THE Logadarium

30 Cube AQUASCAPE

I have had this amazing piece of hardscape for over ten years, long before I ventured into the world of Aquascaping.

It was purchased back in the days my wife was a chiclid keeper and we bought it for our 200L tank. When that was taken down I couldn’t bring myself to simply throw it away so it was relegated to our garden. I was looking to start up a new scaping project and I remembered I still had it and extracted it from the garden bed and begun playing with ideas on how to utilise it.

So, How can I make this work and ensure it retains a small foot print in our home?

vertical scape!

I took the measurements of the log (700x300mm ish) and started to look for a tank to purchase locally. A few suitable options were available but the winner in the end was a 30x30x30 cube from Seaview Aquariums for an outstanding price. So before I spent any money I made up a dojo based on the internal measurements to ensure it would fit.

Success! Albeit with a few inherent instability issues to sort out but thats was a challenge for another day.
Time to buy the tank and think about how to create the other main feature of this scape.

NOW THE FIRST TEST, WILL IT FIT?

At this stage I must say, its not all roses…

Yeah it fits but, its extremely unstable since I don’t want it resting on the glass in any way. Plus, I have the bigger challenge of working out the plumbing... I had a filter that I tried to repurpose but it turned out to be my first fail of this project. It simply didnt have the head height required so I purchased the SICCE Syncra, that posed its own set of unique challenges.

But for now, the fact this fairly heavy log fits into the tank and isn’t touching the glass is the first win of this project, but now the real work starts.

SECOND TEST. If this fails the project is dead in the water

Pun intended ;)

Before I went any further with the hardscape I HAD to ensure the SICCE Syncra delivered. The pump can be run wet or dry and has the smallest outlet at 13mm with an adjustable flow rate at the pump IF its run submerged.

I tested running it dry (externally mounted) on 13mm line, but priming the pump was going to be an issue so I tested it wet (submerged) on the same 13mm line simulating the tank depth and line length/height running it at the pumps lowest setting and it was waaaaay overpowered. Crap, back to the drawing board!

To overcome this I tried it on 8mm line, still too much flow even with the pump on low, then finally 5mm line, but even still it was too much for what I was trying to achieve, even with the greater friction of the water due to the smaller diameter 5mm pipework. Time to add elbows, a T join to have a second outflow location and taps for finer control. You can see from the video below with the taps open there is a fair amount of flow, but close the tap a small amount and I think this is going to work. WIN!

Now back to the hardscape challenges, lol.

TIME to sort out the stability issues and a home for the pump.

With the first two big hurdles solved it was time to move back onto stabalising the hardscape and working out where to install the pump since dry running was out of the question.

The log is zip tied to the black egg crate which is very secure, but since I want it leaning backwards I had to make up some support bracing behind the log to take the vertical weight and stop it toppling over. This extra lean resulted in massive torque at the bottom of the log’s only fixing point... It was flexing the egg crate to the point that the front right standoffs were actually not touching the ground anymore, great!

I tested various solutions to strengthen the egg crate flex, then I went and made it worse when I cut out the space for the pump... Ill have to find a real solution to this at some stage, one step forwards, two backwards…

My first pump was going to be internal, I had factored in the space behind the log before buying the SICCE Syncra but I wanted to ensure it didn’t digest soil or sand and could be removed for maintenance. I intended to make a coreflute box for the pump to live in but maintenance was always going to pose a bigger challenge since the vertical pipework would be fixed to the hardscape and would make removing the pump difficult, let alone its location in the scape.

I managed to make another win here, the 8mm vinyl pipe I used in the 2nd plumbing test fit snugly inside the 13mm pump outlet, and the 5mm vinyl pipe happened to fit snugly into the 8mm so I was able to make a press fit fitting without using any clamps, barbs or glue, and it didn’t leak!

One other thing I wanted to address with the pump was its ability to have some basic filtration. One to protect the pump and two some additional surface area for some beneficial bacteria, there was plenty of space above the body of the pump (70mm x 70mm x 50mm deep) for some 30ppi foam and a bag of Macropore. The Last time we had this piece of wood in a tank it leeched so much tannin’s my wife removed it after 1-2 weeks so this extra space under the foam was a real score!

