Slate is alot harder to come by than you would think in arizona. I called a bunch of places and got this one place and i bought 16x16 tiles. The only prob i had was the bottoms were scored so that they would adhere to mortor when laid. In this whole project, that side is on the bottom so you cant see it 
. Aside from that, i got the earth slate color tiles and i cracked them with a small 5lb sledge hammer and it cracked them with little effort. My big thing was trying to make something the fish would swim through, something that was big and had good flow, and well, my initials plans are completely diff then wheat i came out with. I will be siliconing parts together so they stay togethr in the tank. I will be doing that in parts so i can assemble in the tank and not have to worry about carrying a crapton of slat at one time. The next reason for siliconing is to try and prevent rogue pieces from falling and potentially cracking the glass on the bottom, thats a big issue.
My tank is a 72 gallon bow front so this thing is gonna occupy alot of space. The cave is about 38 inches wide and the tank is 48 so thats only 5 inches on each side. Depending on how things look i will modify from there. Its meant to be a plants tank so i am going to try and plant all around the cave and possibly inside if i take the top of the cave off.
here are the pics
. Aside from that, i got the earth slate color tiles and i cracked them with a small 5lb sledge hammer and it cracked them with little effort. My big thing was trying to make something the fish would swim through, something that was big and had good flow, and well, my initials plans are completely diff then wheat i came out with. I will be siliconing parts together so they stay togethr in the tank. I will be doing that in parts so i can assemble in the tank and not have to worry about carrying a crapton of slat at one time. The next reason for siliconing is to try and prevent rogue pieces from falling and potentially cracking the glass on the bottom, thats a big issue.My tank is a 72 gallon bow front so this thing is gonna occupy alot of space. The cave is about 38 inches wide and the tank is 48 so thats only 5 inches on each side. Depending on how things look i will modify from there. Its meant to be a plants tank so i am going to try and plant all around the cave and possibly inside if i take the top of the cave off.
here are the pics
