caves
- Thread starter D4N
- Start date
WyldFya;520548; said:
this sounds like a neat idea. do you have any step by steps or a site that does?
i guess some of my questions are... what kind of mortar (any kind of cement work)? what kind of paint (oil base)? some pics would be real helpful too
an idea i have been playing with.
take a piece of drift wood with a kind of ball shape to it. choose which side will be the front and which the back. at the back, use a chisel to carve out a hollow almost all the way through to the front of the wood, as wide as you want the cave. stop carving about 0.5cm from the front of the wood.
now, drill a large hole in the front and hack away at the pilot hole until the entrance is as large and the shape you want. now smooth it with sand paper to prevent any damge to the fish living in it.
at the back you can use a piece of slate, broken, shaped or tooled to roughly cover the space. i dont think you have to worry about holes between the slate and the wood as this will allow more water to pass through and oxygenate the cave better. silicone the slate to the wood and hey presto, a 'natural' cave.
last step is to place the cave where YOU want it.
hows that sound boys and girls?
take a piece of drift wood with a kind of ball shape to it. choose which side will be the front and which the back. at the back, use a chisel to carve out a hollow almost all the way through to the front of the wood, as wide as you want the cave. stop carving about 0.5cm from the front of the wood.
now, drill a large hole in the front and hack away at the pilot hole until the entrance is as large and the shape you want. now smooth it with sand paper to prevent any damge to the fish living in it.
at the back you can use a piece of slate, broken, shaped or tooled to roughly cover the space. i dont think you have to worry about holes between the slate and the wood as this will allow more water to pass through and oxygenate the cave better. silicone the slate to the wood and hey presto, a 'natural' cave.
last step is to place the cave where YOU want it.
hows that sound boys and girls?
yea its dirt cheap, you can use any cement really, just dont use the quick dry stuff(quickrite), its got a different chemical make up, i use portland. i think its number 3 or 7, whatever just the stuff menards sells. the key is the curing in water, it takes 6 weeks, change the water a few times in there also, a cup or two of salt is supposed to be usefull also. try to make caves you can fit into a 5 gallon bucket to cure, the background of my tank had to be cured in a large plastic tub. inexpensive makes diy that much more rewarding, i made most of my tank out of scrap, even the glass is an old coffee table top i had cut upbermuda;521640; said:that sounds neat, but i like the styrofoam idea better. details on that one would be muchly appreciated, i hear that that method is pretty inexpensive, and i think that THAT is at the heart of DIY.
oh a couple quick tips, let it dry slowly the first few days, spraing it down with water as often as possible will prevent cracking, covering it with plastic will prevent it drying out too fast also, put the cover on in coats, dont rush, take your time, lots of thin coats
you could play with Great Stuff foam. They have double and triple expanding types and a new type that stays soft after you are done with it. I don't know what you could use it for, I know they use it for keeping rocks in pond waterfalls secure and I use it to build terraiums.
A chunk of drift wood & a hole saw.
pvc pipe.
rain gutters.. I saw that on here somewhere.
anything safe that can be stacked.
pvc pipe.
rain gutters.. I saw that on here somewhere.
anything safe that can be stacked.
IMO driftwood, lavarock, slate, tera cotta pots, an PVC fittings or Pipe. You can silicone stuff together to change it. Any pvc I have in my tanks has been sanded an looks ok once algae has taken hold. Ive had slate caves fall an hurt big fish, an its pretty easy to silicone gravel to PVC.
get 3" pvc pipe (black so ABS i guess) two 90 Deg. elbows and some of that foam in a can. cut like two 8" peices of abs, then put a 90 on each one. now put that in ur tank so the 90 are in the back couners facing each other now cut a piece that fills the gap along the back, now you have a cave that wraps around the back of the tank. now use that foam and cover all the abs pipe and form it to your preference. i think this looks really good and is easy to clean, just shoot pressurized water through one end and gunk and junk comes out the other.
