DIY styrofoam background + rocks

the_deeb

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Apr 22, 2006
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Thanks for the comments

One question have you had any problems with plecos, catfish or any fish eating on the foam?
Unfortunately yes. My clown loaches in my paludarium managed to chew their way through the Drylok in a couple of spots and started chewing away at the foam underneath. I've heard that they've been known to do the same to concrete coated backgrounds. I imagine that large plecos would also be able to chew their way through. You could probably avoid this by throwing a coat of epoxy over the background but I'm not planning to do that (it would be expensive and I think it would ruin the texture).

I put a couple of extra coats of drylok on this background to be safer and I'm going to try to avoid adding any rasping fish. Though I was planning on adding some Synodontis multipunctatus... might have to do some research to see if they've ever been known to damage backgrounds.
 

stevenhman

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Dec 31, 2011
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I remember you saying that the Drylok tended to maintain the texture of the foam on your palu thread, but I was wondering what loss of detail you have as the coats go on? Would you mind posting a close-up picture of how the final texture is?

Hope everything cured well, can't wait to see this thing with some nice substrate in.
 

stevenhman

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Dec 31, 2011
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Forget my last question - did my test rock tonight and it looks a lot better than I thought it would. The only thing that made me a bit uneasy was all that warning stuff on the back about lead.

I will definitely be sure to use silicone to glue the sheets together next time instead of gorilla glue - the gorilla glue made an un-carveable barrier in places between the sheets.
 

littlewangzfan

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Dec 22, 2010
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Subscribed. Will definitely try this on my next project. Thanks for sharing tips and tricks.
 
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