Actually floating Reef, not on acrylic columns

WallyB · Feb 1, 2022

@Afterburner I'll give you credit for wanting to do something original, and creative. Kudos for attempting to solve a complex challenge. Good Luck!

If you want your SPS island boyant and remote controlled, you could consider what I did for my kids entertainment when testing my Newly Installed Custom Tank for any leaks. LOL

Obsessed with fish · Feb 1, 2022

Afterburner said:
I was wondering if anyone has actually made a rock structure in their tank that is hollow and actually floats. I am thinking about making something that I can grow corals on that would be suspended mid water column by being hollow, and connected to a heavy rock on the bottom by fishing line. My reasoning for this is that if I make what people call a floating reef, it is really just rock on clear columns. I worry that coraline growth on the columns would defeat the purpose over time or result in a lot of cleaning. With my proposal, the rock structure would also sway in the current giving it a really cool animation. Think of it as something that looks like those floating mountains in the movie Avatar, but they would be constantly moving though. My plan is to eventually get some blown glass that is in unique shapes, but start my proof of concept using a small bottle that will be hung upside down so I can add or remove water from it to get different buoyancy for different affects (also to reduce that size of the anchor rock). I also figure that over time as the corals grow on the float, I will need to add buoyancy to keep it from sinking, so I could just use an air line to get a couple of bubble in it as needed.
One of the reasons I am thinking about this is because my tank is so grown out that it is hard to find places to put new frags and this option will be easy to transport to other tanks, move around or trade with friends when they grow out.

Has anyone done something like this and can comment or provide pics?

Here is a picture of a candidate bottle that has been in my tank for a couple of years, I just wish I had put it in upside down so it would be easier for this project. Of course it may be easier to just start over with a different bottle or use blown glass.

Sounds awesome, following

Dburr1014 · Feb 1, 2022

Afterburner said:
Why do you think that would happen, the currents are swaying the tiny polyps all that time in my tank, so I figure the whole thing moving would not make any difference to the polyps. The changing of lighting angles as is spins might be more of an issue, but I don't think it will be once it gets used to it.

I say only cuz if it's on a string to keep it in place, when swaying, it will get to the end of the string and abruptly stop. Kinda like getting constantly bumped.

But maybe I'm not understanding the concept. I digress.

Afterburner · Feb 3, 2022

I deployed the final version today. I evacuated the air in the auxiliary chamber to get more movement, and there is still plenty of buoyancy (maybe too much for optimal movement). I figure I can get a lot of growth before I will need to add any air to it. It looks like I was spot on with the pigments I used in the epoxy to match the coraline in my tank. I am pretty happy with the results, and may deploy the other one, or make something slightly different so they aren't identical. The next one will probably had a flatter top (like my original print) to look more like the floating mountains and have a nice area to plant corals that grow upward.

Description from my video in case someone is new to this post and doesn't want to read the entire thread.
This is a real floating reef that is suspended in my tank by an air chamber and a rock on the bottom. In this video, I just glued the frags onto a plastic 3d printed float that was covered in epoxy to reduce the hygroscopic properties of the PTEG plastic and to match the coraline in my tank. The corals are pretty stressed from the fragging process and should color up later today.

Seymo44 · Feb 11, 2022

Following along. Can’t wait to see how it looks in a few months. I love out-of-the box ideas.

Afterburner · Feb 18, 2022

Here is a new video that includes the original floater anchored to the bottom, and a new one that is hanging under a float. I just put it in and will probably have to secure the it in a limited position to keep it from stinging everything in the tank.

Floating corals suspended from top and another from bottom

youtube.com

Afterburner · Mar 2, 2022

I know some of you wanted to see how this experiment would grow out, so I am including a video here of the floating reef after one month. It is doing well with good polyp extension. In another thread I have on here Does high flow really matter? I got a lot of technical information and in one of the articles it mentioned that frag growers sometimes suspend the frags mid water column to get better turbulence for faster growth. I think this is happening with my experiment even though all but my return pumps failed while I was on vacation so the water flow is very low, but this floating reef is growing quite well. You can see from the lack of movement that there is not much flow in my tank right now, and from the earlier videos that I have been experimenting with reduced flow to get more polyp extension.