Why is reef aquascaping so unexplored when compared to freshwater?

[mahindra.dev]

But the point is maintaining an aquarium like that long term.

I hated cutting grass in the cube box. All the dosing etc to get the nice dense scape and then cutting. But may be with GSP its different. I have GSP growing on the back wall, but how du control it.

 

[mahindra.dev]

This one?

My bad. Yeah 2014. I’ve seen this soo many times.

 

[Ardeus]

GSP doesn't spread over sand.

 

[mahindra.dev]

You don’t see saltwater examples!!! Anyway this Topic is making me think about creating a scape first...

 

[cmcoker]

GSP doesn't spread over sand.

Mine does....

 

[Ardeus]

I have a rock with 2 types of GSP and they grow out into the open water, but not into the sand.

 

[ArowanaLover1902]

I thought Takashi Amano said something about how reefs can't be controlled

 

[lbacha]

Freshwater plants are also a lot more forgiving than coral. The way you trim stem plants is to pull them out of the tank cut the bottoms off and replant them. Within a week or two they need this done again.

Now imagine if we could frag a price of coral let's say a fast grower like monti. Reglue it and a week or two later it would be the same size as the original. That would give us a lot more aquascape options as we could rearrange as we go. Reef tanks unfortunately don't grow that way that monti may decide to grow up over or down all based on the lighting and flow. In a freshwater tank you can predict exactly how the plant you pick will grow.

I think aquascaping in a reef tank can be done it just takes longer. Also look up Dutch style freshwater tanks that is more of what our reef scaping is like.

 

[Ardeus]

Most freshwater aquascapes are nano tanks. It doesn't take that long to achieve whatever aquascape you plan in a nano reef.

How long would it take to create this aquascape assuming you already have the sarco and a stone covered in GSP that you can frag to spread over the hills of this layout? 3 months?

 

[Ardeus]

This forum has a single thread dedicated to aquascaping.

I would like to suggest that this subject is important enough to have its own area.

 

[fish farmer]

But the point is maintaining an aquarium like that long term.

I hated cutting grass in the cube box. All the dosing etc to get the nice dense scape and then cutting. But may be with GSP its different. I have GSP growing on the back wall, but how du control it.

My 29 gallon was started with a "bonsai mindset". I just wanted the mushrooms and polyps to cover the rocks with a few softies swaying in the breeze. My nepthia is now thick as my wrist and somedays sways in the breeze well, but some days like today it is having a bad hair day and splayed in different directions. It does trim well, but I've completely topped some arms off and the stumps take forever to regrow. I would think if I was to keep it manageable(artistic) in it's current spot I would have to restart it every once in awhile. It currently is attached below where I placed it and invades the middle of the tank. It is acting as a shade tree now. Mushrooms are a little harder to control and pretty much can take over and aren't necessarily a "small" scale.

I think GSP, yellow polyps, most any zooanthids work as small scale corals. Xenia umbellata looks awesome and tree like. Any branching corals like hammers, torches and frogspawn can work well as a "tree" specimen.

I've been pondering letting one side of my tank become a hammer garden.

 

[PupChow]

So, what I've noticed, is that with freshwater aquaecapes the goal is to almost mimic a picturesque fantasy landscape; this is done through complex scapes filled with plants, typically of which have small blades or leaves. As such, everything is "small" and it gives the perception of peering into a much larger area.

With reefs, none of our corals really look "small" enough to make that work. In the planted macroalgae tanks above, the illusion wasn't there; it still looked like tuffs of algae tied to sticks, because the algae lacks the texture and size differentiation to mimic a larger structure on a smaller scale; instead, it just looks small. That's why reef aquaecapes struggle, because nothing really looks "small," rather, it just looks like small portions of something large. This applies to virtually all macros and corals I'm aware of. The illusion can only be created in a massive tank where our corals can truly grow to sizes that actually look proportionally large.

I feel the same way, a lot of the freshwater planted tanks that I found breathtaking resemble miniature versions of an idealistic landscape. There are many beautiful reef tanks out there but I suspect the approach to aquascape may be different from freshwater... I'd love to explore this and looking forward to seeing more beautiful examples!

 

[sp1187]

don't use rock.

 

[LadyMac]

Following. This has intrigued me as well.

 

[andrewkw]

These are just my thoughts. The only freshwater keeping I do is auto top off containers and while I have aquascaped reefs at least a dozen times of various sizes I am by no means an expert.

