- There's a reason why the better zoos and public aquariums
refer to the displays as habitats.
The first goal is always with the animals need and after how
do we make it look awesome as well?
I've been Aqua scarping wrong for decades.
It's not about looking cool stability,
not about choral placement, not even about flow.
It's a fish tank. It's where they live.
What happens when we give the fish what they want,
will they give us what we want
today BRSTV investigates.
We had habitat into the NSA mix.
Can we produce an Aqua scape that reduces aggression,
stress, moralities,
and even allows us to comfortably house more fish in the
same size tank while keeping everyone happy?
I believe we'd done it with the H NSA and it might just
change the way the hobby considers Aqua escaping reef tanks.
This story starts with the negative space, Aqua Escaper NSA,
top shelf aquatics built for me out of Haitian rock.
It's stunning open the piece is intertwined with each other.
There's a seamless,
nearly impossible look in awesome potential for flow
characteristics. However,
Haitian rock doesn't exist anymore.
So what are other rivers supposed to do?
This is the birth of the Marco rock NSA.
Many of you likely saw me smash Marco rock up and reassemble
it into a smaller Aqua scape that maintained many of the
most interesting aspects of the top shelf scape,
the larger one 20 version and how to video filed right
after.
And I didn't think that the open space design could be beat
from a visual flow or coral mounting perspective,
and I'd never built a scape any other way. And I was wrong.
Ultimately,
what I missed is the open negative space provides very
little habitat for the fish.
The big smooth structure just doesn't have a lot of nooks or
natural shelter for hiding arresting. I saw my own tank,
even though it's 360 gallons and relatively few fish for a
tank that size there's a lot of NYP fins,
a decent amount of aggression stress,
and even some mysterious losses of fish Elliot at Marine
collectors suggested that consider building many habitats of
open structure rock and added them to the tank.
When I did that,
the fish immediately moved in on the problems dissipated.
This is one of those missed pieces. When pointed out,
it's instantly clear.
This is where the fish live and like any community,
the fight over the best homes are habitat as well as benefit
from safe retreats. When other members are jerks,
for instance, in the clown harem series,
where we maintain 30 clown fish for four years and a one 20
success,
largely based on managing aggression through a stable supply
of food and ample habitat homes and retreats.
I've also seen it in my own tank.
When I add those mini habitats to supplement the negative
space scape. So that sets us up for today's challenge,
incorporate habitat into a negative space design.
Let's start with what matters most our responsibility to
care for fishes needs and habitat,
but not let go of what makes a tank look awesome.
Provides wide open flow in through and behind the rock,
an ample location for corals. Lastly,
it also would like it to be easy to remove and transfer to
another take without skipping a beat, if needed,
allowing us to otherwise capture impossible fish down the
road. Can this all be done?
Well, you be the judge.
This is the H NSA we put together.
We have over 25 different retreats and resting areas
throughout the entire scape mission
accomplished on that front.
I'm confident this habitat considered
and accounted for the fishes needs.
You want you to see them swimming back and forth,
but rather In and out and throughout the entire tank and
habitat, but does it look good?
And does it still meet the standard of negative space?
There's no question filling in areas,
creating coves, overhangs,
and hideouts also fills in some of the negative space.
However, you can see ample open space,
particularly when you look at the tank from a variety of
angles, I'd call it a hybrid.
Once the habitat is incorporated,
it always a little bit less negative space,
but you can find the unique balance that you're looking for.
However it's is impossible, overhangs, open areas, coves,
and balance of space that retains that same awesome look of
an Aqua scape built for our eyes and a display in our homes.
It's the same characteristics that
provide for awesome flow in front,
behind and throughout the scape all done without sacrificing
space for coral. In fact,
I think there's likely more coral locations
than many Aqua scape styles.
We also do a two pieces which appear to be intertwined.
The two pieces are heavy, but manageable.
We can take the scape out and put it back in the tank with
near zero effort. Okay.
So how do you do this for yourself?
The core of this is just breaking reef saver,
Marco rock into pieces and reassembling them into new unique
shapes in one larger cohesive structure.
But the results are in the technique and we learned some new
techniques to share first right tools for the job.
This is what we used on this scape for 120 gallon tank,
one large container of extra thick glue,
one large container of general bonding glue five into sets,
22 sticks of gray epoxy, a few syringes
acetone stir sticks, canned air,
a large metal mallet chiseled with
guard 200 pounds of reef saver,
rock a half dozen small pieces of foundation rock one large
and one medium foundation. A bag of
Oolite sand is optional,
but I'll show you a new technique with used to avoid the
need for sand building. Escape is pretty easy.
The flat bottom foundation pieces,
maybe the most critical pieces of building an open scape
like this. They're going to provide leverage,
and you'll see why we don't actually
stack rocks on many of them.
We often build pillars out of it and create open space to
build the rest of the structure.
You'll need to use the hammer and chisel to break up larger
rocks. They break pretty easy,
but if you take a minute on each piece to look for the fault
lines to leverage, you'll create more unique shapes.
