in today’s video we’re building an
optical illusion it looks like a
waterfall but it’s underwater and it’s
small enough you can have it in your
house I’m Nate and I’m Callie and today
I’m going to teach you how you can make
your own underwater waterfall what it
looks like is a waterfall but it’s
already underwater I can show you how to
do that so here’s the basic idea with
some supplies from your local hardware
store and pet store that you can use
sand and air to create an optical
illusion underwater the supplies that we
have here are actually available at most
local stores so we have got some rigid
insulation film some PVC pipes and a PCL
Bend bamboo skewers the great stuff an
air pump aquarium tubing this is what is
called an air stone and some sand to
fine of a grit and what you’re gonna get
instead of a nice beautiful waterfall is
actually very cloudy water to coarse of
a sand and what you’re gonna end up with
is a waterfall that just doesn’t work so
to begin with we’re gonna need our
bamboo skewers a really really good box
cutter knife and the foam and the glue
gun and with that we can start
assembling
so not all tank pumps are created equal
this is a 3.5 watt you want a stronger
pump even if this doesn’t seem stronger
this is good for a twenty to thirty
gallon tank we’re using a ten gallon
tank we’re not just using the two inch
piece of rigid insulation foam just for
stability sake this is also because you
can carve into it really nicely makes it
a lot easier than trying to add a four
inch layer of expanding foam that’s
gonna take a week to dry all right
you’ve got all of our supplies so let’s
start assembling the first step is to
measure and cut our rigid insulation
foam the foam is gonna end up floating a
lot on water if we just put it in there
by itself but the tank does have this
sort of lip along the top edge and so
even though we’re gonna add some anchors
on the bottom we want to try and make
sure that it’s pretty snug so it holds
itself in place so it doesn’t end up
floating up the back of our tank is
gonna have one piece of foam that runs
aways and then it’s going to turn it a
little bit of an angle and we’re gonna
use that turn partly for decorative
effect
but also because we need to hide some of
the hardware behind it looks like we
need to go to about 11 and 1/4 inches
high but we are gonna have some
attachment points on the bottom that
should add a little bit of thickness to
it so 14 by 11 and 1/4 so to remind you
that the piece of hardware that we’re
hiding is a 1-inch piece of PVC paxville
to fit in here and plenty of room to
catch our waterfall without it being
seen this piece is the same height so it
should fit nicely but now it needs to be
made to fit kind of right here or
exactly that wasn’t quite long enough
for this cut so I’m just using a soft
yes they are in place yes they’re not
really going anywhere however we want to
carve this up to make it look like rocks
we want to add some expanding foam for
the same reason so we have more room to
carve we need these two pieces to never
come apart so now we’ve got the glue
together and you’re gonna break off a
few bamboo skewers so that everything
stays in place so that when we pop this
out nothing moves so that we glue it in
the right position and then after that
we will add our expanding foam this is a
little mist spray bottle just has some
warm water in it and this can help make
where the waterfall itself goes add a
little bit more and the reason why is
because you want to be able to choose
how your waterfall is going to flow the
more foam that you have the more options
you have for carving it out and if you
go a little bit overboard that’s fine
this is not a hard stuff to carve so we
can fix that in minutes fix it in post
so think about Clips think about the way
that rock formations kind of jut out
you’ve got those little overhangs things
like that
now it’s decorative we’ve got a lot of
foam on here and even though we’ve added
some spray water to try and speed a
picture time it’s gonna take quite a
while before it’s ready to be carved so
we’re gonna actually let this cure like
over the weekend before we start cutting
into it in the meantime we’ve got some
mechanical parts we can build we’re
actually going to
pump itself so we can even show you how
that’s gonna fit into place how it’s
gonna work and even give it a test run
l-bracket and we need to drill a hole in
this so that our hoes can actually be
threaded down into it exactly this is
gonna be what actually causes the
airflow to bring our waterfall up in
it fits down and you don’t end up with a
kink in the line that will cause the
airflow to stop when you have an L
bracket there’s about a 3/4 of an inch
lip there and what that does is hold the
PVC piece in place so when you put it in
you lose that amount of PVC so you want
to make sure you do that first so you
get a correct measurement now what we’re
gonna do is figure out exactly how high
we want this to be this is upside-down
just you know this is not the way it
goes
measuring purposes only yes is that so
that’s the height at the top of the pipe
sure this will be the top of the pipe
now you’ve got to remember this is going
to go through the reason we’re doing
this is that the top of the pipe will go
through and then we’re gonna have a lip
licks plane that later so now we’re
beautiful it’s actually going to go in
