Actually floating Reef, not on acrylic columns

[Afterburner]

Won't that structure naturally fill with gas over time and then act differently on the buoyancy front?

I have no idea what you mean by naturally filling with gas. What gas are you referring to? Nitrogen? Anyway that was the idea of having it open at the bottom so I could change the buoyancy as corals grow out anyway, so if some sort of mysterious gas happens to appear, it would only reduce the amount of times I would need to add air in the future I guess. The reason I feel I need to be able to change buoyancy is because I don't want to have to tie it off to an huge rock initially.
If you have some experience and can share any information about any significant amount of naturally occurring gas underwater, please let me know.

 

[J1a]

I have no idea what you mean by naturally filling with gas. What gas are you referring to? Nitrogen? Anyway that was the idea of having it open at the bottom so I could change the buoyancy as corals grow out anyway, so if some sort of mysterious gas happens to appear, it would only reduce the amount of times I would need to add air in the future I guess. The reason I feel I need to be able to change buoyancy is because I don't want to have to tie it off to an huge rock initially.
If you have some experience and can share any information about any significant amount of naturally occurring gas underwater, please let me know.

If it is not tied to anything. It will just get blown around by the flow.

Also, it will be very difficult to maintain exact neutral buoyancy. It will eventually surface, or sink to the bottom.

 

[Afterburner]

Here is my print from yesterday. To see if it is air tight, I filled it with water and some leaked out overnight, so I am going to design a new one (smaller) and use a higher extrusion temperature next time to hopefully get a better print. I will also add a large cavity at the top to keep it upright initially even without any air in the buoyancy compensator pocket.

 

[Afterburner]

If it is not tied to anything. It will just get blown around by the flow.

Also, it will be very difficult to maintain exact neutral buoyancy. It will eventually surface, or sink to the bottom.

I think you missed the original post..... it is tied to a rock on the bottom by fishing line, possibly in two places if needed to keep in in a general area. The whole idea is to have my SPS flow with the current.

 

[J1a]

I think you missed the original post..... it is tied to a rock on the bottom by fishing line, possibly in two places if needed to keep in in a general area. The whole idea is to have my SPS flow with the current.

Oh I misunderstood your post earlier.

I don't want to have to tie it off to an huge rock initially.

So you plan to attach them to smaller rocks then.

 

[Tonycass12]

Here is my print from yesterday. To see if it is air tight, I filled it with water and some leaked out overnight, so I am going to design a new one (smaller) and use a higher extrusion temperature next time to hopefully get a better print. I will also add a large cavity at the top to keep it upright initially even without any air in the buoyancy compensator pocket.

Maybe you should shape them like balloons, will help keep them more stable and easier to adjust for buoyancy. Also single line attachment point....

 

[Afterburner]

Maybe you should shape them like balloons, will help keep them more stable and easier to adjust for buoyancy. Also single line attachment point....

Here is the design I am working on right now. The top half will be printed as a hollow area with about 10% fill for rigidity, and the bottom half will be fillable to change buoyancy as needed. The reason I am not making it completely a hollow balloon is because I would have to have too big of a rock to keep it in place and I don't have that much room in my tank.

 

[Stackrat]

I have no idea what you mean by naturally filling with gas. What gas are you referring to? Nitrogen? Anyway that was the idea of having it open at the bottom so I could change the buoyancy as corals grow out anyway, so if some sort of mysterious gas happens to appear, it would only reduce the amount of times I would need to add air in the future I guess. The reason I feel I need to be able to change buoyancy is because I don't want to have to tie it off to an huge rock initially.
If you have some experience and can share any information about any significant amount of naturally occurring gas underwater, please let me know.

Yes, nitrogen for example. Also any microbubbles that are present in the water column. I'm not talking about it happening overnight, but surely it will happen. When it does go over the amount of gas that you have purposely put in there, won't it tip over?

 

[Afterburner]

Yes, nitrogen for example. Also any microbubbles that are present in the water column. I'm not talking about it happening overnight, but surely it will happen. When it does go over the amount of gas that you have purposely put in there, won't it tip over?

No it should not. look at the picture and see the connection at the very bottom. if it completely fills with gas, worst case i would need a bigger anchor rock.

