Tips and Tricks on Creating Amazing Aquascapes.

[Rip3618]

I rearranged my aquascape this weekend (from photo 1 to photo 2) for for two functional reasons;

First, I want my GSP to grow up the back wall of my peninsula. He can have that whole wall to himself and I feel it will be easier to trim along the edges when he starts to creep onto the glass.

Second, I noticed the water flow was stronger toward the middle and outer edge of my tank. I felt moving the larger / taller rock formation in the stronger flow would benefit my zoas.

Thoughts and/or recommendations on the aquascaping? Does my logic sound reasonable? Or am I looking for justification for when my fiancée calls me a insane???

 

[vetteguy53081]

#2

 

[andrewkw]

I rearranged my aquascape this weekend (from photo 1 to photo 2) for for two functional reasons;

First, I want my GSP to grow up the back wall of my peninsula. He can have that whole wall to himself and I feel it will be easier to trim along the edges when he starts to creep onto the glass.

Second, I noticed the water flow was stronger toward the middle and outer edge of my tank. I felt moving the larger / taller rock formation in the stronger flow would benefit my zoas.

Thoughts and/or recommendations on the aquascaping? Does my logic sound reasonable? Or am I looking for justification for when my fiancée calls me a insane???

Your logic is reasonable, and your tank looks better. It's certainly more visually pleasing. I will say by the time you start adding corals it's probably safe to remove the ammonia alert badge unless there is some specific reason why you are concerned with an ammonia spike.

 

[Rip3618]

Your logic is reasonable, and your tank looks better. It's certainly more visually pleasing. I will say by the time you start adding corals it's probably safe to remove the ammonia alert badge unless there is some specific reason why you are concerned with an ammonia spike.

Thanks. Not concerned with ammonia spikes. Just left it in.

 

[gotmesalty77]

Ive got this massive yet awesome rock and i cannot figure out how to use it any opinions?

 

[Sarah24!]

Hello,

So as some may know my 240 is (was) almost 2 years old and loved it and the rock scape and corals grew great. Let’s rewind to Thursday, where I had to move into my new house.

I can certainly say getting the rock scape back the way it was is very hard. Do to unfortunate events my rock planning and reset of my tank went bad. I will admit that I absolutely hate my new one but love my old one.
It seems that some works of art are just that, and others that we do (meaning me only) not so much. First three are old tank from last Wednesday to now. Most corals have suffered specially sps and some delicate lps.

 

[Sarah24!]

Hello,

For example here are two pics of my rock scape that I loved and tore down due to a move. Sadly I have three huge 100 pounds rocks, and well I’m 84 pounds, so moving them is silly hard. But I found pics further down and want to know the probability of doing the same structure. I ask because I don’t wanna move things because they are stressed. Yet I can’t stand my correct rock scape and I had to work the night of the move which is a 24 hour shift I then went and spent another six hours. Corals per th lfs led them inna bucket over night (said heat house to 78. But the water was sooo cold and I poured three full pictures of my tank water to acclimate them. It just shocked them too move.

 

[Prinz55]

Thought I’d share mine.... I think I accomplished the rule, if not I’m happy with it either way. Thoughts?

 

[Ashish Patel]

Prinz55 - Really like that Roc, nothing comes close to tonga! .. I have about 150LB of similar rock I got last year for future build I would say your right side is perfect for future coral growth in multiple levels. The left side is less bang for the buck you'll get frags growing into each other in less than a year.

Here is the rock, It should be going into a 400g in the coming months

 

[Prinz55]

Prinz55 - Really like that Roc, nothing comes close to tonga! .. I have about 150LB of similar rock I got last year for future build I would say your right side is perfect for future coral growth in multiple levels. The left side is less bang for the buck you'll get frags growing into each other in less than a year.

Here is the rock, It should be going into a 400g in the coming months

Those look nice and like big pieces

 

[BlueDevil]

Here is my aquascape design for my new tank. It is a 60x24x20 125 gal system. I will be having a remote sump using a rubber I’d feed trough which will have a lot more rock for filtration. So I’m trying to keep the rock work in the DT tank minimal to allow for lots of open spaces. The small rock on the left is where I will transfer a similar sized anemone rock from my current tank.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions welcome! Especially tips on how to transfer this structure to the DT. It’s hard to even recreate it when I move a few rocks so I have no idea how best keep the structure the same during the transfer process.

