DIY Pebble background

What you will need:



* Garden pebbles from nursery. Cleaned and dried. (Ideally don't take from your garden, as you more than likely find that you've sprayed stuff on it that you dont want.)
* Paper
* Ruler
* Pencil
* Silicon
* Prestik
* Toilet paper. (For the mess)
* Selotape
* Screwdriver



Measure the back of your tank, as well as the layout of your substrate. This is actually easily done. Draw the water line on the top. Stick the ruler into the water until it touches the substrate, and read the measurement. Do this across the full tank, and you will get a layout.



Do the same for the bottom. You will notice on the right I left a "kink" to allow for a heater. However this didn't work out practically. Stick the bottom page to the table/board and put the background up. This is where the selotape comes in handy. The bottom should idealy not move at all, so I stuck prestik in the middle under the page as well.



Obviously you don't want the bottom section, cause this is the line of the substrate. So I simply used the pebbles and pretiked them together into the form of the substrate.



From there I started siliconing pebbles together, following the outline I drew on the papers. This can be time consuming, and fairly tricky. I found that I could only silicon about 3 layers of pebbles at a time, else it became to unstable. Took me 4 days to accomplish what I have in the final pic.

You will find that you get silicon all over your fingers. This is why the toilet paper came in handy. Also, once in a while, a pebble may fall behind the wall, and the easiest way I found to get it out was with the screwdriver.

This is the outcome:



A rock wall. Heater hidden behind. Filter inlet pipe and outlet pipe hidden behind. Water from my outlet is actaully been sprayed through the rocks, and not recirculated back into the filter. The pebbles have MORE than enough space for water circulation.

Basic principle. Cost me only R60 for the pebbles. Everything else was lying around the house. [And I have literally only used 1/8th of the bag of pebbles. If anyone wants the rest- it's available for R50.00 (Collection only)]

You can build it as high as you want... but this will obviously take time. I decided to do mine at an uneven level, as you see, to give some interesting scape.

Regards

 

Ok this time you outdone yourself. Now I might have to copy something you did .
8.5 out of 10

 

Nice Zoom! Looks good!

 

Pebbles

This looks really nice and natural,Great to see okes doing the DIY and saving us all money
WELL DONE ZOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Well Done Ash!


Think your definately going to have some copy cats!

10 out of 10!
+1 Zoom!

 

WOW, impressive. I think a few members are going to be doing this in some way shape or form.

 

Done!
For someone else that saw your post Zoom.
They love it.

 

The picture doesn't do it justice. In the photo the pebbles look grotesquely out of preportion. Maybe I should take a pic from the other side of the room... maybe another time.

Thanks for all the positive remarks and comments guys.

 

Do you think it would work th same with broken pieces of slate??

 

I've seen slate strips being used as a wall, remember you cant have any sharp edges though. You will have to sand all the sharp edges.

 

This is a nice idea Ash, well done! Could you perhaps give us photos from the side and back of the tank as well?

 

Yeah you could.... just check the slate you get doesn't release anything into the water.

Nope Then you'll see all the hardware and mess! L L

 

WOW!! 10 out of 10!! Great idea. Now I just need another tank

 

Update:

As great as this idea was... it needs to be refined a bit. The stones absorb water, which results in the silicon not bonding anymore to the stones. I tried to take the stones out the water last weekend to plant the Glosso... and it fell apart. I suspect it may work "better" if you smeered the back with silicon, but this won't be a long term solution.

Pity...

 

Pebble Background

Hi there silicon has a tendency to do that,I fly model airplanes as well and think if you use epoxy it might solve your problem it dries perfectly clear and sticks like hell you get different setting times 5,15,30 minutes its not toxic because it transforms to a solid

 

Try getting Dental cement.

 

stil this is a great idea

 

Hi Zoom, the best would be to use Pratley Puttey , the type with the 2 parts you mix . Another product is called Aquamend. We use it a lot in Marines as it is 100 % safe. Even better would be to stick the stones to a perspex (black) backing and to each other.

My 2 C

Looks nice BTW

 

The epoxy, dental cement, and pratley may work, but my logic says no. It'd be interesting to let someone try...

The reason I say no is because the STONES get waterlogged, and we all know that water repels glue if it comes from the inside of the item being stuck. (Hence the warning label of glue always says make sure the item you are gluing is dry). I know pratleys and dental cement dry under water... but that does not necessaryly mean they will BOND with something that is water logged.

 

Hear what you are saying Zoom, and yes you are right in a sense. I mention it as in marines we use it extensively to stick corals onto rocks and rocks onto rock.

I have some around and some pebbles in the garden...will give it a test quickly & let you know