Now all this was great in theory but it had to work.

The video below shows I can release the press fit vinyl hose, remove the pump for maintenance and put it back all one handed. That’s another WIN! Hopefully it still works in a few months time after its been running but, I also tested if the pump can be removed without disconnecting the plumbing line so I think I have that potential future problem covered.

Now satisfied the pump challenges were met it was time to sort out the big one, stability. This thing rocks more than a rocking horse…

I spent ages playing around with standoff locations, bracing the egg crate with more egg crate to make splints/spines, taking it off the standoffs and mounting it flat but when all else failed I went to the hot glue gun!

The video below is a before and after comparison in the dojo which weighs around twice the tank. You can see how little force I would have to give the upper log to make the standoffs leave the ground by 5-10mm! My fear was when substrate was added and the tank planted, IF I bumped it during maintenance it would have the possibility to dislodge a lot of sand and aquasoil, not really ideal.

Now this works but its not fool proof, hot glue has a low tensile strength and it can be snapped from the base of the dojo easily. I have a spare sheet of 4mm black acrylic I plan to make a 280mm x 280mm foundation plate and glue the hardscape to it with silicone. This will sit on the glass base of the tank and will then have all the sand and substrate on-top of it so it should stay put. Even if it gets knocked the silicone wont fail like hot glue would and I wont have residual glue on the bottom of my tank when its time to rescape.

TIME TO GIVE THIS HARDSCAPE A FOUNDATION

As mentioned above hot glueing the egg crate standoffs to the base of the dojo helped a lot with the wobbling of the log. But, I didnt really want to glue it to the glass tank base since this wont be the only scape run in this tank so I planned to make a black acrylic foundation plate which would then have the substraite, sand and rocks placed on-top of to assist in supporting the log on the egg crate.

Its a lot more stable now.

Final bit of fit n finish work.

The left side of the log will act as a soil retaining wall but when i did the rough cut to test that it would fit in the dojo I cut it like a drunk monkey… Time to fix that and get it as flush as possible, got it pretty bang on in the end. Happy with that result.

DREMEL TIME!

Now that most of the details had been addressed it was time to take the plunge and put this concept into action and crank out the Dremel and make the plumbing lines permanent!!! I’m not going to lie, I was looking forward to this step because, who doesn’t like to Dremel things but I was also dreading equally as much. If I stuffed this up that’s a $90 lump of wood relegated back to the garden.

All in all it went really well. From the side you can hardly tell the plumbing is there with the exception of the flow taps and when this is all siliconed in place it will follow the contours of the wood much better and portions of the pipe that are visible will be pinned in place.

WILL IT WORK?

Until now I still had no idea if this crazy idea would work….
So now the plumbing is fixed in place, albeit no silicone has been used just yet (plumbing lines are just sitting in the wood) its time to fill this sucker up, turn the pump on and see what we’ve got! The video below is the first wet run and a comparison of the woods wicking state after 6 hours of running.

I ran this for 8 hours with no external leaks :) Note: I had a small leak from the outlets where the water would wick back down the plumbing lines, nothing silicone shouldn’t be able to fix but in saying this, the water seepage was so slow it clung to the back side of the wood and never actually dripped. Happy with that for no glue!

LIGHTING?

Till now I haven’t mentioned how I was planning on lighting this scape. It was always my intention to run two lights on this, one for the water column and another for the terrestrial plantings on the log. Easy right?

Ill be honest, this has been a real pain in the arse!!! So im going to spend some time going thru the options that have led me to the final conclusion that I ended up with.

I think more planning went into lighting this than the scape itself… But nothing is worth doing unless its done right, right?

I was in no rush to start up this scape. I was lucky and purchased an IKEA VÄXER plant cultivation globe before IKEA discontinued them and have been impressed with how they have preformed on my other planted setups so I wanted to use this globe for the top light, but what to do for the water column lighting?

I had my available space dimensions, so to the interwebs to go light shopping!

It came down to two options for the 30 cube tank, the Chihiros WRGB 2 and the Twinstar 300 models, both available from Australian distributors, nice. Both lights would do the trick for this scape and any other scape I setup after this but for this hardscape I only had around 145mm max from the log to the right hand edge of the tank to play with, and I planned on end mounting the light to the tank to reduce its visual footprint, not side on like you would normally use these lights… The Chihiros was 140mm and the Twinstar was 117mm so that was a big strike against the Chihiros.