the corner I know that seems a little
bit odd the reason why so when the water
and the underwater waterfall gathers its
gonna come down at an angle you want to
make sure it can all be caught now this
will of course be in here it’s gonna be
a little bit easier but gives you an
idea you want it all to kind of gather
in this little triangle the point of an
airstone is that it oxygenates the water
it makes it a little bit easier for the
fish themselves to you know be happy
this air pump is designed to just I mean
the pumps air through the hose down into
the air stone if we didn’t have the air
stone all of the bubbles are come out
here as pretty big bubbles and the goal
is to actually to get the oxygen to
dissolve into the water we’re gonna be
using air to lift the sand so this tube
and stone will go inside of our PVC pipe
when it gets surrounded by sand the air
bubbles flying up will lift some of that
sand with it and then that gets poured
out the top but right now if we had this
air stone inside the PVC set on the
ground no sand could get to it so we
need to give the sand an access point to
our PVC pipe so this actually has two
pumps but I’m only using one so is there
a correct way to couple this yes
am I gonna jerry-rigged it yes
so then it just comes down to how close
do you want the pump to your tank so I
like to give it a little bit of room
which is actually good that’s what I’ve
got so we’ll do that side about there
seems pretty sealed all right let’s try
it go and lift it up let’s see we’ve got
a nice water pool that’s actually decent
see how high you can lift it up and
still get a water flow okay so a couple
inches out of the water but that’s fine
this whole thing is gonna stay submerged
and it’ll be nice and quiet so now let’s
see if we can add some sand and now
we’re covered in it that should be
enough so let’s go and test it out okay
okay okay Sammy’s falling now this is
pretty cool you can see that even though
we’ve been pumping the sand the water
has stayed pretty nice and clear and
that’s because we did a lot of work to
clean our sand I know
it’s sand it’s not going to get not
sandy but what we’re trying to do is
remove the extra small particles that
would just float throughout the water
and make it really hard to see through
so let’s take a look at how we can clean
off our sand to get only the size of
particles that we want this is some of
our unwashed sand and you can see that
when I add water to it the water gets
really murky you swirl it around a
little bit and the water is getting
murky that’s what we’re trying to remove
we’re gonna pour all this sand into a
now we can see that it’s full of water
but even if we just get the sand
swirling up a bit
it immediately settles back down and
it’s clear again that’s because we’ve
washed all the dirt and silt off of the
sand we just have the larger grains
nothing to murk up the water so that’s
what we need to do with our sand before
running it through our pump or the whole
tank is just gonna go cloudy alright so
it’s been at least 48 hours and our
expanding foam is very dry so now it’s
ready to be carved we’re gonna carve
that out we’re gonna add in our pump
system and then we’re gonna make sure
everything looks nice and decorated at
all next part is just making sure that
we know where the waterfall itself is
going to be so placement we kind of
formed this little ledge here because we
know that we want the waterfall to come
out of this area
then we’re gonna form sort of a pool for
everything to fall into and then it’s
gonna fall back so that we have a full
circular system all the air in sand will
be coming up and getting shot out the
front and we don’t want it shooting we
want it falling so what we need to do is
carve into the foam a little bit and
then have it slope so the sand hits that
sloped portion and just gets angled down
to our waterfall area we have a spot
marked off here and we need to carve
into the foam and then down a little bit
so there’s gonna be some tricky angles
going on here I think we’ll probably use
the drill a little bit but because we
don’t want to just go straight through
we’re not gonna drill like a tunnel into
it we’re just gonna carve it out a
little bit and we now need to add sort
of like angled hole
evening out of that direction at about
45 degrees as far as the drop we’ve
already got that set now what we need is
we need a feedback we need to carve like
a receiving pool where all the sand is
gonna land and flow back down to the
bottom of that pipe trial and error has
taught me that the best way to do that
is actually the car from the back again
we’re gonna start here we’re gonna make
a little mark we’re gonna carve upwards
and then once we figure out where that’s
gonna come up and we can start
aesthetically perfect up here we’ll open
that up as well we’ll recess this whole
area back in so the waterfall has more
area to fall hopefully we’ll try and
make it look like rock
[Music]
we’ve got our foam carved out to look
like rocks I think we’re pretty much
ready to go on that so next step is to
make it look like rocks we’ve got some
good shapes but we don’t have good
colors I think it’s time to paint this
so when it comes to painting something
like this you don’t have to break the
bank these are of course just regular
acrylic paint that you can get at any
craft store now the important thing is
if you are going to be putting something
