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Fluval Ebi - 'Pandora'

LancsRick

LancsRick

Member
Joined
18 Apr 2012
Messages
683
Right, well today's shopping has seen a bunch of clear pipework ordered from eBay, and from my LFS a Fluval Ebi and JBL e700 have been collected.

I suppose since I'm going to do this as a journal I'd better give some background.

The existing Fluval Edge (23l) in my bedroom was run as a shrimp tank, and in fairness it was a lovely looking tank. It was a pig to work on though due to the small opening, and with it being a waterfall filter, it wasn't the quietest of things unless it was 100% topped up, which didn't go down well with the other half.

Criteria for shrimp tank number 2 were defined...

1) Nano sized still, I'm not a fan of masses of water upstairs!
2) Very quiet running
3) Inhabitants to be shrimp (currently Cherry Red)
4) Look nice - hence the colourless clear pipework experiment
5) Stick to the golden rule from two angles. The reason for this is that the tank will be in the corner of the room, so it can be seen either from the bed, or from standing in the room. That's two different sides of the tank that will be looked at, so I'd like it to look good from both


In terms of layout, I wanted to try a nice basic one, so I'm going with a rock layout with eleocharis acicularis, eleocharis acicularis sp. mini, and also some weeping moss. On top of this, I've taken a bit of inspiration from the film Avatar (hence the journal title) - whilst only mocked up in the pictures (I'll use silicon and some hidden fixtures when final), I quite liked the idea of "floating" rocks, with a weeping moss "hat" on them. It will also help deal with the fact that the Ebi is quite tall for its footprint.

So, first shots below now that I've been playing with the hardscape - something that I think will work from both angles, and keep it nice and clean. This is going to be really minimalist and tidy, that's the aim.

Thoughts?

(I've made the pictures links rather than embed so hopefully people read the commentary above first!)

2012-12-29-19.12.47.jpg

2012-12-29-19.13.11.jpg
 
This is an interesting idea mate, will look forward to seeing how it all comes together with the moss on the floating stones.
 
Love the concept of this tank :) how is it progressing, any recents pictures of it??
 
interested to see how it pulls off.. nice one for trying it out. I been thinking about this but was unsure about how to do it. I was originally going to buy a few large magnet cleaners and cover them in moss so it was close up against the glass.. yours will be interesting too see how it looks when its got a certain distance fro mthe back :)
 
Wow great idea Avatar is my favourite have you seen those guy works 2012 AGA Aquascaping Contest - Entry #153 Cant wait to see your progress. I want to make Pandora floating mountains but my idea was a bit diferent. I was planning to use a volcanic rock because is the lightest ever scrape the inside and fill it up with insulation foam or stirofoam which will make it even lighter and will float. Than the diferent size islands will be connected with some natural rope or fibers from a tree or something so they will look as the pandora`s. The volcanic rock doesn look solid as those on the pictures, but will not be attached so will float for real an will transform the scape dynamically. What do you think is it that possible. Wish you luck with ur project.....Regards Nikolas
Floating+Mountains.jpg
View attachment 134810
 
clone said:
Wow great idea Avatar is my favourite have you seen those guy works 2012 AGA Aquascaping Contest - Entry #153 Cant wait to see your progress. I want to make Pandora floating mountains but my idea was a bit diferent. I was planning to use a volcanic rock because is the lightest ever scrape the inside and fill it up with insulation foam or stirofoam which will make it even lighter and will float. Than the diferent size islands will be connected with some natural rope or fibers from a tree or something so they will look as the pandora`s. The volcanic rock doesn look solid as those on the pictures, but will not be attached so will float for real an will transform the scape dynamically. What do you think is it that possible. Wish you luck with ur project.....Regards Nikolas
Floating+Mountains.jpg
View attachment 134811
Click to expand...
WOW thats an amazing and ambitious leap of faith! Well done on coming up with that and good luck mate! it would look amazing if you managed to pull that off! :) You would need to be careful the rocks didnt bump into the side of the glass though! and buoyancy would be a slight issue but I think with careful planning it could be done for sure :)

Nice one!
 
I'm not sure you'll manage to make the volcanic rock float, and hollowing it would be extremely difficult, but you might be able to put something buoyant on the top (which would be covered by plants), and just have the lower part as a stone"skin" if that makes sense?

