Nano Reef Aqua Sculpturing

Today, I collected about 10.9 lbs of "shelf" and 8.2 lbs of "rubble" live rock at AquaSD. I was able to go through a vat containing various sizes and shapes. At home, the rock was drilled with a 1/2" drill bit and acrylic rods were inserted to help construct the aqua sculpture. I was confined to making the structure fit into a 20 X 10" footprint. Most pieces of the live rock were easy to drill through while only a few were impossible to drill.

Here's a look at how the acrylic rods go through the shelf rocks. To hide the acrylic rods, I'll drill more small pieces and insert them between the shelf rocks. I'm aiming to get the bottom shelf drilled at an angle so that the shelf slants. In this way, I can position the sculpture to display more surface area when the tank is viewed from the front.

I was able to carry the entire structure by grabbing the bottom "legs". Of course, the rocks rearranged a bit when I placed it into the tank and it took me some time to figure out how to adjust it. I found that the shelf rocks had to be chipped away further because I wanted to leave enough room for front glass maintenance.

I originally wanted to fit the filtration device on the back glass, but there wasn't enough room. So, I mounted it on the left.

Next, I performed a 10 gallon water change on my main tank and used the discarded water to fill up the Nano tank. The biologically active water from my main tank should help speed up the process of cycling the Nano tank.

I used a filter bag with an MJ1200 pump and tubing to speed up the filtration of particulates coming off of the newly drilled live rock. Note: using the clip on the top was a bad idea because the seawater wicks up the sides and drips out. I caught it just in time, though. I then placed the temporary filter bag in the middle of the tank.

After it cleared up a bit, I turned on the Subcurrent filter device and installed a 50V heater. Left over rock was placed on the bottom left side for future use.

Sweet.