living in this tank
you don’t want foam in acrylic that’s
bad so we have plastidip now everything
that I have read online says that if we
can cook this well enough multiple times
with plastidip it should be safe for
aquatic animals now don’t take my word
for it I don’t want to kill your fish so
once you do this once you let it dry
once everything seems like it’s working
and you have a filtration system running
for a couple of days go get the water
tested and if everything works out it
here’s the plan acrylic paint dries
pretty quick but we want to speed that
process up even more so we’re gonna put
okay okay so we had industrial velcro
strips that you can put on the bottom of
this to hold this in place however this
tank has a lip that’s gonna hold it in
place
we made this very close fitting to the
size of the tank which there was really
difficult for us to squish it down into
the tank but now that it’s in there it’s
in there I’m quite confident we’ll be
able to fill this with water yeah okay
so we’ve got our backing we’ve got our
tank now let’s go ahead and actually get
the waterfalls in place and that should
fit snug into place perfect we have a
double hose for this air pump we’re
gonna start with one see if we need more
power than that all right let’s make it
pretty finished let’s see if I can even
get these we made like a little cave I
want to see if I can even get these in
here now okay I will never be able to
move them but I can get them in there
some of our larger ones we also painted
gold just very pretty you can kind of
see where we’ve got our tube going down
now we’re gonna go ahead and add the
sand first and then we’re gonna fill
this with water see what happens the
water is a little cloudy right now I may
have forgotten to rinse the rocks that I
got if you were to coat this so it was
safe for a fish or anything like that
and you were to put in an actual
filtration system that be come in in an
hour you won’t have any problems all
right so we have assembled our tank we
have let the water settle and I added a
pet his name is Steve should we get to
actually figure those words let’s try it
so you can obviously tell when you get
up close that it is sand but just as the
decoration in your living room if
somebody sees this from across the room
it really does look like an underwater
waterfall it’s really cool guys that’s
not all we’ve always got more for you to
see this box up at the top will take you
to our latest video and that box at the
bottom is what YouTube thinks you should
be watching next and if you’re not
subscribed hit that bomb in the middle
don’t forget to ring that Bell and we’ll see you in the next one talk to you then
optical illusion it looks like a
waterfall but it’s underwater and it’s
small enough you can have it in your
house I’m Nate and I’m Callie and today
I’m going to teach you how you can make
your own underwater waterfall what it
looks like is a waterfall but it’s
already underwater I can show you how to
do that so here’s the basic idea with
some supplies from your local hardware
store and pet store that you can use
sand and air to create an optical
illusion underwater the supplies that we
have here are actually available at most
local stores so we have got some rigid
insulation film some PVC pipes and a PCL
Bend bamboo skewers the great stuff an
air pump aquarium tubing this is what is
called an air stone and some sand to
fine of a grit and what you’re gonna get
instead of a nice beautiful waterfall is
actually very cloudy water to coarse of
a sand and what you’re gonna end up with
is a waterfall that just doesn’t work so
to begin with we’re gonna need our
bamboo skewers a really really good box
cutter knife and the foam and the glue
gun and with that we can start
assembling
so not all tank pumps are created equal
this is a 3.5 watt you want a stronger
pump even if this doesn’t seem stronger
this is good for a twenty to thirty
gallon tank we’re using a ten gallon
tank we’re not just using the two inch
piece of rigid insulation foam just for
stability sake this is also because you
can carve into it really nicely makes it
a lot easier than trying to add a four
inch layer of expanding foam that’s
gonna take a week to dry all right
you’ve got all of our supplies so let’s
start assembling the first step is to
measure and cut our rigid insulation
foam the foam is gonna end up floating a
lot on water if we just put it in there
by itself but the tank does have this
sort of lip along the top edge and so
even though we’re gonna add some anchors
on the bottom we want to try and make
sure that it’s pretty snug so it holds
itself in place so it doesn’t end up
floating up the back of our tank is
gonna have one piece of foam that runs
aways and then it’s going to turn it a
little bit of an angle and we’re gonna
use that turn partly for decorative
effect
but also because we need to hide some of
the hardware behind it looks like we
need to go to about 11 and 1/4 inches
high but we are gonna have some
attachment points on the bottom that
should add a little bit of thickness to
it so 14 by 11 and 1/4 so to remind you
that the piece of hardware that we’re
hiding is a 1-inch piece of PVC paxville
to fit in here and plenty of room to
catch our waterfall without it being
seen this piece is the same height so it
should fit nicely but now it needs to be
