Working form home back in May the once occasional water pump buzzing and sound of trickling water from the Aquarium became to much and it had to be fixed . There is only so much trickling a person can take while staring at an excel spreadsheet while in lockdown
Quick solution was a silent external cannister pump and then a way to get the water back in to the aquarium silently . While researching the pump I came across Aquascaping
https://aquascapinglove.com/learn-aquascaping/what-is-aquascaping/ ( who knew its been around for 25 years ! and is now a thing) . Now growing plants in a small aquarium has always been a challenge for me ( actually the plants I bought were challenged) but now there was a solution , Aquasoil . Only it doesnt work well with fluid bed filtration where the water percolates up through the sand which was what I wanted to do .
In concept this was a simple project to design a custom undergravel filter in MOI with a dead area in the middle for the soil to sit in undisturbed . The idea is to fill the inner area with soil and the outer ring is covered in gravel to the top of the fence . The whole thing is invisible in the aquarium as it sits at the very bottom covered by substrate . With out MOIand 3D printing this would have been a real time consumming project hacking together bits a pieces to make it all work the way it did in the end
and print it
in total 8 pieces, 4 grids and their support bodies they attach too , these fit a smallish 40 litre aquarium (nanotank) . No glue used just waste PLA filament and solder iron to plastic weld the pieces together
Back left corner is where the water down tube goes in and circulates return water to percolates up through the gravel keeping helpful waste eating baceteria alive
second requirement was half the water had to come in from above silently and support a "dead wood feature" mimicing a tree root dangeling in the water
so the upper water box where all the filter media used to be was modified and had what I hoped to be a silent water spreading foot attached that returned water in trickling stream fashion and also suspended the wood feature. ( I ended up with the irregular shape because I found the perfect half round shape stood out as a visual distraction. )
You can see a small freshwater shrimp happily perched on the dead wood feature . It clips onto the foot and easy to remove for tank maintenace or even wholesale change. They all seem to love hang around , under or on it .
Very happy with end result and how easy it was all to make and tweak using MOI
Best thing is the whole thing is dead quite and plant growth has been absolutley amazing with the use of aquasoil .
