1320 liter clearwater biotope

[Haavard Stoere]

Exactly Very dangerous machines, but cheap. They cost around 50$, and the blade cost around the same.

On smaller rocks in smaller tanks I use a cheap water-saw intended for cutting tiles. A water-saw for tiles is much more pleasant to work with, but is only suitable for pieces of around 3,5cm in thickness. Large water-saws costs the same as a slightly used car, and is therefore out of the question.

[Haavard Stoere]

Yesterday I made two prototype caves in concrete.

I did the following... Simplified explanation.
-Dug two holes in the garden.
-Poured some cement into the bottom of the holes.
-Put a sausage shaped piece of earth on top of the wet cement, and connected it with one of the sides of the hole.
-Covered the sides and top of the sausage with cement, and made a cement slab on top.

Today I dug out the two pieces and hosed them inside and outside. The two caves will not necessarily be used. They are prototypes to learn a proper technique.
The caves will eventually be painted with some thin acrylic to match the natural rocks. Finally they will be sealed with clear epoxy.


Photo taken with internal flash to show the inside:

[DutchFry]

looks great! good technique!

[Haavard Stoere]

It worked a bit better than I expected. Especially the way the concrete mimics the natural rocks in texture. The color is of, but sorting that will be easy with acrylic paints.

I made two more caves that I will dig up tomorrow I will have to buy more cement.

[nvcichlids]

Yesterday I made two prototype caves in concrete.

I did the following... Simplified explanation.
-Dug two holes in the garden.
-Poured some cement into the bottom of the holes.
-Put a sausage shaped piece of earth on top of the wet cement, and connected it with one of the sides of the hole.
-Covered the sides and top of the sausage with cement, and made a cement slab on top.

Why Sausage lol.. now my favorite food has a tainted name

[arjenk]

Very nice!

How do you make the holes? With cement.. But how do you make the inside of the holes?

I think, this will be a beautiful tank in a little time!

success

[Will77]

Now that's what I call dedication!
Stunning work.
I am new here, and one of your other threads was the first one I read, great introduction to the forum!

[Haavard Stoere]

The 9 caves have been painted with thin washes of acrylic paint to imitate what the rest of the rocks will look like under water.
Tomorrow I will seal them with Mapecoat DV from Rescon. This is the product:
http://www.mapei.it/Referenze/Multimedi ... dv_eng.pdf

[Phyllonemus]

Wich species did you plan to hold ?

[MatsP]

Wich species did you plan to hold ?

One of the first posts say "Large loricariidae", I don't think Haavard has decided exactly what he's going to keep (or he's not telling us

--
Mats

[DutchFry]

In the long run I will use this tank for Pseuda`s, but at the moment almost all my Pseuda are really small, and don`t need all the space in this tank. I will keep my 13 Baryancistrus demantoides (L-200 hifin), my Leporacanthicus sp. L-240 and perhaps my Pseudacanthicus spinosus (it may not be a good idea considering the L-240s)in this tank.

[Haavard Stoere]

Initially the tank will be used to house 10 L240s and 13 L200 hi-fins. The last couple of months I have been keeping these two groups in a 720 liter, and they don`t seem to mind each others presence. Feeding them in the same tank is also unproblematic as the L200s tends to go for the food items intended for them, and I think the L240s benefits from eating the L200s food beside shrimps, fish and discus pellets.

Today I sealed the 9 concrete caves. I mixed up a kilo of epoxy and used most of it. The caves are very glossy, but I hope they will look fine under water.

[Haavard Stoere]

Finished cave in another tank:

[Birger]

Hi Haavard...looks great,very natural...add a little algae growth over time.
Nicely done.

[Haavard Stoere]

Thank you Birger

The color is a little of. It turned out slightly purple for some reason. In the next batch of caves I will try to get a closer color match to the rocks. In time algae will make the concrete more similar to the other rocks.

[Tenzin]

Wow all i can say is that it looks great! even if it is unfinished..

Bump! for UPDATES!