made to fit kind of right here or
exactly that wasn’t quite long enough
for this cut so I’m just using a soft
yes they are in place yes they’re not
really going anywhere however we want to
carve this up to make it look like rocks
we want to add some expanding foam for
the same reason so we have more room to
carve we need these two pieces to never
come apart so now we’ve got the glue
together and you’re gonna break off a
few bamboo skewers so that everything
stays in place so that when we pop this
out nothing moves so that we glue it in
the right position and then after that
we will add our expanding foam this is a
little mist spray bottle just has some
warm water in it and this can help make
where the waterfall itself goes add a
little bit more and the reason why is
because you want to be able to choose
how your waterfall is going to flow the
more foam that you have the more options
you have for carving it out and if you
go a little bit overboard that’s fine
this is not a hard stuff to carve so we
can fix that in minutes fix it in post
so think about Clips think about the way
that rock formations kind of jut out
you’ve got those little overhangs things
like that
now it’s decorative we’ve got a lot of
foam on here and even though we’ve added
some spray water to try and speed a
picture time it’s gonna take quite a
while before it’s ready to be carved so
we’re gonna actually let this cure like
over the weekend before we start cutting
into it in the meantime we’ve got some
mechanical parts we can build we’re
actually going to
pump itself so we can even show you how
that’s gonna fit into place how it’s
gonna work and even give it a test run
l-bracket and we need to drill a hole in
this so that our hoes can actually be
threaded down into it exactly this is
gonna be what actually causes the
airflow to bring our waterfall up in
it fits down and you don’t end up with a
kink in the line that will cause the
airflow to stop when you have an L
bracket there’s about a 3/4 of an inch
lip there and what that does is hold the
PVC piece in place so when you put it in
you lose that amount of PVC so you want
to make sure you do that first so you
get a correct measurement now what we’re
gonna do is figure out exactly how high
we want this to be this is upside-down
just you know this is not the way it
goes
measuring purposes only yes is that so
that’s the height at the top of the pipe
sure this will be the top of the pipe
now you’ve got to remember this is going
to go through the reason we’re doing
this is that the top of the pipe will go
through and then we’re gonna have a lip
licks plane that later so now we’re
beautiful it’s actually going to go in
the corner I know that seems a little
bit odd the reason why so when the water
and the underwater waterfall gathers its
gonna come down at an angle you want to
make sure it can all be caught now this
will of course be in here it’s gonna be
a little bit easier but gives you an
idea you want it all to kind of gather
in this little triangle the point of an
airstone is that it oxygenates the water
it makes it a little bit easier for the
fish themselves to you know be happy
this air pump is designed to just I mean
the pumps air through the hose down into
the air stone if we didn’t have the air
stone all of the bubbles are come out
here as pretty big bubbles and the goal
is to actually to get the oxygen to
dissolve into the water we’re gonna be
using air to lift the sand so this tube
and stone will go inside of our PVC pipe
when it gets surrounded by sand the air
bubbles flying up will lift some of that
sand with it and then that gets poured
out the top but right now if we had this
air stone inside the PVC set on the
ground no sand could get to it so we
need to give the sand an access point to
our PVC pipe so this actually has two
pumps but I’m only using one so is there
a correct way to couple this yes
am I gonna jerry-rigged it yes
so then it just comes down to how close
do you want the pump to your tank so I
like to give it a little bit of room
which is actually good that’s what I’ve
got so we’ll do that side about there
seems pretty sealed all right let’s try
it go and lift it up let’s see we’ve got
a nice water pool that’s actually decent
see how high you can lift it up and
still get a water flow okay so a couple
inches out of the water but that’s fine
this whole thing is gonna stay submerged
and it’ll be nice and quiet so now let’s
see if we can add some sand and now
we’re covered in it that should be
enough so let’s go and test it out okay
okay okay Sammy’s falling now this is
pretty cool you can see that even though
we’ve been pumping the sand the water
has stayed pretty nice and clear and
that’s because we did a lot of work to
clean our sand I know
it’s sand it’s not going to get not
sandy but what we’re trying to do is
remove the extra small particles that
would just float throughout the water
and make it really hard to see through
so let’s take a look at how we can clean
off our sand to get only the size of
particles that we want this is some of
our unwashed sand and you can see that
when I add water to it the water gets
really murky you swirl it around a
little bit and the water is getting
murky that’s what we’re trying to remove
we’re gonna pour all this sand into a
now we can see that it’s full of water
but even if we just get the sand
swirling up a bit
it immediately settles back down and
