Redoing my rock layout....FRUSTRATING!!

[ken123]

Got some more rock recently. 3 nice interesting flat pieces and some other roundish rock, some that I broke up (not the flat stuff).
Here is a pic before. Not touching the left side, redoing only the right side. Already spent a few hours trying different things and I just can't get it right! UGHHHH. Clownfish are in the tank and putting up with the sandstorms!!! I'm trying to make caves on the right side by putting the regular shaped rock into the sand and placing the flat rock on top of it and TRYING to make it look somewhat natural. This is a real P.I.T.A, FRUSTRATING!! Any ideas?

The right side.

 

[dflint]

yeah use those tall pieces on the right as the top of the bridge. seperate the two pieces in the middle as the sides of the cave.

 

[jnfallon]

Its tough, especially since we are such hard critics of ourselves.

Some things to try.

1) since your rock is what appears to be base rock, feel free to work with it outside the tank. Put some newspaper somewhere and try and set things up different ways. Moving rock in a full tank is tough, and I have scratched every one of my tanks doing so. ****es me offf!!

2) Unfortunately its also kind of blah to start with (dont be offended), but that just means that it doesnt have much character to start with. Make some. Use your chisel, and make the pieces you WANT. ****, its only rock. Have fun, whack away, defects become frag rubble.

3) balancing rock in a smaller tank is tough. Especially the way you're trying it (using big, round pieces and trying to avoid touching the back glass). I'm starting to play around now with tubes, rods, and epoxy to build different arches, caves, etc. Not much info to pass on, but its not as hard as I thought, and seems like any changes in color will be covered in coralline anyway.

Hope that helps. Its ALWAYS a work in progress anyway, so enjoy.

 

[ken123]

I did just that dflint, separated those tall pieces, but it just did not look right. I dunno?!?!?

The rock on the right side is all Dr Mac live rock. Had it since September. It would have been easy to try and arrange it out of the tank and use amend to fasten them together but I don't want to leave the LR out to long. There is life in those things! I have been chiseling away and making smaller pieces.

Yea. Guess I just have to keep at it. One of these times I'll get the right combination. Tomorrow I'll post some shots of the flat pieces I'm working with.

 

[szeth13]

get more rock, some nice shaped stuff and it'll come to you. what you have now simply isn't enough to have what you want (unless you sucessfully breed rock and if you do let me know). IMO what you have on the right side is a little bit more than what you need for the base, and not for the top (cave) pieces.

 

[Hef]

I think it looks ok. You should really build a quick cave for the Clowns. They will love you for it. They will hang out it in it and protect it. Even if it doesnt look natural at first, any rock formation you make will start to grow on you.
Other than that, tear it up and start over. I did that a hundred times, then it just started looking good.