Unalome's Rainbow Utopia

[Unalome]

Had a lot of fun building this hardscape, taken me a while but I'm finally happy with the composition. I'll leave it like this for a few days to make sure I'm happy with it and then I'll glue the wood in place at all touch points to the rock with the tissue trick.

[fr499y]

Nice!

[black ghost]

Looks like there’s a snake on its way up the branch… love it.

[Unalome]

So yesterday I decided it was time to start locking the wood in place - begun placing some cotton wool pads between touch points of wood and rock only to run out of glue almost straight away - Picked up some more from local shop only for it to be a bad bottle that had completely hardened already

Prior to running out of glue I was having a tough time getting all the cotton wool to stay lodged in to all the touch points (they make it seem so easy on YouTube)

Anyone got any alternative methods or do I just need to work on my technique? I'm contemplating maybe securing some small rocks at each end of the wood pieces with cable ties and then hide these with my plants later...

[fr499y]

tissue instead

[Unalome]

Thanks I'll give that a go, just regular toilet paper or kitchen roll ok? Also any glue recommendations?

[fr499y]

Non scented toilet roll, kitchen roll does the job and any cyanoacrylate glue (liquid works better than gel for this purpose)

[Unalome]

Finally got round to gluing the wood to the rocks...



I ended up squeezing some SuperFish Aquarium Glue into all the touchpoints without having to faff getting any tissue in as was proving far too difficult - I let that cure for the last 2 days and just filled the tank up - None of the wood has budged so think we're good!



Got the filter/heater going and I've just added 15ml of Ammonia to kick off the cycle - I will be doing the dark start method again for the duration of the cycle as I don't have any plants on order however I may change my mind... But for now it's lights off* and cycle time!



*Light on for the purpose of the photo

[fr499y]

Lovely and clean! next time dont buy 'aquarium superglue' just get some cheap Cyanoacrylate superglue ( gel is easier ) and save yourself a few quid

that 4g twin pack is like £7, a 20g tube of bog standard superglue gel is around £2

[Staffylover]

That hardscape looks great, did you shut the previous tank down? If not you can use a bit of the media from there to speed the cycle along if you want to that is