfalls overall design we had one main output in the front and then i made two emergency outputs on the left and right side slightly higher just in case a snails sits on the waterfalls main output and clogs it and water flows over the back side....couldn't risk that lol







brought home and a quick dry fit before we sealed it all and made it one piece still is a bit shaky!



top down of the raw rock after being cut out, still alot of work to be done on this before its running







next up: the island design!!


enjoy!!

denny:mrgreen

 

[reefwars]

the island

the island

next up we started to work on our island , we didnt want to use multiple small rocks to build the structure we were hoping to find either one large one or two large ones joined together.

to get the look we wanted we ended up with two large rocks , out of the box they weren't exactly a perfect fit but had the right profile....just needed a little trimming

out came the old saw again and we started cutting to what we wanted



problem was neither rock had a flat bottom to it so one had to be trimmed in order to fit comfortably on the other rock






about this much had to go :

 

[reefwars]

repeat as necessary


getting there:

 

[reefwars]

brought it home for the final touches and a quick idea of how it looked in tank:mrgreen:







lights:




nice straight alley in the back:

 

[FF184]

Cool concept, following along . . .

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

This is interesting. Have you thought about how you'll handle the salt creep from the splashing of the waterfall?

 

[reefwars]

This is interesting. Have you thought about how you'll handle the salt creep from the splashing of the waterfall?

absolutely , in fact its running flawlessly as we speak , the only saltcreep we get from the waterfall is what precipitates out the pores on the rock , the actual waterfall doesnt spill water it flows through the rocks and steps down into the tank ,we had not planned on the creep making it through so we had to go and seal the rock completely from the outside as well but still manages to get through so ill be going a step further and it will be siliconed

thanks for the kind words we will try to get more updates going

 

[reefwars]

next up we had to seal the waterfall to hold water in its basin as well to make sure it didnt leak through the back and onto the floor , as much as we liked the all natural stone look seeing the water seep through the pores had me worried about if the waterfall backed up or if we may have missed something when planning , so we decided to seal it from the bottom and backside


good ol fijicrete to the rescue ( fast setting mortar) to seal the stones and then we used spray foam , 2-party epoxy and silicone to seal the outside and finish off the top off the waterfall


after making our cuts i realized this wont hold water lol




hmmm...big hole here...that wont do either lol



the lip of the waterfall , as well the emergencies on each side(less noticable)



the underside of the rocks.....see this wont hold water at all lol

 

[reefwars]

fiji crete:



a can for mixing:



some water:



very technological mixing spoon




top portion of the waterfall also needed to be sealed

 

[reefwars]

time to get messy







consistency of peanut butter

 

[reefwars]

like icing a cake






dont be afraid to get your hands in there







afterwards a little shot of water and then smoothed out with my finger to get full coverage and make sure theres no pinholes in the mortar

 

[reefwars]

while that dried we got to work on the water channels for the island , since this rock is so porous we decided to use some vertex 2-part epoxy to create our water channels and focus water where we want it , as well to build our basins/pools that the water flows in to later


stinky stuff but molds well and doesnt dry nearly as fast as that fiji crete lol




poke it right in there:



looks ok?



basins at the bottom

 

[saltline]

following our thread

following our thread

gotta say babe she really came along nicely

 

[roooler]

very cool!!! need more pics!!