Foam/Rock Wall for my 265 gallon Tank!

[Speckled Grouper]

Eversince I started reading Tiggsy's and Kannin's threads about their Foam/Rock Walls, I wanted to do the same.

I want to get away from the "Great Wall of China" look...
I want frags to grow on the back wall, not just a black, boring background.

After reading pages after pages, sucking in as much information as I possibly could, I am now ready to share the beginnings of my new 265 g Perfecto with a full foam/rock back wall.

This is what I have now





Here is my new tank





Do you hear it crying: Foam me! Foam me!

[Speckled Grouper]

The humble beginnings:

I used this tool to trim the eggcrate


My boyfriend showed me the easy way


Wow, much faster


Worked out great, we had a lot of trimming to do





Here, we fitted it in the tank for the first time




So far:

4 sheets of Egg Crate from Home Depot
Zip Ties, I have 4', 8" and 15". luckily I get these from work for free.

[Speckled Grouper]

Cut outs for the closed loop


I made templates out of cardboard for the overflow shape


And started to ziptie rocks on the eggcrate




And fitting the bigger pieces

[Speckled Grouper]

Almost time to start foaming....

These are the different brands of foam I had available to me



Atlantic Falls Foam I got for $ 8.00 a can. It was really good to work with, dried pretty quick and I was able to shape it and get most of the air out of the foam. I used about 6 cans on the project.

Great Stuff, I bought at HD, because I wanted to try it out, since a lot of people have used it and had good results. It was easy to work with and easy to shape after it dried, but I liked the black foam better and eventually covered up the one piece I used it on.

Touch n Foam, I got for $ 6.00 a can and used 6 cans on the project. About the same as the Atlantic Foam, dries a little slower and messier but works very good overall. It states "Fish safe" right on the can and is designed for water falls, ponds, etc. I think it even said "UV safe". I have found it for even cheaper since and declare it my preferred foam!

Before you start foaming, make sure you put your plastic gloves on!!! And wear old clothes!

So I begin

[OCEAN SIZE]

Extremely cool. Thanks for the pics. Keep em flowing if you can plz...

[Speckled Grouper]

Materials used so far:

4 sheets of Egg Crate
Zip Ties, 4', 8", 14"
Rock
Plastic Gloves
Great Stuff Foam (only one can, changed to other brands)
Atlantic Falls Foam (changed to Touch n Foam due to price)
Touch n Foam

Tools used so far:

Wire cutters
Grinder

Lessons learned:

Pond Foam works much better than Great Stuff
Must wear gloves

[Mikigo]

Great job. How do cure the foam?

[Kannin]

Very nice. At first... when I saw the two giant tanks in the same room, I thought... "Wow, your wife is so cool!" Then I saw your boyfriend's hairy arms and thought... "Wow, it's you that's cool!" Imagine how many cool tanks we could have together. I will deny that I ever said this.

More pics??? Of the tank... not your boyfriend's hairy arms.

[crázy clowntang]

looking good, i think i will lean towards doing something like this. Keep up the good work.

[Speckled Grouper]

Originally posted by Kannin
Very nice. At first... when I saw the two giant tanks in the same room, I thought... "Wow, your wife is so cool!" Then I saw your boyfriend's hairy arms and thought... "Wow, it's you that's cool!" Imagine how many cool tanks we could have together. I will deny that I ever said this.

More pics??? Of the tank... not your boyfriend's hairy arms.

LOL Kannin, I had 7 at one point until I realized I was nuts......
At the moment I have the 250g to be replaced (I promised myself) by the 265g and 3 propagation tanks with about 165g total water volume.

Anyways, back to the project.

The first part almost done


Starting on the second one


Fitting in of freestanding pieces that will be infront of the wall


Another one foamed


Lessons learned:

Use parchment paper under the eggcrate when foaming, saves a lot of material and time, keeps trimming of the backside to a minimum.

Close the zip ties to the front, not the back! eliminates the little bumps on the backside and they are easily hidden in the front.

Be bold with the rocks. Use big pieces even though you might think they are too big and heavy. Once the foam is on, the whole things gets strong and bonds together very nicely. I started out with little puny pieces of rock (like on the yellow part) that virtually disappeared in the foam. After I was done, I went back and added more rock until I was happy with the look.

I timed the curing of the foam until it was workable by hand (with gloves!) and smooshed it in, creating a more natural look, getting the air out and making it even stronger. I pushed it and pulled it and twisted it, even made little holes for frag plugs at this point.

[GIJOE007]

looks great, keep up the good work, and keep the pics commin'. man is this method ever taking off...I'm glad I did mine this way also, you'll love the end result.

[EBOLII]

I have had a thought. To take a really good piece with great textures and stamp the foam to give it more of a natural look before it dries and adding the epoxy. What do you think?

[eznet2u]

Originally posted by Speckled Grouper
LOL Kannin, I had 7 at one point until I realized I was nuts......

Some of us go a whole lifetime without this realization...

[STREAMLINEGFX]

Looks good, can't wait to see the completed project.

[1fishkeeper]

WOW I would love to do something like that to my tank. It looks great keep up the get work and keep us all posted with it.

[EBOLII]

No thoughts to my idea?

[Speckled Grouper]

Originally posted by EBOLII
I have had a thought. To take a really good piece with great textures and stamp the foam to give it more of a natural look before it dries and adding the epoxy. What do you think?

You mean taking a rock to stamp it? It would have to have a really deep texture, because the sand/crushed coral and the epoxy would cover most of it up in my opinion, and it would not be too visible at the end.

[Speckled Grouper]

Here is another piece foamed. I sprinkled crushed coral on this one, but once it was covered in sand and epoxy, it wasn't visible anymore, so that was a waste of time.


Couple more


Here is one of the freestanding pieces I made


Putting them all together


And with the freestanding pieces in front


One more


Different Angle


Also wanted to mention that I used a tile bit to drill the rocks before I zip tied them to the egg crate. Worked great!

[OCEAN SIZE]

The cat: "Fishies.... soon you will be mine. All mine."

Is the arch drilled and pegged or ziptied under the foam?

Thats a great piece in particular, though the whole thing is coming along swimmingly. Bravo.

[Speckled Grouper]

I built a cradle for the tip of the arch on the wall, it rests in there securely and it will be in about 3 inches of sand on the bottom.

It is a beautiful piece, full of holes and places to insert frags. I can't wait til it's covered with corals!

[RobynT]

Awesome thread! 1+ for lady reefers!!

[yousmellsfishy]

I think it looks great. My only suggestion would be to make the edges of the panels not straight vertical lines. Irregular lines (like jigsaw pieces, for instance) would make the pieces less obviously panels. My project was made in 2 panels and the seam between them still catches my eye as a seam. That was one of the things I thought I would have done differently.

[Speckled Grouper]

I tried.

I ziptied rocks so they would overhang the adjacent piece and hide the seam and foamed raggedy on the edge.

Here is a picture when we fitted the pieces into the tank and they seemed to have grown....had to cut off 1/4 to 1/2" of each panel to make them fit. And I had to promise my boyfriend to keep the edges free. Still didn't help, today, I had to go through some major cutting and refitting again, but that's another story.....

[Kannin]

Awesome... Looks real. The foam cat behind almost looks real.

[Speckled Grouper]

The next step:

Epoxy and Sand. I used the same 20min Epoxy from Bob Smith Industries I think Kannin used. The bad news: I bought a case (24) and I might have 3 sets left







Max is participating in this step also


Is it cured yet?




Another hint while I think about it:
I used 16oz Pepsi bottles and wrapped rock and foam around it to make swim thru's, they can easily be removed afterwards and make a perfect tunnel.