My DIY Styrofoam Background (and tank)

[SRC]

Ok..since I was starting to "over power" the other thread and I felt bad..so I made my own thread lol.

Here are the "plans" I originally drew up to start this project:

Then I decided to go a little more into it...

So, I wanted this to look as natural as it could..since my lady betta's will be going in it...and they will be seperated yet can still see each other...
I decided a foam background woudl fit in nicely (plus give me something to do..I am constantly building or making something..I think I'm addicted to it lol)

front of backpiece and sides (unpainted)

back of back piece(unpainted)
The holes are for the filtration aspect..so water moves in and out easily.

right side (painted)

left side (painted)

front of back piece (painted)

And I also decided that since they will only have clear dividers that they would need somewhere for "refuge" should they desire it...so I made caves for each section...

here's what they start out as (2 peices of dry floral foam glued together with epoxy)

Here's what they look like before you paint them

I tried to make them look as real as I possibly could

First coat of paint (exterior Home latex paint btw)

After the "detail" shading paint

Then I wanted them to look really real....so I coated each styrofoam peice with Epoxy resin (which you have to do to make it water proof btw), it's VERY shiny after you do this...

Then after it dried I put another coat of epoxy on it and covered it in sand to take off the shine and make them look like "real" rocks (I bought different colors of sand to create different looks and create more depth and shading to the finished look)

This is with 1 coat of sand (black sand was put in teh crevices, and dark brown put in the deep sections of the rocks, then beige sand over the entire thing)

This is with 2 coats of sand (unbrushed)

I'm far from finished (as I have to wait for it to dry again and then brush the excess and off to expose the black and dark brown sections...as the sand sticks to everything..but then you brish it off after the epoxy dries and only the sand that was on wet epoxy stays lol)...so I will keep you updated as I go. Hopefully it won't take forever...but it is slow going as I have to wait for a day or so for teh epoxy to dry between coatings lol.

 

[Vivienne]

That looks brilliant - I did a DIY rock background using styrofoam and cement but that looks like it may be a slightly easier option - can't wait to see what it looks like finished.

 

[daza]

that looks absolutely excellent! A couple of questions if you don't mind:

Where did you get the foam from and how much was it?
What type of paint do you need to use?

thanks.

edit: just searched and the foam seems widely available and cheap...good stuff.
and just found the other thread you mentioned with the other answer

 

[SRC]

For those that didn't see the other thread.

Latex paint


And dry floral foam..the kind you find at Walmart in the craft section. I actually got mine at Hobby Lobby...it was on 1/2 price sale ...but normally a big sheet (36x12x2) is like $6.


The dry flroal foam carves much easier then regular styrofoam...and there is no need for heat (to reduce it from looking so "sparse") as regular stryofoam does.

I didn't do teh concrete because I didn't want to deal with the PH thing lol...you already have to let it "cure" for 2 weeks (to let the chemicals from the epoxy resin evaporate) after you have finished and concrete takes several more weeks in water to be ready...it's a PITA to wait 2 weeks as it is. lol

 

[KeddyPie]

About latex paint... Is it ALL aquarium safe, or only some kinds? Will it start to wear after awhile in water? How long do you need to wait before you can put it in water without harming the fish?

I'm thinknig of doing my own little DIY project

Katy

 

[SRC]

The latex is perfectly ok..I used exterior house paint on mine.

You put the Epoxy Resin over it..that is what keeps it form deteriorating...it "seals" it. The epoxy resin hardens...it's the stuff they use to make fiberglass out of (that and the fiberglass matting).

As long as you cover EVERYTHING in teh epoxy resin..you will be fine. I used 2 coats, just to be sure I got all nooks and crannies, before I sanded the first time. SO when all is said and done..each pieces will have 4-5 coats of epoxy resin when complete...so there will be no chance of the latex or foam getting wet.

**A side fact** When you epoxy the foam, after painting, it makes it very stiff/hard feeling. It gives the once squishable foam a tougher texture. Once you put the sand and epoxy on the pieces...after 2 coats it feels much heavier and almost like it's made of concrete...although I'm still certain it would float if placed in water lol.

It almost looks AND feels like real rocks. Which I thought was kinda cool...that is also felt like real rock, or concrete.

 

[KeddyPie]

That is awesome to know. I would SO make some little caves with that stuff, but floating is the problem. I am trying to think of an alternitave that would not float and is still easy to carve, but I'm not sure. I might just take a PVC tube I like, make a thin layer of Sculpy with texture to it so it no longer looks like a plastic tube, leep it off and bake it, use some silicon to glue it on there well (or maybe hot glue...) and then do the paint/epoxy thing. I think that would work pretty well! My Dojo's LOVE half-buried PVC tubes, and the other fish don't go in there so they have their own little place ^^

Beautiful work you've done, too! Make sure to keep us updated!

 

[shuhu]

Wow, I like this "floral foam" idea much better than the styrofoam they look so cool

To avoid it from floating, why not simply use 2 or more coats of concrete before the paint and the epoxy coats, people do this same thing with styrofoam and use the epoxy coats as well.... that is, for the next one since you already sealed these with epoxy


Do you have an aproximate cost of the epoxy btw ??

 

[Vivienne]

Even with three coats of concrete my background and rocks would still float without being stuck down by silicon - it's astonishingly buoyant !

 

[Ava_Banana]

Wow........how on earth did you manage to carve something so "rock" looking out of floral styrofoam stuff.

Any carving I have tried in the past has just looked like a hashed/hacked block of foam.

