That one was a bit poorly excecuted. When I do mine all the base rock will have a slant toward the front of the tank so you would have to get very low to see the rods at all. In a bare bottom you would have to decide to scrape coraline off the bottom or not either way.
Acrylic rod to hold up rock for BB tank?
- Thread starter acroholic
- Start date
This isthe reason not to, from the reading I have done. I am no expert, however. For a BB tank to be successful you want detritus to be kept in the water column so it can go into the overflows and be skimmed/filter socked out. BB folks poo-poo using eggcrate becasue the crate can trap detritus in the little squares.
I am only assuming that people like acrylic rods because of the minimal contact point between the rods and the class.
I thought of the half balls because this would make the contact point even smaller and friendly to water flow around the half balls.
You could definitely do it that way as well, but I think for me the half balls are the way to go. That is great for raised rock over a sandbed, but to me seems a bit cluttered to use for a purpose bare bottom tank.
The half balls seem less obtrusive to me in a bare bottom tank.
I decided to go with 1" acrylic balls instead of the 1/2 balls, as these would probably be more flexible regarding where you can epoxy them onto the rock. Found a place that sells them at half the price USPlastics does: 75 cents each vs $1.50 each:
I want to do a more open aquascape, and some of the lingering STN issues is making me think maybe I need more flow, which an open scape would allow, and I have a line on a Marineland Deep Dimensions 300 gallon starfire front tank!
I am a bit scared of a closed loop if it means drilling holes in the tank, just from a leakage point of view. What I was thinking is perhaps using the tank returns to flow water down to the bottom and basically have most of the return water flowing out at the back bottom of the tank towards the front through a piece of PVC with multiple holes drilled in it. But I think I would tee off the pipe where it exits each of the overlfows with a lock line tee and valve and feed a little water out like a normal return at the top. Then, in case of a power failure, the two small returns will act as a siphon break so water doesn't siphon from the bottom pipe into the sump and empty the tank.
And I suppose I could incorporate the same idea with a dedicated external pump and just come over the top of the back of the tank as well.
I also thought that another pair of Tunze 6105s aimed at the lower back wall of the tank would also do the same thing. I have four 6105s already that I would transfer over to the new tank.
I think the rods will be much easier to work with. It will be difficult (impossible) to adjust the length of the rounds to compensate for the rocks shapes. I personally would go with the rods. Like mentioned before, you really don't have to drill of you use epoxy. Plus, chances are, you'll have enough holes in the rock to find places for the rods.
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