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So I was able to find a lake with a huge amount of driftwood. All kinds of shapes and sizes. I grabbed a few pieces and went home and started to design a new improved natural platform for Toku to bask on. I was able to raise the water to the top as a result, super stoked about this design. This will be a build thread for the platform;

First thing to do was select so pieces for the tank....



As you can see I grabbed six pieces of driftwood. The largest diameter one will be the main basking piece. I found a good piece that had a fork at the end of it. The fork will be used to craddle the main basking piece. This piece of driftwood will be used as the pillar to hold the basking piece upto the surface. Next I made the measurements for the pillar and cut it to size. Next I selected the three pieces to be used, the last pice I selected was a curved piece to use as a sleeping branch or another spot to get out the water.

After I got my pieces selected I baked the pieces in the oven at 250 degrees for 15 mins to kill any unwanted aliens to the tank. I kept a close eye on the wood to ensure no fire got started. After baking the wood I set it back outside to cool. A left it out there for a few hours. The next step was to put the pieces together.

To do this I used 1 5/8th in. coated Deckmate screws;



Now is wheremy mistakes started to show. When I baked the wood I didn't take into account the wood would get brittle. And it did, when I went to screw the pillar and the main piece together the wood would crack. At this point I realized what I did. So I soaked the wood for a bit. Then I was able to screw the pieces together. Next I screwed the sleeping branch on. The result looked like this;



Next, I put the base on. I ran into a issue here as well, I could not drill thru the tile I chose as the base. So I used some plywood. I cut a piece of plywood the size of the tile and screwed it to the pillar. This is what the setup looked like screwed together.









The piece was put in the tank and I covered the base with the sand then I filled the tank up. At this point I found another mistake! The whole piece was wood and well I soon realized how boyant four pieces of wood really is! As I got to the main pbasking piece the whole thing started to rise! So I stopped and put more sand on the base area. I was able to put a bit more water in but I need to cut a bigger piece of plywood for the base to put more sand on it. This is the in tank view.






As you can see the basking branch and the sleeping branch fit perfectly together.



This project is still a work in progress to get it right but so far Toku has used it to bask:) Hope you all enjoy

Looks so awesome, hope Toku has fun with it!

yeah I have caught him basking already on the first day of it being in the tank!

Natural wood is the way to go!

yeah steve it really makes the tank look like a lake! This is the most natural looking tank I have made so far, minus the skull of course;)

Looks great! Now you just gotta work that skull so that the outputs from the FX5 exit through the eye sockets

Very nice!

Dude VeipaCray, that would be awesome!!! But that is how the ghost shrimp and fish fry survive lol

You could always find something else for the ghost shrimp and fish fry to hide in. That skull is too tempting not to make part of the FX5 return plumbing.

Looks awesome! I never have good luck with driftwood in my aquarium. Ranger always bites it and theres little pieces of wood everywhere lol.

Oh these are much better pictures. Very cool!!

That's pretty sweet, and simple. I should have done something closer to that.

It was pretty simple and I think it is the most natural looking setup

This shot was taken the next day after the Driftwood platform was put in the tank. Sorry it is so fuzzy but I had to be super sneaking and get a quick shot.

VeipaCray wrote:You could always find something else for the ghost shrimp and fish fry to hide in. That skull is too tempting not to make part of the FX5 return plumbing.

That would be very cool! Maybe sometime in the future I will tinker with this great idea;)

I'm gonna do some small tweaking to the platform this weekend. The biggest issue is getting the sleeping log to be positioned under the water surface as oppose to on it like it is right now. The wood is very soaked now so hopefully I will only have to readjust it and set the whole platform back in the water, if it still floats then I will cut a bigger base and that should do the trick. I will post pics when done.