Plants and animals are so different. Besides the time that has already been mentioned as far as I know the plants in a planted aquarium are not trying to kill each other all the time. Something unexpected almost always happens in a reef, let say it takes 2 years for a tank to be mature, 3 in a lot of cases, in those 2-3 years the tanks owner is going to change priorities be it going from softies to sps, a new coral craze ect. What you had in mind when you got your live rock is not going to be the same as when your tank is full of coral in a lot of cases. Corals don't always grow as planned, if you're starting with 1" frags or even larger wild colonies the structures will not always grow how you anticipate. Flow and light play far larger factors and there is more variance in how acropora grow then a less advanced plant.

This one some people may not agree but most mature reef tanks look great. Even if you start with a blander then bland rock wall, as long as your corals are not arranged as a fruit stand (and even them sometimes it looks good), once you have mature colonies and can no longer see the majority of rock work it's going to look good. If the corals start to kill each other your tank won't be full and the ones that die out are either replaced with compatible ones or the survivors grow where they killed off the others. When you prune a reef you expect it to look good again a few months later. Planted tanks are setup in a day and will look mature a week or a month later.

 

[NY_Caveman]

These are just my thoughts. The only freshwater keeping I do is auto top off containers and while I have aquascaped reefs at least a dozen times of various sizes I am by no means an expert.

Plants and animals are so different. Besides the time that has already been mentioned as far as I know the plants in a planted aquarium are not trying to kill each other all the time. Something unexpected almost always happens in a reef, let say it takes 2 years for a tank to be mature, 3 in a lot of cases, in those 2-3 years the tanks owner is going to change priorities be it going from softies to sps, a new coral craze ect. What you had in mind when you got your live rock is not going to be the same as when your tank is full of coral in a lot of cases. Corals don't always grow as planned, if you're starting with 1" frags or even larger wild colonies the structures will not always grow how you anticipate. Flow and light play far larger factors and there is more variance in how acropora grow then a less advanced plant.

This one some people may not agree but most mature reef tanks look great. Even if you start with a blander then bland rock wall, as long as your corals are not arranged as a fruit stand (and even them sometimes it looks good), once you have mature colonies and can no longer see the majority of rock work it's going to look good. If the corals start to kill each other your tank won't be full and the ones that die out are either replaced with compatible ones or the survivors grow where they killed off the others. When you prune a reef you expect it to look good again a few months later. Planted tanks are setup in a day and will look mature a week or a month later.

Good point. A planted tank is usually maintained with a single look while a reef evolves unpredictably over time. So maybe the question is how can you plan and maintain a predictable reefscape? And can this this be done “fairly” to the live animals involved?

 

[NY_Caveman]

joshky on RC has a fairly famous bonsai reef that seems to attempt a maintained reef aquascape.

To be honest, I do not love it. I marvel at the concept and the execution, but after running planted tanks, it seems out of place to me as a reef. It is beautiful, but the word that comes in my head is artificial.

EDIT: sorry, that user only referenced the tank. I am searching for the true owner.
UPDATE: looks like the owner was pisces4u on N-R.

 

[ZAB]

Good topic!

I often wonder why there are so few coral aquarist that put an effort in hiding pumps and pipes.
You see amazing tanks with beautiful corals, clean windows, white sand AND a couple of those big ugly stream pumps(sorry ecotech et al)... It ruins it a bit for me.
Sure we need the flow but wouldn't it be possible to find a way to hide the pumps?

/ David

I saw on blog at unique crals some put three mp40 pump on bottom glass of there tank and then use some large pvc pipe tacked on to bottom glass ..and the pump could place put pu site behind rocs..

 

[ArowanaLover1902]

You guys are forgetting Murphy's Law, everything bad that can happen will do so, this is one of the most important aspects of a reef tank. You're not going to be able to control the tank well enough, plus freshwater algae is way easier to maintain than saltwater, you'd have to deal with too many factors to list to really do it right (not that there aren't amazing looking reef scapes, I just think it's not feasible to do a perfect aquascape like some of the pictured freshwater ones).

 

[Ardeus]

If you already have a reef tank, creating a much smaller aquascape becomes easier and you will not be tempted to deviate from the original design you proposed yourself to achieve. You will also be able to achieve it a lot faster.

I am currently trying to create something similir to that photoshopped picture I posted earlier and I am growing the GSP pieces in my main tank.