Rock wall, the aftermath and advice

[fishgate]

So over a year ago I made a rock wall for my tank on 3 sides. I used pond foam and egg crate for the frame. It looked very nice. I attached the egg crate with silicone just on the top. So here I am now realizing this was not a great idea. I can't get to the back of the tank at all where not a lot, but some ditreus collects. And my tank is through the wall so I only have a top-down view of what I am doing in the tank. So I have set up anther tank to take the inhabitants of this tank where I will have to do a complete tear-down and start over from scratch. I just hope I can get the rock wall off the glass without breaking it!

If you are thinking of doing a rock wall. Don't! :debi:

 

[Sk8r]

Oh, my. Good luck.
I'd suggest its next incarnation might be some eggcrate frames with deliberate interconnecting 'caves' so you can support your rockwork.

I buried some isolated large dry limestone pieces resting on eggcrate on my bottom glass, sanded it 3" deep before I began stacking rock atop the 6 or so spires that thrust up through the sand, and it's worked well: nassarius and blennies can get at the sand and move it about, and when I needed to catch an obnoxious fish, I could simply lift rock out, bucket the corals, catch the fish, then restack the rock and put the corals back. It's very solid. I can't say it hides the downflow box as much as I'd like, but I'm thinking of attaching some xenia to that and letting it spread.