OK, so that was "Live Framing." Hindsight is 20/20, they say, and as I mentioned previously there are a few things I would have done differently if I had known. Live Framing is VERY time-intensive, with a lot of planning out needing to be done to make sure everything fits. Not to mention the time involved in cutting all those little holes for the rock hangers, and drilling the rock itself. It works, but just be aware that it took a good week's full of evenings to do this.
A few months later I gave myself the project of revamping my kid cousin's 28g tank. He loved the rock columns in my tank, but I was hesitant to start THAT project again. Around this point in time people were starting to talk about using Great Stuff foam sealer to foam up the backs of their tanks. Some folks were starting to add rock in to the foam, since the sticky goo acted as an effective glue once it had expanded and set. One of my LFS's had an excellent display tank with a huge foam and rock piece front-and-center in the tank, and I loved the way the foam could be carved and made to take on any shape. A little light bulb went off in my head, and I thought, "
if it looks good like this, what if I used it on a PVC column.....?"
I'd never heard of anyone doing this. I searched and I couldn't find a single thing on the web about it. Magazine articles yielded no results either. "Fine," I thought. "My idea. I'll name it."
Foam-Framing was born.
Foam framing takes the premise of the live frame and simplifies it. You still cut holes for caves in the PVC, and you still have to make sure to stabilize the main riser. But instead of drilling the rock, cutting a hundred holes, and giving yourself an inhalation seizure from the PVC dust when you weather the riser..........you just lay rock against the side of the clean, white PVC, and squirt foam between the pvc and the rock. Let that set up, turn the pvc pipe a little,then add more rock. Rock, foam, and repeat until the column is done. Like so:
Foamed up, but no cave cut yet:
Same column, cave cut:
The back is all foam, so it fits in the back corner of a tank. You can also take this and carve the foam into rock-like shapes:
Just as an experiment, I tested some of that Krylon fusion paint on the rock and foam. It's sort of a "pre-shading" until coralline algae takes hold. Good news: Krylon fusion is pretty nonreactive against the fully cured foam:
And my cousin's tank, after two columns installed:
Not bad. I kept at this, building more columns for my aunt's tank, a friend's tank, and even selling a pair. The foam framing is great...it keeps the rock from becoming the dreaded "wall o' rubble" and frees up a lot of swimming space. The only drawback is that you are pretty much forced to use dry rock for this technique as well. When I was building these, it occurred to me that the foam was a great material to press coral frags and plugs into. You could even use faux coral. Here's the latest foam frame, a three-tiered beastie for my seahorse tank. This is complete with faux corals in the foam that are slowly being replaced by live corals:
I don't really feel like reposting an entire buildup, but when SWF ever gets the bulletin board fixed, you will be able to search my screen name for posts started in the seahorse section of the forum.....I have (had??) a tank buildup in that section that covers the foam frame for a 37g seahorse tank.
Whew! OK, I'm typed out for a little bit. I hope that helps. If you have any questions, feel free to post 'em!
