What lessons have your aquascape taught you?

[1fastfxr]

Love your 220 scape. We'll see how this one turns out. I think plenty of caves in the left structure and especially the center one. I built the rock work in the tank (without sand). The one thing I would change is I got anxious and when I pulled the center structure out to cement it (Marco e-400), after gluing it, the top portion fell off. So I tried from best of recollection and pics to duplicate it and it ended up WAY too high.

 

[ninjamyst]

That bottle of ca though, right on!!!

I been singing your praises every chance I get. Medium and thick 8oz glue master peeps. Best glue you can buy for aquascaping. People recommend thin but I already have trouble with medium dripping all over my hands...

 

[Murphs_reef]

Shading, I have so much of it and it's worsened by plating Monti's placed higher up on the rock, rendering a goo bit of real estate useless.

I would love to start from scratch with avoiding shading in mind, it just wasn't on my radar at all when building this tank..

 

[DaddyFish]

NSA rock work makes catching fish without destroying a tank nearly impossible. Looks cool, but you better be prepared to leave the fish in there forever. When one gets sick you aren't catching it. And sick fish don't eat, so forget a fish trap.

 

[Glue Masters]

I been singing your praises every chance I get. Medium and thick 8oz glue master peeps. Best glue you can buy for aquascaping. People recommend thin but I already have trouble with medium dripping all over my hands...

Thank you so much! Those are ca viscosity grades, they are confusing at times

 

[ninjamyst]

NSA rock work makes catching fish without destroying a tank nearly impossible. Looks cool, but you better be prepared to leave the fish in there forever. When one gets sick you aren't catching it. And sick fish don't eat, so forget a fish trap.

How does wall of rocks make catching fish easier?

 

[Dryanimtt]

To do better!

 

[Queenofreef]

Thanks, guys. Appreciate the vote of confidence. I think the more I look at it, the more I want to find things wrong and try to fix. I come from the freshwater side and was really involved in planted tank aquascaping. I feel like I always have aquascape regret once I am done . Since everything is glued down here, I just have some anxiety about calling the scape done. I am constantly moving things around in my planted tanks haha.

I’ve never had fw, but love planted tanks and use them a lot for inspiration! With the 40g, recently added little rock pieces that made me really fall in love with the tank. I’ve realized it doesn’t have to be once and done, once you have a stable system you can add chunks once you have a better idea of the coral layout

 

[Stang67]

I have learned that to enjoy aquascaping you need to possess the following 3 things:
1. Love of games or puzzles, especially jenga and 2000 piece puzzles. Preferably of dogs or kittens.
2. Sticky fingers. Have stock in acetone to remove all of the super glue that will fuse your fingers to everything.
3. Help / feedback. After a while you may want to quit and just go with whatever. This forum is a great place to post picks and ideas and get feedback from others. Just dont take things personal.
4. Bonus advice. Build what you like and enjoy the process you (hopefully) will only get to do it once.

 

[Queenofreef]

Just put this scape together:




What I learned:
- Keep height low. I am planning to completely demolish the first branching structure next week and start over and make it lower. It is currently 14in high and will be going in a 20in high tank.
- Make plenty of caves and hidey holes and ledges for fish to hide. It's a balance between minimalistic and practicality. Not shown in my photos are additional rubles I will lay next to the main rock structure to create safe space for smaller fish.
- Avoid too many flat spaces. I am not a fan of stax or smooth flat surface. They do not look natural.

The rubble pieces is a great idea! Going to add some to the 220g now, great for the goby I plan to add so I don’t have to wait until the corals fill in.

Also the flat spaces— wish I had seen this comment earlier with my 40g haha. Learned this lesson two weeks ago, but spent 3 years not understanding why I hated my tank so much ;Shifty

 

[DrZoidburg]

@Stang67 I hate the sticky fingers part. I always wear rubber gloves cause of that.

 

[Queenofreef]

My personal lesson is:

I planned this:

Then I collected too much coral and messed up with this:

Then I did a radical restart and went back to what made me much happier, this:

So, if you have a nice plan, just stick to the plan….