it’s clear again that’s because we’ve
washed all the dirt and silt off of the
sand we just have the larger grains
nothing to murk up the water so that’s
what we need to do with our sand before
running it through our pump or the whole
tank is just gonna go cloudy alright so
it’s been at least 48 hours and our
expanding foam is very dry so now it’s
ready to be carved we’re gonna carve
that out we’re gonna add in our pump
system and then we’re gonna make sure
everything looks nice and decorated at
all next part is just making sure that
we know where the waterfall itself is
going to be so placement we kind of
formed this little ledge here because we
know that we want the waterfall to come
out of this area
then we’re gonna form sort of a pool for
everything to fall into and then it’s
gonna fall back so that we have a full
circular system all the air in sand will
be coming up and getting shot out the
front and we don’t want it shooting we
want it falling so what we need to do is
carve into the foam a little bit and
then have it slope so the sand hits that
sloped portion and just gets angled down
to our waterfall area we have a spot
marked off here and we need to carve
into the foam and then down a little bit
so there’s gonna be some tricky angles
going on here I think we’ll probably use
the drill a little bit but because we
don’t want to just go straight through
we’re not gonna drill like a tunnel into
it we’re just gonna carve it out a
little bit and we now need to add sort
of like angled hole
evening out of that direction at about
45 degrees as far as the drop we’ve
already got that set now what we need is
we need a feedback we need to carve like
a receiving pool where all the sand is
gonna land and flow back down to the
bottom of that pipe trial and error has
taught me that the best way to do that
is actually the car from the back again
we’re gonna start here we’re gonna make
a little mark we’re gonna carve upwards
and then once we figure out where that’s
gonna come up and we can start
aesthetically perfect up here we’ll open
that up as well we’ll recess this whole
area back in so the waterfall has more
area to fall hopefully we’ll try and
make it look like rock
[Music]
we’ve got our foam carved out to look
like rocks I think we’re pretty much
ready to go on that so next step is to
make it look like rocks we’ve got some
good shapes but we don’t have good
colors I think it’s time to paint this
so when it comes to painting something
like this you don’t have to break the
bank these are of course just regular
acrylic paint that you can get at any
craft store now the important thing is
if you are going to be putting something
living in this tank
you don’t want foam in acrylic that’s
bad so we have plastidip now everything
that I have read online says that if we
can cook this well enough multiple times
with plastidip it should be safe for
aquatic animals now don’t take my word
for it I don’t want to kill your fish so
once you do this once you let it dry
once everything seems like it’s working
and you have a filtration system running
for a couple of days go get the water
tested and if everything works out it
here’s the plan acrylic paint dries
pretty quick but we want to speed that
process up even more so we’re gonna put
okay okay so we had industrial velcro
strips that you can put on the bottom of
this to hold this in place however this
tank has a lip that’s gonna hold it in
place
we made this very close fitting to the
size of the tank which there was really
difficult for us to squish it down into
the tank but now that it’s in there it’s
in there I’m quite confident we’ll be
able to fill this with water yeah okay
so we’ve got our backing we’ve got our
tank now let’s go ahead and actually get
the waterfalls in place and that should
fit snug into place perfect we have a
double hose for this air pump we’re
gonna start with one see if we need more
power than that all right let’s make it
pretty finished let’s see if I can even
get these we made like a little cave I
want to see if I can even get these in
here now okay I will never be able to
move them but I can get them in there
some of our larger ones we also painted
gold just very pretty you can kind of
see where we’ve got our tube going down
now we’re gonna go ahead and add the
sand first and then we’re gonna fill
this with water see what happens the
water is a little cloudy right now I may
have forgotten to rinse the rocks that I
got if you were to coat this so it was
safe for a fish or anything like that
and you were to put in an actual
filtration system that be come in in an
hour you won’t have any problems all
right so we have assembled our tank we
have let the water settle and I added a
pet his name is Steve should we get to
actually figure those words let’s try it
so you can obviously tell when you get
up close that it is sand but just as the
decoration in your living room if
somebody sees this from across the room
it really does look like an underwater
waterfall it’s really cool guys that’s
not all we’ve always got more for you to
see this box up at the top will take you
to our latest video and that box at the
bottom is what YouTube thinks you should
be watching next and if you’re not
subscribed hit that bomb in the middle
don’t forget to ring that Bell and we’ll see you in the next one talk to you then
Please follow and like us: