I wish I could delete my previous posts. I've been really terrible at updating this in any coherent manner. So here is the sum of it up until this point.
The Christmas Holiday weekend I'd been all antsy. Having to do the family shuffle, visiting 5 different locations. Even though I got a pretty decent haul( got a kindle! and the first book I bought was a frog book), I'd been itching to get home. Because that Monday, Petco started the Dollar Gallon sale!
I'd been waiting for this for weeks! I had even started to work on the vine groupings and the framework for the tree focal point.
Monday afternoon, we finally loaded up the Christmas haul and the 2 dogs and headed back home. What was supposed to be a 2 hour drive, was much closer to a 3 hour drive because everyone seemed to have found their brakes for Christmas and were testing them out randomly the ENTIRE trip! Think from 80mph-50mph(or less) for NO reason what so ever... really none, not an accident, not a flat tire, nothing!!!
Either way we arrived around 6 o'clock and we unloaded the dogs & haul in 15 mins so I could hop right back into the car and go to petco for my brand new 29G tank! (When it comes to my hobbies I have a very one track mind!) I purchased my tank and a small cork round to accent my build and headed across the parking lot to Home Depot, who must have had the slowest day ever. Everyone was so helpful (which is semi unusual).
One guy cut the PVC pipe in to 3 inch lengths. Another guy really nice was trying to help me hunt down the black pond GS and either black or brown GE silicone I. Neither searches were fruitful. But I did meet someone who wants to join our addiction!
So I left there with a smile on my face and most of the supplies I need to do my build (stuff I didn't already have)
Came home and assembled a rough of my set up.
I Clipped the egg crate and laid out the PVC then Played with a few orientations of the extra materials I have that I can use in the build. and came up with this!
After doing that I took my tree skeleton into the garage and cracked open a brand new can of the Red Great Stuff. and sprayed my tree all up. Unfortunantly I forgot the Greatstuff isn't very sturdy when wet, and I left the tree standing up after spraying. Only to find that the whole section on the trunk had slumped off into a big messy puddle. *sigh* leaving the trunk pretty exposed.
but I began carving then carved some more
Yesterday my order from Josh's came in after 7 loooong days (free shipping

) I was waiting on my coco fiber to arrive amongst the rest of my order... and realised I ordered coco husk

I guess I'll have to make it work?
Then finally, today, I'm ready to start moving forward with all of this nonsense (you should see the state of the house! Foam bits everywhere branches, eggcrate x-acto knives gloves etc all over the place!)
I read that using egg crate in the bg will help the GS ad hear better. That's a great Idea since I would love to carve, paint, silicon and apply coco fiber(husk) background outside of the aquarium!
So I take 2 pieces of left over Egg crate. hot glue and zip tie them together. I know hot glue does not hold well in moisture(or at least submerged). Its just for holding it straight and it will be supported.
after doing that I placed the sheet and the tree in the tank and glued some spots to hold it in place to make sure I could take it out and put it in with relatively little fuss. i trimmed the root on the left because it was going to cause problems.
Took it out and reinforced with some more hot glue (just pinning it together). Its going to be silicon-ed eventually.
Thennnnn I cut pockets for the roots glued them in and then checked again just for safe measure.
while it was in there I made final decisions on how I was going to put things in there and clipped an opening in the egg crate to be able to silicon the branch in there. My initial plan for that was to have to use more Great Stuff after I silicone everything in but I realized... maybe I don't need to. Could I just stuff whatever hole with moss? Its not going to have any gaps that I foresee.
Also in this picture you can see that I screened & lowered my false bottom. the front and the center are a T-section of egg crate tha support it. the ends will be supported by small terracotta pots. 1.5"? I'm probably going to use some level of support for the center section that I haven't decided on yet. in the image I have some pipes but they aren't tall enough to offer any support.
Any how after tacking it to the egg crate i took it out to the garage and set it on top of these acrylic sheets I had lying around. I'm hoping it will do 2 things. 1 it will keep the GS flat on the back and 2 I hope that it will come off easily from the acrylic. and sprayed it up!
and now I'm sitting in my living room typing this up waiting for the GS to cure and trying to figure out the correct way to 'sterilize' the branch I'm using since it used to be used in my salamander tank.