 

[Afterburner]

So I printed it with a hollow top portion and thinner (extra fine) layers to get it water tight. So far so good as you will see below that I deployed it in my tank. None of the issue everyone seems to think happened (blown away, crash into glass, etc). It seems to be doing exactly what I wanted and I will add some frags to is shortly. I may first dip it in epoxy just to make sure it won't absorb water over time, and change the color to be closer to coraline colors. Stay tuned.

 

[Afterburner]

Video didn't work just pasting it, so I sent it to my youtube channel. here is the link.

 

[Afterburner]

I put epoxy on the printed floats to change the color closer to coraline so they won't stand out so much and seal the water out. I will glue frags directly to them and deploy in a few days from now. I used table top epoxy because it is food safe with some pigment that changes color slightly from different angles to give it a unique look till it is covered with growth. This is them hanging from my kitchen cabinets dripping the epoxy off. The first one I printed leaked, so I figure this will seal it up and it will still be useable.

 

[JNalley]

You should try creating a branching coral out of wire coat hangar, solder it all together, and then use some puff paint or something to give it a little body, then glue it to one of your rocks, don't let it be symmetrical and all weighing the same... put it in a 20-gallon aquarium to see if it will float the way you want it to. Then point a powerhead at it. I hope it works because it reminds me of the Hallelujah mountains on Pandora in Avatar, but I still think you're going to run into problems where it lists one way or the other very far to the point that it completely topples over, or you're not going to like how it looks... I hope I'm wrong though cause it's a really neat idea.

 

[Afterburner]

You should try creating a branching coral out of wire coat hangar, solder it all together, and then use some puff paint or something to give it a little body, then glue it to one of your rocks, don't let it be symmetrical and all weighing the same... put it in a 20-gallon aquarium to see if it will float the way you want it to. Then point a powerhead at it. I hope it works because it reminds me of the Hallelujah mountains on Pandora in Avatar, but I still think you're going to run into problems where it lists one way or the other very far to the point that it completely topples over, or you're not going to like how it looks... I hope I'm wrong though cause it's a really neat idea.

I plan to just cover them with some corals later this week when they have fully cured. I will be evenly distributing the pieces of coral to keep it somewhat vertical, but I don't mind it leaning a little bit anyway. I have no plans to do extensive experimenting or trying to see how far I can go to make it fail with powerheads or lop sided weights. I have plenty of corals I can clip and glue to them, and I plan to place them not directly in front of any powerheads. If the coral grows and they start to lean too much in any direction, I will simply prune (frag) the corals that I need to. I visited the Hunan Zhangjiajie National Park in China that inspired the creator of Avatar's floating mountains, and at some point I will print a version that will look more like them and include some printed vines hanging down that I could grow some green plating coral on to get the full effect. These are just my first prototypes for proof of concept.

 

[Afterburner]

Perhaps you can seal up the bottom opening as well, so that the trapped air will not some how escape from the cavity. In addition, the bottom surface will be perfect for attaching some sun corals if that's something you like.

If your plan is to anchor the floating structure with a fishing line, a higher buoyancy will make it less likely to drift about in the aquarium.

I think I mentioned it in a previous post, but the structure's top half is an air chamber, and the bottom half is so I can change the buoyancy to get more fluctuation in the current, or add air and support more coral.

 

[Dburr1014]

I want the swaying in the current, so basically I can have SPS that moves like LPS. I am now thinking about designing and 3d printing the hollow structure so I can make some really cool structures.

SPS swaying around? Would that cause the polyps to, like never open up?

 

[Daniel@R2R]

I saw something similar to this done at a n LFS, but instead of having a buoyant object suspended from below and floating, they simply drilled rock and suspended it from above with rope (it was a REALLY large tank).

One thing that really might be an issue (that has already been mentioned) is that as things grow and get heavy, the floating structure will likely capsize. However, stabilizing it from above with some additional cord/line of some kind could prevent that capsizing issue but also allow the movement you're going for.

 

[LeftyReefer]

 

[Afterburner]

SPS swaying around? Would that cause the polyps to, like never open up?

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.

 

[Tamberav]

Coming along nicely!

I can say that fishing line turns brown and grows algae like anything else. My fish trap uses it and it did not stay clear. So you may want to take into consideration how to clean the wires. Maybe wipe down regularly with a original mr eraser?