The ele. acic. seems to be doing fine, although with the tank being low tech, it's in no hurry to carpet. I wanted to make sure I was happy with the ground level scape before I started meddling with the higher rocks, and need to spend some time picking suitably shaped rocks (might have to take a hammer and chisel to some of my stone!). I think I'm going to go the route of drilling into the rear of the rock, siliconing some suction cups into the rear, and fixing it with those.

I've got some weeping moss in another tank now which I'm just growing on a bit so there's a bit more coverage.
 
Looking good rick. The longer you give that elecoharis, the better it'll get.

Did you see the 27th ranked tank in IAPLC ? 'Green Paradise' by Quan Nguyen Minh of vietnam.
Its on page 23 of PFK.

Similar look to what your trying to achieve here.
 
Yea, since the shrimp seem pretty happy in my Rio 180 (I'm setting up a riccia carpet in there, so why wouldn't they be?!) I'm giving the Ebi plenty of time to establish and get rooted before "helpful" shrimp come and dig it all up!

I'm really going to have to start getting PFK aren't I....
 
Ok, so I've finally made the pipes!! I used 8/12 acrylic which was infinitely easier than the 16/20 I used for my first attempt.

You might be wondering why I've left such a long tail on these pipes, and also angled them. My mad scheme is to avoid needing suction cups. I'm hoping to use the flex in the tube to have it effectively clamp itself against the glass, thereby helping my minimal desires!

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2793861/2013-02-01%2014.58.24.jpg
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2793861/2013-02-01%2014.58.39.jpg
 
Did u find the little project difficult Mate? What was your overall experience making these? Would u do it again? Any tips?

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
 
I was going to put up some posts on how I found making the pipes, so I guess this is as good a time as any!

Attempt 1 - Abandoned.

Equipment: 16/20 pipe, 15mm pipe bending spring, hot air gun

I encountered two main issues with this. Firstly, it was pretty difficult to avoid minor distortion in the pipe because I was using a 15mm spring. The easy solution would have been to use a 16mm spring but a) I couldn't get my hands on one, and b) getting the 15mm out of the bends was tough enough, without losing the slack! Secondly, I didn't manage to stop the pipe from "wrinkling" on the inner curve of the bend. Whilst it has no effect on the flow, it was unsightly so I didn't want to leave it like that. The spring does leave a minor impression on the inside of the pipe, but you have to be up close to see it.


Attempt 2 - Success!

Equipment: 8/12 pipe, hot air gun

Following some thinking, a chat with EaserGeezer, and some more thinking, I changed my strategy and ordered some smaller pipe, with a bigger wall/bore ratio. This time I didn't use a spring, but just put the hot air gun on a table pointing straight up, and worked over it. The outcome can be seen two posts up. I'm very happy with them for starters, but I haven't managed to get the curve perfectly smooht all the way around as you can probably see.


Attempt 3 - Future Strategy?

If I was making more, I'd definitely give the sand technique a go, and pack the length of tubing tightly with fine sand. Hopefully it would help to eliminate the small amount of distortion I had in the second one.


General Pointers / Learning

1) Don't get the pipe too hot! If it gets too hot, you'll struggle with it bending in the wrong axis (which you'll never straighten out fully), or at the extreme, it will "boil", and you'll get air bubbles forming within the acrylic
2) Get the pipe hot enough. If you don't heat it evenly, you can end up getting little hairline cracks lateral to the pipe, since the acrylic isn't pliable enough to bend properly.
3) Try to do it in one session, a little length at a time. The best bits of the curve I did came from the pace I was working at. If you get a couple of inches of the pipe hot enough, you'll be able to work the middle inch very easily. Once you're happy with that, pause for a few second, then immediately move onto the next inch or two of the pipe. This means that as you're forming the next bit of the curve, there's still a tiny bit of flex in the previous section, and it gives a smoother, more continuous curve. Go too slow, you can get harsh angles (see my pictures 2 posts up), go too quick and the bit you've already bent will get distorted.
4) Don't be tempted to speed up cooling in any way - I tested on a scrap, and as suspected, acrylic goes brittle when rapidly cooled
5) Make sure you hold each bend for a few seconds before letting go, as the acrylic will try to "spring" back when it's still pliable.
6) The hot air gun is hot. The plastic is hot. The spring will be very hot. Don't come running to me if you burn yourself! :p
 
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