thatbostonguy
Community Member
- Joined
- May 2, 2026
- Messages
- 99
- Reaction score
- 171
- Location
- Boston
- What state or country do you live in
- Massachusetts
Introducing Project Caelid.
This project has been months of research, testing, material cleaning and now finally application of theory. I've always wanted to try to bridge the gap between the art of freshwater aquascaping and the rigorous chemistry project that is reef keeping. The idea came to me during an extended play session of Elden Ring in the Caelid region of the game hence the name. For those who've never played the game, Caelid is a landscape that has been overtaken by The Crimson Rot. Decaying creatures, burning red skies, a dead landscape that is being over taken with parasitic fungus that looks an awful lot like zoas, acros and montis. I have attached a few source material photos from the game.
The first challenge was selecting materials that fit the theme and would have zero to minimal impact to the chemistry and stability in a typical reef aquarium. My picks were Ohko Stone, Rhododendron root and Morocco UNS control sand which are typically inert. My concerns with the Ohko stone was possible heavy metal leaching and trouble fully establishing the beneficial bacteria colony since it is far less porous than typical aragonite rock.
The first month was just soaking both the stone and wood. I wanted to remove as many tannins from the wood and soften up the clay left behind on the stone. Each week I would change out the water, give everything a rinse and soak again. Each week I would test for heavy metals in the water before changing the water out. Always zero so I felt safe using it for the scape. After the 4th week I soaked the wood in boiling water to kill any living remaining organisms. Boiling Ohko stone could shatter or even explode the stone. I wasn't going to risk that so I soaked them in 170f water to sanitize them. It was then time to clean them. Almost 8 hours of scrubbing, skewering, scraping, brushing and hand cramps. It's amazing how many channels form in these stones that are invisible until you start cleaning them. I had a baseball sized wad of clay from 20lbs of stone AFTER soaking it for a month. The weight of the stones after soaking and cleaning had to be 5 pounds less. I used that clay to make a nice clay turd that I used to prank my coworkers at work.
For equipment I went with Fzone studios backpack hang on back filter. Since this is only a 6 Gallon tank I wanted as much filtration and bio-media as I could get, controllable flow, adjustable outlets nozzles and a minimalist look. I have quite a bit of fzone equipment on my freshwater tanks and I've been impressed with their quality so far. For lighting, I'm using Fluval's Reef 4.0 Nano. I'm getting 250 par at the tops of my rocks and 75 on the sand bed. Plenty of power for the type of corals I want to experiment with in this tank.
Cycling went smoother than I expected although a bit slower than usual. I added 4 ounces of Microbacter7 at startup and within
24 hours had an intense bacterial bloom. It took about 7 days to clear up and parameter swings were wild. PH and ALK dropped to the low 7s the first week. I adjusted the output nozzle to add more surface agitation and PH rebounded back up and settled at 7.8 while ALK has been 8.3 and hasn't moved in 2 weeks. I'm OK with those numbers as they are stable.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and if you've tried similar project what successes and failures did you encounter. I'd also love to hear some suggestion on livestock.Thanks for checking out my project!
This project has been months of research, testing, material cleaning and now finally application of theory. I've always wanted to try to bridge the gap between the art of freshwater aquascaping and the rigorous chemistry project that is reef keeping. The idea came to me during an extended play session of Elden Ring in the Caelid region of the game hence the name. For those who've never played the game, Caelid is a landscape that has been overtaken by The Crimson Rot. Decaying creatures, burning red skies, a dead landscape that is being over taken with parasitic fungus that looks an awful lot like zoas, acros and montis. I have attached a few source material photos from the game.
The first challenge was selecting materials that fit the theme and would have zero to minimal impact to the chemistry and stability in a typical reef aquarium. My picks were Ohko Stone, Rhododendron root and Morocco UNS control sand which are typically inert. My concerns with the Ohko stone was possible heavy metal leaching and trouble fully establishing the beneficial bacteria colony since it is far less porous than typical aragonite rock.
The first month was just soaking both the stone and wood. I wanted to remove as many tannins from the wood and soften up the clay left behind on the stone. Each week I would change out the water, give everything a rinse and soak again. Each week I would test for heavy metals in the water before changing the water out. Always zero so I felt safe using it for the scape. After the 4th week I soaked the wood in boiling water to kill any living remaining organisms. Boiling Ohko stone could shatter or even explode the stone. I wasn't going to risk that so I soaked them in 170f water to sanitize them. It was then time to clean them. Almost 8 hours of scrubbing, skewering, scraping, brushing and hand cramps. It's amazing how many channels form in these stones that are invisible until you start cleaning them. I had a baseball sized wad of clay from 20lbs of stone AFTER soaking it for a month. The weight of the stones after soaking and cleaning had to be 5 pounds less. I used that clay to make a nice clay turd that I used to prank my coworkers at work.
For equipment I went with Fzone studios backpack hang on back filter. Since this is only a 6 Gallon tank I wanted as much filtration and bio-media as I could get, controllable flow, adjustable outlets nozzles and a minimalist look. I have quite a bit of fzone equipment on my freshwater tanks and I've been impressed with their quality so far. For lighting, I'm using Fluval's Reef 4.0 Nano. I'm getting 250 par at the tops of my rocks and 75 on the sand bed. Plenty of power for the type of corals I want to experiment with in this tank.
Cycling went smoother than I expected although a bit slower than usual. I added 4 ounces of Microbacter7 at startup and within
24 hours had an intense bacterial bloom. It took about 7 days to clear up and parameter swings were wild. PH and ALK dropped to the low 7s the first week. I adjusted the output nozzle to add more surface agitation and PH rebounded back up and settled at 7.8 while ALK has been 8.3 and hasn't moved in 2 weeks. I'm OK with those numbers as they are stable.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and if you've tried similar project what successes and failures did you encounter. I'd also love to hear some suggestion on livestock.Thanks for checking out my project!
