Foaming a tank

[melev]

Hi Eric,

Interesting article. :thumbsup:

I'm curious about a number of things, and was hoping you could shed more light on this topic. You mentioned pressing LR into the foam to get it to adhere, and not use pieces that are too large as they might pull away.

How do you avoid die-off during this process?

You talked about rinsing or even soaking the tank before use. My impression is you meant freshwater, but saltwater might be a better option to keep the LR live, right? Or is this really all about decor, and not so much about keeping the biological filtration alive in the LR you use?

That really is some Great Stuff! :D

[Skipper]

Hey Marc. I don't think he's using LIVE rock, just regular pieces of rock.

[NVHS Tank]

We sell that stuff at lowes and I can see it now rushing off the shelf. Funky idea I am thinking depending on results of maybe using it as a funky over flow I am sure you can slowly build up a corner leaving some holes through to hide a heater and maybe my rio for my bak pak skimmer. Curious to see the long term effect and how bad the foam degrades in the salt environment.

[melev]

Originally posted by Skipper
Hey Marc. I don't think he's using LIVE rock, just regular pieces of rock.

"Now, with a fair amount of research under my belt, I decided to try my hand at this stuff. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this idea, the basic premise is to spray/apply insulation foam to the back and/or sides of the tank, and then push pieces of <b> live rock,</b> crushed coral, or whatever would look interesting and natural as a backdrop, into the drying foam. The foam dries, and hardens somewhat, and creates a "living" backdrop. Additionally, it allows the un-natural looking plumbing, overflows, etc., to be hidden. "

"I sprayed the foam, let it sit for about five minutes so that it started to expand a little, then added some small pieces of <b>live rock</b>. Then, I sprinkled some crushed coral on top of that, followed by some Southdown sand to give the surface of the foam some more texture."

It appears he meant LR as he stated such twice, unless I missed more references. I look forward to his response. :)

[beeda]

My wife works at Home Depot and once in a while some unfortunate soul comes after having a 'Great Stuff' disaster. Recently a young guy came in with his hands and arms covered with the hardened stuff. It works great but wear gloves!

[ejmeier]

I did use both dead and LIVE rock, as in living stuff on it, and I'll tell you, it smells BAD. The problem I had was that I foamed a piece that was above the waterline, and so the rock just kind of rots up there.:(

It is much cheaper to just use dried out LR, or somthing similar (maybe tufa?). On one of of my projects, I used some old acropora skeletons that I used back in my FO days as decor. I smashed the skeletons into smaller pieces, and used that as part of the background.

The small LR pieces that I chose, for the most part, didn't have much life on them, but if you must, I would recommend drying them out a bit on the bottom. The foam only takes about an hour to harden, and about 8 hours to fully cure (or so the can says). This shouldn't completely wipe out the life on the rock, but it's more of a decor thing.

In case any of you haven't seen the thread on RC I started on this a while back, it can be found here:
http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=206567
It might be able to help answer some questions, and it should contain any up-to-date info that I have on this subject.

[Skipper]

Oops. My bad, Marc.

[spacernglr]

I just foamed my freshwater fish tank, and 12 hrs later my fish are dead.

Two possible reasons. I did not rense the foam well enough. The second option is that I used great stuff big crack filler in the black can. My friend that works at a hardware store tells me this type is oil baised, where as the red can normal great stuff is water baised. I dont know if that is true, but take great caution when using this stuff!!! It may work for others, but for the love of everything that is holy dont kill all your fish!!!

Good luck

[Skipper]

Hey spacernglr. Sorry to hear of your troubles. Like you said, a totally different variety of the material that you used and without the recommended rinsing mentioned in the article. I double-checked with our chemistry expert, Randy Holmes-Farley, before this article was published and he checked into the material for this particular product (not the one you used) and concluded that he saw no reason to be more concerned about it compared to typical plastics that folks use.

Do you have any pictures of yours?

[ejmeier]

Originally posted by spacernglr
I just foamed my freshwater fish tank, and 12 hrs later my fish are dead.

Two possible reasons. I did not rense the foam well enough. The second option is that I used great stuff big crack filler in the black can. My friend that works at a hardware store tells me this type is oil baised, where as the red can normal great stuff is water baised. I dont know if that is true, but take great caution when using this stuff!!! It may work for others, but for the love of everything that is holy dont kill all your fish!!!
That is very sad. I'm sorry to hear about that.:(

Can you give any more details on what happened exactly? How did the fish behave before they died? Also, what did you do to rinse/soak your tank?

This is very unfortunate, and I did not mean to cause any harm by all of this. I tried to show a specific picture of the can to look for, and the type of foam. Maybe I wasn't clear enough about it, as the two cans are RIGHT next to each other in the same aisle...

Sorry again about your loss.:(

[oz]

Here's an FAQ on Great Stuff (http://www.dow.com/greatstuff/faq/index.htm#Q1)

http://www.dow.com/greatstuff/images/family12.jpg

Eric, thanks for the article. I may use some of this great stuff in my next tank I'm about to do. cheers.

[gregt]

I love it! :thumbsup:

[boris MAC]

I own "Reef Secrets" from Fossa and Nillsen and there are some pictires of aquascaping made buy gluing a rock directly on the back side of the tank. I belive that here in Europe a polyurethan foam is widely used for aquascaping.