hi all i am new to this forum and am currently making a planted aquarium and am trying to make a mountain that looks like this sort of thing
The Kerala Articles: Banaue Rice Terraces
the idea being to put gravel in the tiers to have plants going all the way up anyone have any ideas how to go about it materials etc

thanks

danny

peices of stacked slate might help you acheive that desired look

i am looking for something that i could manufacture into 1 or 2 pieces so it could be removable for cleanign etc also i would like to leave gaps at the very back to put my siphon for my filter and maybe the heater depending on the size
also i have never really liked slate

i was thinking maybe a moulded item resin or some kind of wire mesh i dont know really

Slate is natural which in the long run is better for your tank.

i know but was thinking along lines of maybe some bogwood stuck against a framework or even gravel stuck to a frame does not really matter as long as the sturcture is secure enoguh to be lifted for mainenance and i can make a shelf/hole in each tier toi fill with gravel so i can add some plants nothing too big just 3 or 4 inch any suggestions on a good plant for that nothing tall and dont say riccia that stuff makes my head hurt last time i had it i just ended up with it floating at the top of my tank no matter how much fishing line i used

I was going to suggest using the styrofoam/cement "trick" that I just did, because you can get a very nice stair-step effect while keeping it contoured. I don't think this is what you want to do though, because you want it to be easily removeable. A good place to start may be to use shallow glass baking dishes or plastic containers siliconed/epoxied together. I'm not sure how difficult it would be to construct, but it looks like you could cut plastic to "fit" eachother like LEGOs and then fill their shallow bowls with substrate for your plants, stacking them up like a pyramid. You could then have several main pieces that are glued together, but can still pull them out relatively easy.
I will attach my quickrete/styrofoam background even though you probably don't want to do this (mainly b/c i spent alot of time on it, only to rip it out before ever getting to use it - I used the wrong type of silicone )
best of luck!

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Why do you want to be able to pull it out? And how often? What is your lighting? co2? If you are gong to be taking it out regularly then you need a plant that doesn't mind being disturbed too much, prehaps one of the mosses.

You'd need to be careful if useing the filter behind, that it didn't get in the way of the water circulation.

Very interesting project by the way AtRandom. Are you going to try again?

If you use the dense foam wall insulation with the silver stuff on both sides you can glue squares together and carve out the shape that you want. You can hollow out the bottom for weighting... and if PH is a factor you can just paint it with textured Krylon Fusion and it'll look pretty decent.
I don't tend to weight things... I make an access port from the top and just silicone or superglue stuff down.

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Crystal Red and Black, Red Claw Macros, Red Cherrys, Green Shrimp, Sulawesi Malawa, Blue Pearls, CPO, Dwarf Crays (C. shufeldtii), South America Puffers, Assassin Snails, Ramshorn and Pond Snails, Hawaiian Actinic Shrimp (Halocaridina rubra), Nerites

I bought more of everything accept styrofoam, I'm currently stuck on resealing 2x 55 gallon tanks...I really don't like the idea of having to separate the glass and cleaning every seam 100%, school takes up most of my daytime hours and I don't have a garage. It will happen soon enough though!
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On topic: I don't think it's very easy to weigh something like styrofoam down, but I may be wrong. I've seen people use styrofoam buoys while diving and it takes a lot of weight/force to pull those things under water!

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The landscape from the picture is beautiful, but is hard...with all those stairs...

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"http://freshwater-aquarium-passion.blogspot.com" - for people with passion for aquariums

now that is more like it
i will make sure i leave plenty of space for the water siphon and as for removal it is more of a just in case thing such as if something gets stuck behind or as i was thinking of putting an airline beneath it to allow bubbles to copme out of some of the steps just in case something came loose on the airline for repair so not often
2 questions though
what do i paint it with/cover to make it look less like foam and 2 anyone have any idea how much weight would be required to hold foam down
was thinking of maybe 115 to 18 inches high and stepped down

those pictures look like an excellent idea

Aghh sorry I somehow missed this, I've been very busy with school/tanks/flicks/website! This is actually very easy to create, even the stepping part. I cut it all out and siliconed/shaped it in 1 evening. You cover the styrofoam with QUICKRETE (fast drying cement). It WILL raise your pH b/c...cement is high in mineral content. But alot of pre-cycling (just running water through it for a few days with a power head, then dumping the water and filling it again) should make it manageably lower. I only filled mine and let it sit for a day or two, pondering if I should still use it regardless of the silicone mistake, before I tore it down. So I never actually attempted to rinse it.

You really shouldn't have any issues with things falling behind the structure if you silicone/cement it properly. With mine, there was no space between the "rock" and the glass, as it is literally siliconed AND cemented directly to the glass.

As for being able to put in air-line hosing, I'd recommend that you draw up a 3D image, or mental picture, of how you want it all to look. In my case, I planned to simply run my filter intake on the end with no shelf, and use a powerhead on the opposite end of the tank to blow debris from inside the cave and around the curves to a planted area under the filter intake (making the water flow in the direction the "erosion" actually looks to have taken place).

There is (I can't remember where) a video or site where someone made a background that had specific holes in his layers for his filter tubes to hide in and whatnot. If you want to hide all that stuff, you will probably need to design your styrofoam in the "traditional" way - where the sheets run vertically instead of horizontally. This way you can silicone individual cut pieces to the glass and then cover them with more styrofoam sheets. This will leave you with tunnels/caves/holes that run vertically down the glass, hidden from view.
For a quick "step by step" of how mine was made, visit my DIY page:[url=http://www.aquaticopia.com/Projects/diybackground[/url].
Edit: Also, I noticed that the cement deteriorated on the pieces I pulled out and left in the yard. I should probably note that it'd be very wise/important to use the acrylic fortifier, or something similar.

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Thats pretty amazing work! I was searching for somewhere to buy Fake live rock I wanted a reef look in my FW tank but after reading all these post I think I want to try and build it my self.