# My First DIY



## Newfishlover (Apr 16, 2010)

Ok so after reading on here for over a week i began to get jealous of all the amazing backgrounds i have seen and decided to try my hand at it. Now few things i should mention is a few years back i was in an accident that left my nreves in both my arms quite bad, i can not hold my hand steady also i have never worked with parging before so was interesting to try out.









This was halfway through carving it out.









First coating of parging.


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## Madhun (Mar 13, 2010)

looking sweet!is that "enclosure" for filter/heater in the middle?


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## Newfishlover (Apr 16, 2010)

The little block on top left corner is to hide the filter intake and the one in middle is to hide the filter return and heater yes. Made both from some scrap my grandfather had laying around from his new sand blaster he bought.


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## Newfishlover (Apr 16, 2010)

Any other critisicm from anyone? My first attempt at any real crafts since grade school so good or bad i welcome everyones thoughts.


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## tmds3 (Jan 14, 2010)

Waayyy better than mine, I ended up trashing mine cause it sucked so bad, yours looks good


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## liquid134 (Feb 22, 2010)

looks great! i like how the return/heater cover sticks out, gives it some depth... nice way of doin it! im still waiting to do my first DIY background....i cant wait!


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## Newfishlover (Apr 16, 2010)

Thanks for the compliments. I did some more work but i have an iphone so no flash an lighting wasnt great when i was done so no new pic. The project is actually being done at my grandfather's house and i wont get back there til weekend. I used black and red pigment to make a deep brown and used to in the deep lines between rocks and to splash over whole thing off paint brush, also one spot was cracking badly and i had no black left so went over it with the brown.

Ill post a overall pic this weekend and with luck ill have a pic of it in tank over weekend. Now I have heard of some people using a Gloss Clear coat on top of the parging, which ones would be safe and does it add or subtract time need to leech the BG b4 adding my fish back?


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## ShagPower (Mar 11, 2010)

nice..I think a steady hand would ruin the natural look of the background...rocks aren't supposed to be perfect.


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## Newfishlover (Apr 16, 2010)

Ok so stopped by my grandfathers to grab a pic. Now it has cracked in a couple spots more so i am forced to get black pigment so i will be covering some of the ugly red up. Now i believe i have to make the parging thicker to stop it from cracing as much am I right on this?


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## Newfishlover (Apr 16, 2010)

Ok so i got the red covered and it will be all set for tomorrow so I can silicone it into tank.

Now the big ? for all you BG makers out there, while leeching to you put your subsrtae in while it is leeching or after thats done when you get rdy for fish?


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## cichbubbles (Apr 14, 2010)

Add your substrate after your BG is leeched. You don't want anything that leeched off your piece to get stuck in the subtrate & possibly contaminate your water.


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## Newfishlover (Apr 16, 2010)

Set it in tank yesterday, now I was wondering how long i need to leech it before i can put fish in there


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## cichbubbles (Apr 14, 2010)

Looks Great!
If you've just siliconed your BG to the tank, I would reccommend waiting 5 days for the silicone to cure & another 5 days for any acetic acid to evaporate. It's better to take your time & let it sit for longer than not long enough. I think I saw a posting on here that said the rate was 1mm/day. So it also depends on how much silicone you used. You can check the label to see what the company reccommends & then double their reccommendation. 
I let my BG cure for 7 days, at which point there was no odor so I began to leech it after that. I let it leech for 10 days, then cycled the tank for 2 weeks on top of that. I've had some of my fish for a long time so I didn't want to risk anything! 
Always better to be safe than sorry!


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## Newfishlover (Apr 16, 2010)

Ok so I finally got it all set up and have let my filters run on my other tank to keep them established so I have placed mt order at the per store but here is tank pre fish, be atleast 2 weeks till i get fish though.


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## PeppaChica (May 9, 2010)

Looks amazing!! Wish I could be crafty like that....


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## tokyo (Jan 19, 2010)

Very nice. I was worried about the heater/filter return block in the beginning, but it really came together in the end. Its pretty thin too. My biggest issue with DIY backgrounds in smaller tanks is that they take up too much space, but this one works very well.


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## Newfishlover (Apr 16, 2010)

110 gallon small? wow think's huge by my standards lol


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## Pali (Dec 22, 2009)

Newfishlover said:


> 110 gallon small? wow think's huge by my standards lol


I think that he's refereing to the depth, thats often the biggest change when u go up in tank size.
Atleast for tanks sold around here

I got a 105 g tank that would loose alot of room/depth if you put in a 3D background, as it's only 45 cm / 15 inch deep.

No matter what I like your BG it's looking nice under water, a few edges that might need a little sanding on the rocks but all in all a nice DIY BG. Personaly I would see if I could find some rocks matching in color and remove the orange plants. I guess it's fake plants, as they are on the dry pic too and from the look of it. Personaly I think it takes away the focus from the rest of the tank, that is looking really nice and much more natural.

Thats just my opinion, most important is what you like! :thumb:

Thanx for shareing


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## Newfishlover (Apr 16, 2010)

Mine's about 18" depth, ya the orange plants are going to be going, they are mainly there for the purpose of showing me how well the water miver hidden behind the rocks is working, i have some plans on getting some java fern to do the job instead.


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## tokyo (Jan 19, 2010)

I actually didn't see any mention of size and was assuming that it was something in the 30g to 45g range. I guess I was a bit off. :lol: It's hard to tell without any point of reference.

Still, a was refering to the depth of the tank and how I've seen alot of DIY backgrounds take up close to half of the tank.

I still think it works very well in your tank.


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## Newfishlover (Apr 16, 2010)

Np man i do have a 60 gallon going atm for my girlfriend with some cichlids in it, but now she is wanting me to get a 3rd tank for angels lol. Ya it does take up quite a bit of space but still plenty of swimming room. My personal favorite part of it is theway i was able to hide all of the equipment within the tank.

As for my stocking of it, i just visited my local Big Al's where i know a few people and placed an order for 20 Demasoni, 5 Yellow Lab and 5 Albino Socolifi rough guess on pricing was 290+ taxes


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