The “Castle Ruins” Aquarium

Completed in February 22nd 2014, it represents the ruins of a castle located on the bottom of the water, on which some research is made by a boat with diver-archeologists who recovered artifacts and a rock which rises from the water to the surface, on which a lighthouse is built.

Putting real fish in the aquarium I realized that I wouldn’t reuse these LEGO bricks in the future for other projects.

Trying not to use more bricks to limit the costs, I chose to do only the outline of a castle and a few architectural elements, arches, stairs, ceilings and “collapsed” elements such as walls, window frames, which would give the feeling of ruins. But at Rolland’s advice, after only a few weeks I stopped making any more savings, which led to a work with many details and pieces.

The challenges were:

• The usage of LEGO pieces floating on the water’s surface if they are not caught to the bottom panel. I’ve made many tests and I was forced to adopt different construction techniques due to this fact.
• Creating a fully covering rock (in order not to be seen by the viewer from any angle) of the electronics necessary for the survival of the fish (filters, heaters, pipe water jet, power cords). This rock must have large holes in the bottom, to ensure that the entire tank cleaning residues would reach the filters. We have created a black sticker, specially cut out to size and irregular shape of the rock covering the electronics in 2 of the 4 sides visible so as not to be forced to use more parts to build these two sides of the rock.
• To calculate the position of the floating boat, so that the diver to be able to “descend” on the cable towards the ruins. Due to the movement of the water jet it seems that the diver swims in the aquarium.
• The model to allow an unimpeded “life” for the fish.
• The model should not come out entirely to the surface of the water when refilling the aquarium, according to Archimedes’s law. This happened at the worst possible time, at 3.30 in the morning while Diorama #3 was being dismantled in order to install the aquarium. I had to work the following week to change it in order to allow the “embedding” of several pieces of fishing lead weighing between 20 and 150 grams on the motherboard but also in the inner wall of the rock and inside the lighthouse.
• The biggest challenge was to clean up the tank of algae every month and a half. The algae muddy the water and every facet of every LEGO piece, which led me to disassemble my work twice and clean each piece with a toothbrush on every facet of each piece and then remounting the whole work.

Official LEGO sets unmodified / partly modified: 8072, 30042, 8056, 60014.