DIY Rock wall / Slate Terracing

[shev]

This is a good option if you are low on good plant substrate. this way you can have a deep back of the tank, for the background plants, and not much substrate in front of the wall. then just put your background plants on the terrace where they will have more root space with more depth in the substrate. I have seen this done with driftwood also.

There arent any real rules to making a rock wall. but this how I did it.

First things first, you need some slate or other flat rock. You can go out and collect this on your own, which is good if you know where to find it, or buy it from somewhere. At home depot you can buy slate tiles for 2 dollars a square foot. kind of a ripoff. ask if they have any broken tiles that they are going to throw away. You are going to break them up anyway, and theyre free. Or buy them from a lawn center by the pound. Or find a landscaper or rock quarry. Rock quarries sell slate by the ton, but give away large samples for free. luckily theres one nearby me in montana, which would have been the second place I would go if home depot didnt have any free slate. Problem with the free slate is that none of them are the same color. which doesnt matter that much.

It just so happened home depot had a bucket full of broken slate free of charge

Bucket not included. I had to use my own.

Wash off all of the rocks real good. make sure the rocks dont have any glue or paint on them, which some probably will. and pick out all of the wrong kind of tiles. the bucket here had a couple ceramic and sandstone tiles included which I didnt use.

Then test the rocks to see if they are inert and wont mess up your water parameters (gh kh ph) use this method .slate is a metamorphic rock and shouldnt contain any calcium. but check any way.

Then I just dumped all of the rocks on the floor and sorted all the rocks out from small to big.

not a good idea to do on your carpet. but oh well.


It may be a good idea to use some larger flat rocks on the bottom, to keep it from falling over in case you make the wall too thin. especially if you put substrate behind it, it will be pushing outward.

^ is the bottom of my wall.

The broken tiles I got were quite large surface area-wise. but real thin. To break the tiles, or any slate, into sizes you can work just elevate both ends of the rock, place something in the center (I used a gouge and flat head screwdriver) and hit it (with a hammer, unless youre a karate champion).
It should break just how you imagined it. even without the gouge it usually breaks right down the center. by moving the elevating rocks farther apart you have a more risky fault line, by moving them closer together you can more predict where the fault line is going to crack.



But if you really need it to crack where you want it to, you can gouge a line in the rock pretty easily with the edge of the top of a flat head screwdriver.


THis way it breaks just how you want it to.

or you can just randomly hit it with a hammer, and the resulting pieces came out pretty well for what I was going for. and its really really fun



As for me, I just used square, or rectangle pieces. But there are no rules for this. and naturally occurring pieces will probably look much better. but these are easier to work with.

Oh yeah, this is really a bad idea to do on carpets unless you
a: have already ruined your carpet over the years
b: Have an amazing vacuum.
c: dont care
or d, all of the above.

Now you just have to stack them.

Which is pretty easy

I used a dab of silicone glue on every rock. Its better to put one small glob than smear it evenly over the rock since when stacking them not all parts of the rock will be touching the rock above it.

I ended up using 3/4 of a bottle of silicone glue (I think a 10 oz bottle)

Slate is a very layered rock.

you can easily break it into thinner sheets with a flat head screwdriver.


Hey it kind of looks like idaho.



I used these three as the top of my wall, so its more uniform.



it doesnt matter how the back of it looks, you wont be looking at the back, it will be facing the opposite direction and covered up with substrate.

Remember to measure your tank and your wall. I didnt. ended up being 4 inches too long for the tank, I thought I could just "eye" it. Well unfortunately my dremmel was completely useless agaisnt the rock. but I tried anyway.

Lots of sparks.

I ended up just taking the hammer and smashing the extra 4 inches of rock off, which worked a lot better than I thought.




Then add deor, fish, plants, caves, whatever.







http://img427.imageshack.us/img427/3948/dvc027473kp.jpg


It doesnt have to be the length of the tank, it could just be maybe a corner of the tank or something. As you can see Im not very good at any crafts, and Im sure any of you could do better than I did.

[MiSo]

brilliant use of the slate!

i like it.

i might just copy the idea.

[wildtiger]

Neat idea. Now where do I get slate?

[2complicated]

wow your real creative!

[Georgia Peach]

great post! You tank looks very nice too I might add!

[lochness]

not only was that project creative, but your pictures were outstanding! awesome job! ty for sharing your hard work

[Kids n Fish]

I really like this idea, and have everything on hand. Just 1 problem- everything by me is calcium rich lannon/dolomite/limestone whatever you want to call it. Any methods to 'seal' this, such as an epoxy bath or something to elimate the calcium issue

[shev]

unfortunately I dont think there is a way to change its chemical composition.