It’s always hard to picture it filled in with corals

@Queenofreef I’m a huge fan. I’ve watched all your aquascaping videos.

It took a while, but here’s my scape:

It’s not perfect. But it works. It took me the whole year of constant changing to get it like this. I realized it’s not healthy for me to look at aquascaping threads because I’m never happy with my work. If given the chance, I’d break it down and redo it again. But I’m tired of aquascaping. I never want to touch another rock again. It’s backbreaking, soul crushing work.

I seriously overworked myself on this tank. I got burned out. I tore down my tank over 6 times this YEAR just because of the aquascape.

Aquascaping is definitely a nightmare. And the “what could have been” always haunts you, no matter if the scape is impeccable.

Your aquascape is actually really great- tons of room for coral growth and interesting arches/ledges that give it depth. A tank looks completely different when it’s filled out, don’t stress because your tank is going to look awesome.

Thanks for watching them!! Love making the scaping vids because I learn so much myself. It’s kind of difficult to explain sometimes because it’s a pov and not a step-by-step manual, so weeding the idea out has helped me a lot in my own techniques

 

[afrokobe]

I been singing your praises every chance I get. Medium and thick 8oz glue master peeps. Best glue you can buy for aquascaping. People recommend thin but I already have trouble with medium dripping all over my hands...

Thank you so much! Those are ca viscosity grades, they are confusing at times

So the thin CA glue is great for strengthening up joints/bonds. Take some marco powder or crush up some rock and sprinkle it over the joint area. Then go to town with the thin glue on the powder. It will create a little puff of smoke and create a super strong bond between the two rock pieces.

 

[Jeffcb]

Some times you feel like a nut, some times you don't. I'm into mounds. 2 large mounds. The one mistake I made is not epoxying the rock together thinking it would just stay together. I had to go back and epoxy them all together underwater. What a pain in the mound! Lots of hiding spots for fish is important.

 

[DaddyFish]

How does wall of rocks make catching fish easier?

At least with wall of rocks you can use a large net to reduce the swimming space. It certainly depends on how your scape looks, but NSA is typically built with barely enough base weight to make it sit still. Snag it with the swoop of even a small net and it tumbles against the glass.

 

[Queenofreef]

Good thread!
For me since the time i had to deal with aefw and monti eating nudibranch i dont glue corals on the scape anymore.
like this since 2018.
Now i have 3 rocks with "holders" to place the corals.

Waaay easier to treat or frag corals this way.

That is such an awesome idea! I assume you planned the layout in detail for this scape? I made the mistake of encrusting monti on my ledge and regret not placing any kind of plate to take it off, might pre-make some molds like this when I add more corals to the 220g!

 

[Queenofreef]

Some times you feel like a nut, some times you don't. I'm into mounds. 2 large mounds. The one mistake I made is not epoxying the rock together thinking it would just stay together. I had to go back and epoxy them all together underwater. What a pain in the mound! Lots of hiding spots for fish is important.

Well the pain in the mound was worth it haha. I love the layout!

 

[ninjamyst]

At least with wall of rocks you can use a large net to reduce the swimming space. It certainly depends on how your scape looks, but NSA is typically built with barely enough base weight to make it sit still. Snag it with the swoop of even a small net and it tumbles against the glass.

LoL you doing NSA all wrong. You are suppose to use stable foundation rocks as anchors. With NSA, I can easily remove all the rocks from my tank to catch fish. They are modular and easy to put back together. Wall of rocks is the worst to catch a fish. That's why people have to break down their tank to catch fish. Nothing preventing fish from darting into the wall of rocks.

 

[Buckster]

I only had and ordered 150 pounds of rock for my 180. This was not enough. originally I had two groups of rock at each end of the tank with more sand showing in the middle. Ordered a lot more rock and filled in the center area. The middle of all the rock enables the fish to swim through which also gives them enough hiding places. This now gives me more area to place corals and currently to give more surface area for the dang green hair algae!

 

[flashsmith]

Less is more. Less rock and more sand exposed for those scoly's and other meat corals I prefer an open scape with swimming room as well. I've gotten away from glueing and use aqua rocks in various places for coral display.