Crazy Idea

[sagent3000]

okay i am getting ready to get a new tank and just swtich everything over, tell me what you think about this lunatic idea

take some egg crates and stack two of them on top of each other and sit the live rock on top of them and fill the remaining parts of the tank in the crudley drawn picture the red is the live rock the blue is the egg crates and the green is the sand. will that work or am i asking for trouble
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[xyzpdq0121]

What are you trying to gain from doing that?!?

 

[wbholwell]

You're trying to minimize the amount of LR covered by sand, right?

The problem I forsee is that the eggcrate will be visible in some areas (not too pretty), and you won't have any flow in each hole of the eggcrate. Detritus will fall into the holes and decompose- not good.

Instead, you could drill holes into the bottom of the larger LR pieces that will go on the bottom, and then insert acrylic rods into the holes to elevate the LR. I plan on doing this with my next tank.

 

[sagent3000]

You're trying to minimize the amount of LR covered by sand, right?

you are absolutly right because i some great live rock but i don't want my rocks covered with sand because it kills them. explain more about this acrlyic rod thing. will it still allow my snails and star fish to sift the sand?

 

[kwl1763]

Better to peg with some PVC racks or some acrylic rods do to the problems mentioned above.

Mine is BB but the concept is the same. minimal touching bottom. Here is what I did.

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That was over 2 yeards ago. Looks like this today

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[xyzpdq0121]

Ya I agree with the two above... The use of egg crate this way is a bad idea, unless you are doing a Plenium which you are not. Either elevate your rock or bury it. I always bury mine since I like how stable it makes it and i never have to worry about the sand shifing and you being able to see the support structure. Then again, I have never tried a support structure and Jins looks pretty nice.

 

[kwl1763]

Barbara;122272 wrote: Yes, Jin has a really good set-up. I think he took long acrylic rods, and then drilled holes for pegs, and set the rock on top. I am going to do mine that way next time I have to aquascape.

Sagent I tried a similar approach to yours when I first set up my tank. I was trying to keep more of my rock exposed b/c I didn't have a lot of rock. I took PVC pipe and cut it into 3 inch pieces and put them down in the sand to support my rock. I absolutely HATED it. The PVC pipe was exposed in certain places; the rock shifted more easily. It was bad! My opinion: bury the rock or use the acrylic rod approach.

Agree if your going to use PVC do it right and make them big and zip tie. I drilled holed in my rock and zip tied the rock to the PVC and painted the PVC black with Krylon fusion. It's rock solid and you can't see any of it!

 

[wbholwell]

Here's a diagram to better illustrate what I meant. As long as you're using at least 3 pegs per piece of LR, it should be very stable.

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[sagent3000]

now this is going ot sound REALLY REALLY stupid

do i attach a pump to the pvc so i can send water through the pegs to keep sand from settling on the rock?

 

[cameron]

My thoughts were something similar, but using two 90 degree PVC elbows connected to a single piece of PVC. You could raise the PVC rack up by simply cutting short pieces of PVC and putting it into the elbows. Place the PVC stands about 6"-8" apart then zip tie eggcrate on top of those. Then place the rock in the tank on top of the eggcrate. Use rubble rock to hide the feet of the rack. This should allow a very stable base and some serious flow to fly under the rocks. Should be relatively inexpensive as well.