 

[Jason mack]

Looks great ...the minimal scape is nice but I found I ran out of space for corals fast ..and just ended up adding more rock ...but that's just me !..are you happy with it ...? You have too look at it every day ....your lay out is good ..so then it's just a question of what is pleasing too your eye ...

 

[Jason mack]

This is my tank ...I tried too achieve more depth

 

[lavoisier]

"Here is my aquascape design for my new tank. It is a 60x24x20 125 gal system. I will be having a remote sump using a rubber I’d feed trough which will have a lot more rock for filtration. So I’m trying to keep the rock work in the DT tank minimal to allow for lots of open spaces. The small rock on the left is where I will transfer a similar sized anemone rock from my current tank.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions welcome! Especially tips on how to transfer this structure to the DT. It’s hard to even recreate it when I move a few rocks so I have no idea how best keep the structure the same during the transfer process."

Beautiful. Maybe angle the structure slightly.

I'd number the rocks on your image then get some rubber bands and as you remove the rocks, band a sticky note with the rock number on it to that rock. Or you could use rubber bands large enough to mark the number on the band.

 

[ScottB]

Here is my aquascape design for my new tank. It is a 60x24x20 125 gal system. I will be having a remote sump using a rubber I’d feed trough which will have a lot more rock for filtration. So I’m trying to keep the rock work in the DT tank minimal to allow for lots of open spaces. The small rock on the left is where I will transfer a similar sized anemone rock from my current tank.

Thoughts/comments/suggestions welcome! Especially tips on how to transfer this structure to the DT. It’s hard to even recreate it when I move a few rocks so I have no idea how best keep the structure the same during the transfer process.

I think that is very attractive. You will be able to keep some great flow in the tank with that scape.

As to the difficulty of recreating, yeah, been there. Especially when trying to do it in a new sand dust storm. If you can build it in the tank dry it is easier, but riskier. When rock topples over is water they land more gently, so special care is required. Surround it with thick cardboard on the bottom.

You could try this: get some different color magic marker/ Sharpies and paint a line at each contact point of each rock.

What is your plan for securing some of those top pieces? I love Marco cement.

 

[BlueDevil]

Looks great ...the minimal scape is nice but I found I ran out of space for corals fast ..and just ended up adding more rock ...but that's just me !..are you happy with it ...? You have too look at it every day ....your lay out is good ..so then it's just a question of what is pleasing too your eye ...

Thank you! In my previous two setups I ended up with too much rock. While I love corals, I like seeing the fish swimming a lot more. Ha! With a ton of rocks, I found myself having to look up/down/left/right far too much to spot my fish. This way, I can have a little bit of both.

 

[BlueDevil]

Beautiful. Maybe angle the structure slightly.

I'd number the rocks on your image then get some rubber bands and as you remove the rocks, band a sticky note with the rock number on it to that rock. Or you could use rubber bands large enough to mark the number on the band.

As soon as I took the top down picture, I noticed that the rocks were all in a straight line. So thank you for noticing that too. I will try to swivel the left/right corners towards the front to give it more of a 'U' shape. And thank you for the tips on the scape transfer from the design to the tank. I will keep that in mind.

 

[BlueDevil]

I think that is very attractive. You will be able to keep some great flow in the tank with that scape.

As to the difficulty of recreating, yeah, been there. Especially when trying to do it in a new sand dust storm. If you can build it in the tank dry it is easier, but riskier. When rock topples over is water they land more gently, so special care is required. Surround it with thick cardboard on the bottom.

You could try this: get some different color magic marker/ Sharpies and paint a line at each contact point of each rock.

What is your plan for securing some of those top pieces? I love Marco cement.

Thank you! The tank is going to be empty so all options are open. However, I have found (at least for me) that stacking the rocks in the tank is quite a bit more challenging since you're basically doing it all vertically due to the glass panels. And not to mention the risk of rocks toppling onto glass!

For the shelf/bridge pieces, I am either going to use acrylic rods or if they are too thin, I plan on securing any of the rock joints that are no extremely stable with Marco cement.

What I might do is cement sets of rocks in pieces and leave the base rocks as they are. That way, I have maybe 3-4 sets of rocks to move instead of 8-10 individual pieces. No matter how many times we do this, it always seems to be a challenge

 

[vetteguy53081]

Now would be the time to reconstruct using reef cement and make it a one piece structure. Layout looks good

 

[SueAndHerZoo]

Hi Guys.
Putting together some rocks for my seahorse tank and came up with this for the area in front of the overflow. Do I want to keep the top piece off or leave it on? I want the extra height, but I kinda like the look without it. Opinions?