The most useful pieces tend to be the thin shelves pillar
shaped and generally just irregular shape pieces.
You might be surprised to find that the medium to smaller
pieces are the most useful,
and don't be afraid of taking a bunch of small golf ball
sized pieces and using them to create something totally new
when breaking it up,
do it on some cardboard to save the dust.
We'll use it later to glue the pieces together.
We're going to use extra thick gel and the Inst a-set
accelerator.
The goal here is a nice thin layer between an over the
joints use stir sticks to get it where you need it.
Try to make it look decent,
but we're going to cover it later.
So don't get too hung up on how it looks.
Once we spray on the accelerator in 10 seconds,
we'll hold a pretty surprising amount of weight and you can
work on the next piece if you need
it to be even stronger add
another thin layer or two and spray into set in between try
and avoid big globs of glue because it can take hours or
even days to dry. Even with the inst a-set,
the thick globs will dry on the outside,
but the center states gooey for a long time.
The nice thing about the gel and accelerator method is it's
easy to get the adhesive where it needs to go even on
vertical surfaces, nooks,
or even on the undersides of surfaces
while you're building, keep the goals in mind,
both that negative space or attractive look,
as well as the habitat with negative space.
It's easy for the build to get away from you.
Add in a few pieces,
we lose that effect so often the best looks are achieved by
now what you add, but what you take off, it's a process,
never feel committed to anything and welcome opportunities
to take something off and take a totally new direction.
It's also not a race. It's a hobby.
And the best changes we made came from stepping away from
the project for a day or a few hours,
and taking a look with fresh eyes.
The most natural and interesting looks also will not share
parallel lines or right angles.
So don't put the shelf at the same angles and don't make the
shelves entirely flat.
Give them a contour that follows other natural lines.
The pillars and support should rarely be straight up and
down. Find an angle.
It's also the details that count
when you find a straight edge,
give it that piece that gives it a little bit of visual
interest or flare, and it takes more effort to do,
but whenever possible,
try not to connect the structures or overhangs.
You can see a dozen areas where we chose not to connect one
rock to an outcropping and give it that impossible
Look from a habitat perspective, Look for anywhere
You can do not just have swim throughs,
but substantial overhangs or nooks. Be aware.
You can go too far with this and transition the negative
space into more of a wall look.
So don't be afraid to take some off and find that balance.
However many people may find they actually like this unique
version of the wall
look with 50 times a habitat and a much more personal,
unique scape than many other approaches.
Once escape is together.
It's time to reinforce the structure in the past.
We did this with mortar or cement,
which works well and cheap. However,
it's hard to get into a lot of locations like vertical
surfaces or under joints.
It's also messy to mix and apply this time
We use gray epoxy partially because Randy's investigates
found a epoxy, be stronger bond on dry surfaces.
However, the real way with the
epoxy is a thick consistency allows
you to apply to nearly any surface.
You can wrap it around surfaces and it holds within minutes.
I found rolling it out into tubes,
allows you to insert it into holes, follow glue line joints,
and wrap around objects. And it made it a lot easier.
My biggest complaint about a epoxy in the past is the smooth
surface from our thumbs is
easy to spot and looks unnatural.
This time I found pushing a small piece of rubble into it.
Not only pushes the epoxy deeper into the structure,
but also gives it that natural texture.
That's easier to cover later.
The structure now looks nice and stable,
but it's also covered in glue lines and a epoxy.
You could put it into the tank this way in a year or so from
now, most of the surfaces they get light will be covered in
Caroline or coral,
but we can also make it look flawless today
with just the tiniest bit of effort.
All we need to do is suck up
some of the general bonding water,
like glue into a syringe and apply it
to the glue or a epoxy on the rock,
and then throw some of the dusty bits we collected during
the smashing process. Five seconds later,
blow it off with your canned air and it's almost
gone. One more application in the joint is totally hidden.
I like to do this on 10 joints at a time,
blow them off and reapply.
One of the cool pieces about this approach is this syringe
can get into a lot of places and the thin water like glue
wicks on the services,
and doesn't run off it's wise to periodically clean the
syringe with acetone. A typical syringe works well.
I'd get a few because it will clog,
but if you have an extra metal tip version,
like those found on FFTASIA these work awesome.
Last time with the NSA, we use sand to cover the joints.
However, the dusty finds from
smashing up the rock match the color
better, the small dusty particles,
harder to see and basically free a win on all fronts.
You may need to use the mallet to crush it up more and sift
through the strainer to get the larger bits out.
It's a bit of work. So some reefers will buy sand.
If you do buy dry Oolite sand.
That leaves us with the big question.
What are we going to do with this new HNSA Aqua scape?
The last NSA ended up in the shadow testing tank for a
lighting investigate series. This one,
the flow investigate series.
We want to see how power heads work, the angle, the flow,
the rate, the distance,
and how it works in a tank with an Aqua scape.
The flow dynamics playlist is right here.