Sam answered all my initial questions, then my follow up sizing questions along with photographic proof which made my life easy as I could see exactly what we were discussing, which led to more ideas and questions lol. He even removed some screws so I could check if my crazy mounting idea would work with the 300E model which as this stage it looked like it would :) I even got to the stage I said to Sam you are probably getting sick of answering my questions to which he replied with

“No dramas at all, I enjoy the customization part of the hobby and appreciate someone that actually thinks about details “

That made me feel a lot better since at this stage I still wasn’t sure what light I was gong to go with and checked what Sam’s stock levels were like on the 300E as he was sold out of the 300EA, turned out there were only 3x 300E’s in his inventory… Lo and behold, Sam had reserved a 300E for me and gave me a few days to mull over the info and get back to him! Bravo sir!

A few more conversations, options and photos of the lights details were exchanged, he even offered to call me up on the phone to discuss anything else I needed, as I said, outstanding customer service. My mind was made up tho, this will work and I placed the order for a Twinstar 300E. Happy days.

Sam once again, Thank you.

As mentioned I was planning on custom making some brackets to hang the 300E and the IKEA VÄXER from the same lighting rig. I had the idea in my mind to build it from Bunnings Connect-It black extruded aluminium so I went and purchased what I needed. Once I made up the lighting rig it quickly dawned on me, I hated it, FML!!!

So I got a can of metal primer and painted the aluminium in the same colour as the wall (see the middle & right option below). Turns out I liked it a little more but it was still not quite working for me, the pole created some undesirable cast shadows which I found distracting and having it placed in the negative space alongside the log was a visual distraction. I spend days racking my brain with how to make this look good, bouncing ideas off Sam and my good scaping mate Gavan from Aquascaping Australia…

It also became evident when I mounted the Twinstar into the equation that hanging it from the lighting rig wasn’t going to look good at all (see middle option below and imagine vertical wires added to the mix) I was trying to reduce the un necessary clutter in the negative space, not add to it, grrrrr. I even trialled hiding the lighting arm behind the log. It fixed the negative space clutter but it still looked odd as you can see on the right hand option below.

The only thing I did like was the tank mounted Twinstar light.

Then driving to work one day thinking about bloody lighting it hit me, make it a pendant and piss the pole off all-together! Was it really that easy?

I photoshopped up an option, ran it past my wife since ide have a power cable running across the roof for a small way before I could hide it and got the green light as she agreed, the pole sucked.

The pic below is the final lighting arrangement, it might have taken me a few options to finally get here but I believe this is a great example of not settling and rushing a tank into commission. Keep exploring options, take your time to think things thru and don’t settle for compromises if you can.

root system CONTROL & WEEKEND TEST

Now most of the big ticket items are sorted out I spent a little time creating some coreflute soil dividers.

Mainly to keep he foreground sand from mixing with the aquasoil in the back. There is a big tunnel under the centre part of the log and with my planned soil height at the back I can see aquasoil constantly mixing with the sand at this point. A little time spent now can result in less maintenance time 6+ months down the track if im lucky.

WEEKEND TEST!

Now essentially the hardscape and lighting was complete it was time to fill the tank up and let this thing run for the weekend to monitor leaks, out of tank drips and how the wood was wicking the water flow, before I was committed to substrate in the tank. Easier to fix problems now than deal with wet sand and aquasoil ;)

It also gave me the opportunity to finally start to play with planting ideas for the log itself, testing out how moss would go in certain areas of high and low flow but more on that later.

Time for substrate

Copy to go in here.

DRY START

Add dry start information here

FINAL HARDWARE FITOUT

Loading up the pump box with media to aid in additional filtration.

Since the SICCE Syncra runs at a fairly slow rate I decided to add a Pisces SH100 HOB to the scape to boost filtration. In terms of fit, this really is the perfect filter for this project.

From the left side you can see ALL the hardware so I played around with some external ferns to hide it all and add to the overall effect of a mossy log in a forrest setting.

THE FINISHED PRODUCT