[Farid]

hi havaard,
i missed the whole thread until today....

the project is once again amazingly cool!!! i wish i have the space...

one question i'm asking myself as i am close before to make contrete rock formation fpr my tropheus tank..is: dont you have problems with any silicone clued stones to the glass...that algae grow in between the stone-silicon connection...(until now i trust the glass-silicone thing but stone-silicone???

as i use to place my caves always under flat stones...i've seen that you also make a little roof in front of the cave entrance this made me think about the time when i started to set up catfish tanks...this was one of the first important advices i got of my friend Udo (he will be talking about the L354 in hannover...

the earthversion building caves is exactly what i needed...as i already prepared a styrofoam construction to fill with concrete... thanks for showing!!

farid

[Haavard Stoere]

Although the furnishing is not totally finished the tank has been running since August.

It is heavily populated:
13 large L200 "hifin"
3 Large L128
10 large L240s (has already bred in the tank)
4 small L25s
1 Medium L24
4 Pseudacanthicus spinosus (1 large male and 3 medium sized)
15 small Ancistrus sp. L107

Left side. I am planning to build something for the marked area:


Right side:


Through the right side glass:


Whole tank:


The largest inhabitant... My 21cm P. spinosus male:


Feeding time:

[Martin S]

As always Haavard, truly outstanding!

[matthewfaulkner]

The picture looking through the right side is amazing. You should do commissions.

[hydrophyte]

This project is incredible. I am amazed.

Do you have any pictures of the cave construction? I did not quite follow the written description. I wish to do something similar for my latest project.

[Haavard Stoere]

Do you have any pictures of the cave construction? I did not quite follow the written description.

Sorry, but my hands were so dirty during the process that i did not use the camera. I shall try to remember to make a series of pictures next time I cast concrete caves. It is a good way to make caves, but it would be even better if we could use a concrete that only needed an acid wash instead of epoxy sealant

[hydrophyte]

Have you tried any of those liquid cement plasticizers? I built some features using one of those products and they were considerably harder than regular cement. I did not attempt any kind of real measurement, but the pieces also seemed to be less susceptible to dissolution in water.

[Haavard Stoere]

I am quite ignorent when it comes to these things. Is it an additive you pour into the mixture?

[hydrophyte]

Yes, I think that most of them are liquid products that are simply poured into the mix in place of or in addition to water. Here is one of them.

http://www.quikrete.com/ProductLines/Co ... tifier.asp

I don't know if you can accquire Quikrete products there in Europe, but I imagine you could find something similar.

[Haavard Stoere]

Thank you very much. I really appreciate it

[Haavard Stoere]

I have borrowed an EOS40D. It is similar to my ruined EOS50D, so I am spending the evenings photographing in my big tank.

This is one of my larger females outside the cave of my largest male. The tail of the mail can be seen on the right:


Edit: Seems to may be a male.

[MatsP]

I have borrowed an EOS40D. It is similar to my ruined EOS50D, so I am spending the evenings photographing in my big tank.

Some even say the 40D gives better photos than the 50D - I haven't ever used a 40D, so I can't say - I'm happy with the 50D (pictures look better "out of camera" than the old 10D that went broken on me). But those that have compared the two say the 50D gives more noise in the image than the 40D - I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on that.

--
Mats

[Lloydy]

Haavard, you have a truly amazing tank!!!

I keep showing my girlfriend photo's of your tank and saying "I want to create something like that!", she normally pulls a funny face or ... I guess that's not a 'no' though

[Haavard Stoere]

I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on that.

I don`t have an opinion in the sense that I have not made any direct comparison on same motif and same setting etc. What you suggest when it comes to noise sounds kind of logical because the pixels on 50d will be closer together than the pixels on 40d. Size of sensor is constant. My photographs are primarily done with powerful external flashes, so noise is usually not an issue (100-200ISO). An exception is the four last photographs of the tank (not fish). They were taken without the flash with 1600 ISO. The noise was extremely high, and it might be the same or even higher with the 50d. I ran some noise reduction in photo-shop by the way, so the photos are not really representative.