Did you have a pattern in mind.....or did you stick to some rules? e.g. do you try to shade or layer in a certain way?



Good stuff.......


....oh......and how long did each piece take......I would be there for hours cutting away, never being completely happy with it......

 

[SRC]

I am trying to think of an alternitave that would not float and is still easy to carve,

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I'm not sure there is anything besides maybe clay that you coudl carve and it not float (and some types of clay still might, if it's not a dense enough formula).

To avoid it from floating, why not simply use 2 or more coats of concrete before the paint and the epoxy coats

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As mentioned above....you can either stick it down to the tank floor with silicone and push the gravel up around it, or you could use Epoxy to stick it to a piece of slate, that way you could move it around if you wanted. I think that's what I am going to do in mine...so the caves and decorative rocks aren't so "permanent" lol.

The concrete might also change the PH of the water. I'm not sure if it would being enclosed in the epoxy..but I dunno that I'd want to take the chance either.

The sand makes it just as hard and heavy as the concrete would anyways. But like was also said..this is still styrofoam, it's just a dry floral version. And it still floats just as well lol.

Wow........how on earth did you manage to carve something so "rock" looking out of floral styrofoam stuff.

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To carve stryofoam you have to take in mind that it is VERY easy to manipulate..especially this dry type I have used. You want to be easy when you carve it..don't jab at it. Basically you want to slide and rub your carving tool over the surface...so instead of "cutting" and jabbing, you are pretty much sanding (I generally brought the tool in towards my body when I was carving...pushing out woudl make the indentions too deep. That's why I used tools with a square, flat end.

To begin with I bought a clay carving kit. But the tools were so skinny that I had a hard time controlling them. So to be totally honest ..I used my dremel to get rid of large portions of the foam that I didn't want, then I used a short, fat, flathead screwdriver to carve out deep sections and make edges on the rocks, and a very thin flathead screwdriver (the type that come with a pocket hanger..so guys can stick them in their shirt pockets) to make the finer cuts and details.

All in all I spent $15 (that's the cheapest thing I bought lol oye) on tools that I didn't use very much at all (I did use a few of them at times) in loui of 3 tools I already had in my kitchen tool drawer lol.

Did you have a pattern in mind.....or did you stick to some rules? e.g. do you try to shade or layer in a certain way?

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Not really a set "pattern" persay. I would just look at the block I had cut and them decided on what I wanted the end product to look like.

I did want it layered, so that it looked natural. So I would mark out the individual rocks before I started, then decide which ones needed to be deep (the ones on the bottom layer) then work my way out from there. That's not to say as I got going that things didn't change as I went along. If I thought something else would look better I did that.

....oh......and how long did each piece take......I would be there for hours cutting away, never being completely happy with it......

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Depends on which piece you mean lol. The smaller pieces, some of those took about 30 min-60 min each. The background (which is 3 pieces) took probably 6-8 hours all together.

Mainly, it took so long on those pieces... because not only did I have to carve the rock formations out, but I also had to make slides for the plexiglass dividers to slip into, I had to carve out the back for the filtration holes, and I had to go back and recarve some things after I had painted it...I decided to make the fronts of the side pieces look like rocks too, instead of just flat like I started out with. The top portion is still flat...I think that will work ok....lol and at this point it will have to..I've already epoxied both side pieces.

I carved all the pieces (except the decorative rocks, which I thought of last week lol) in a week's time (I would work on it when I got home from work, around 4-5pm, until about 11ppm-12am).

 

[Ava_Banana]

Well, I am very impressed.........and a little in awe..........

.....I don't have much of an artistic bent.........but I may have to give this a go

 

[SRC]

Do it!!! and post pics lol.

I didn't find this hard at all..just extremely time consuming and messy. (but I just am able to do this stuff naturally..so I dunno how hard it might be for someone else...so don't quote me on it being easy). Just get you several smaller pieces and practice on them before you mess up a large piece of styrofoam.

I will suggest wearing a masks ..the white paper ones...so you don't breath in all that green dust, I'm paying for that right now I think..my sinuses have been aggravated for teh last week.. The dust it puts offis very light and flies everywhere. Might wanna also put some painting tarps over stuff you don't want to clean too lol. And get you several paper grocery sacks to put it in lol...you won't BELIEVE how much you'll have when you're done. (kinda like digging a hole...you always end up with more dirt left when you fill it back up..)

I wish I had, because my entire kitchen looked like a green dust bomb went off in there..took me longer to clean the kitchen up then it took to carve the darn thing .

 

[Adistar]

Wow,


SRC you are an extremely talented person to do that!
it looks great, cant wait to see the finished tank

 

[SRC]

Thanks!!!

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Well I would like to report that the styrofoam pieces I made are fish safe, so it seems.

Yesterday I put one of the caves I've made in one of my 2.5 gallon tanks, put new treated water in it, and let it sit over night. Then today I went and bought a "test" subject...I couldn't bare to try it on one of my others...I'm too attached to them, and if it'd killed one..I would have felt even worse if it had of killed the test fish. (even though I still woudl have felt bad if anything had died)

Well the new betta (which is a lovely orange plakat female btw..I'll post pics of her Monday once I bring my camera back home lol) has been in the tank for several hours now...and is enjoying her new home....complete with her own little cave. With no adverse or strange reactions.

Now if I can just get the plexiglass in, and get the background finished (can't do that until I build the tank..so I am certain it fits tightly..don't want any trapped fishes in crevices)...I will be ready to transer over the girls (after it cycles).

WOOT!