Tips and Tricks on Creating Amazing Aquascapes

[tcp316]

I have a 70g cube. I hsd a hard time with my aquascape. I wanted it to not touch the sides. I used acrylic rods. I measured on the floor but somehow when we lifted it and put in the tank I couldn't make it fit at the angle I wanted. Its been up a year but ive just started over with corals. Ive been battling cancer and just couldn't keep up with maintenance. My dear daughter came for a visit and tried to do a water and got the salinity way too low. 95% of my corals and inverts died.

Here is how it came out. Im unhappy with the size of aragonite and may switch it out slowly but I have eggcrate so I'm unsure how to remove it.( the eggcrate)


Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

 

[MikeTR]

Looks great! love the fish selection. You going all sps?

Majority will be SPS. But I've got a huge learning curve to overcome obviously. My 2 stylophora frags are RTN'ing. Cap is now bleaching. Lights are putting out some serious par. Going to need to find some SPS that love 900s.

 

[jgalvin]

any input or suggestions would be greatly appreciated

any input or suggestions would be greatly appreciated

What a fantastic thread, i tried to do my best to incorporate the concepts and flow to redesign my rockwork. Would appreciate any input or suggestions, my corals (and fish) are not too happy about me moving them over and over. Thanks much!

 

[livingseas]

So I got my 350 lb order of rocks from Reefrocks for my 300 gallon tank.

I have some really huge pieces. 2x 20lb shelves, and a 30 lb column/spire
in there.

How do ya'll go about glueing this much rock together? Cement? Epoxy?
Whats the best way? Silicone?

I thinking about getting a piece of cardboard the size of the tank, drawing
the thirds lines on it and glueing it all up outside the tank in 3 or 4
large objects.

My cell phone if one one of the large pieces for size comparison.. huge.
The spire is 25" long! My tank is 27" high.

 

[jbfloor]

I used JB waterweld and gorrila glue. This is for a dry build with base rock.

Silicone is not nearly strong enough, stay away from that.

Also, look into building PVC structures to support your rocks. You can check my build thread for some simple examples.

 

[ridetheducati]

So I got my 350 lb order of rocks from Reefrocks for my 300 gallon tank.

I have some really huge pieces. 2x 20lb shelves, and a 30 lb column/spire
in there.

How do ya'll go about glueing this much rock together? Cement? Epoxy?
Whats the best way? Silicone?

I thinking about getting a piece of cardboard the size of the tank, drawing
the thirds lines on it and glueing it all up outside the tank in 3 or 4
large objects.

My cell phone if one one of the large pieces for size comparison.. huge.
The spire is 25" long! My tank is 27" high.

Strongly recommend a dry aquascape with mortar from Marco Rocks.

 

[livingseas]

Strongly recommend a dry aquascape with mortar from Marco Rocks.

No that I see it.. it looks like a great solution for the volume of bonding
I need to do. How much do you think I should get for 350 lbs?

2x 15 lb kits?

 

[Rare Angels]

I have a "L" shaped tank, the front viewing panels are 5' long. The depth is 2' and the height is 2'. Any suggestions?

 

[livingseas]

So I've started laying out my tank on cardboard to scale.. its 72wx36dx27h

I'm a total noob at aquascaping so I am looking for advice. This is
a really rough sketch of what I am thinking from a top down POV.

The X's represent areas I dont want rock. The 1/4 circles in the corners
represent the overflows. There are three rock structures
in the tank of varying heights. In there will be shelves, caves,
a spire. I see the one on the right as the tallest with a large shelf off it.
What do you think? How would you change the layout?

I'd love to cover up the overflows Since I want that infinity back look
but I can figure out how to do it without having two giant piles of rock
in the corners.

 

[livingseas]

Okay I pulled out the rock and started dry stacking.. The cardboard is
the size of the tank.

Since the tank has so much depth 36", I wanted areas people could discover
like the cove. a 6ft person is just about at the midpoint of this tank
when looking at it given the height of the stand.

Plenty of space for corals.. One goal was to minimize the look of the
overflow in the corners.

Thoughts? Good? bad? (Please excuse the crappy cell phone pics)

 

[CyclistMT]

I think that looks great! I would love to see it implemented in a tank and once the corals grow in it should look stunning.

 

[knight2255]

^ agree with above, coves are cool.....wish I had all that real estate to play with

 

[Patrick Cox]

Finally got to a real computer. I guess my point is for those building a full reef don't forget to consider the colors and forms of the final colonies or at least what you hope they will look like after a few years : )

Joe

You make a very good point and one that I have been considering as well. We seem to put a lot of effort into the aesthetics of our rock structure when in reality, unless we are running a FOWLR, the goal should be to establish a rock base for mounting corals that in the end will hardly be seen. And to also allow enough negative space to set off the corals and provide swim room for your fish. Very nice reef BTW!

 

[bretcummings]

Any thoughts or recommendations? It's still dry so I an change things pretty easily.

 

[bretcummings]

Picture w/o lights

 

[ReefKeeper64]

This is one of my favorite threads.

Big E, Do you have a link to or more pictures of this tank? I want to glean as many ideas as possible from it for my build. Thanks!

[/IMG]

 

[joe_himself]

An awful lot of good scapes in here folks, Lots of new ideas.

 

[Patrick Cox]

OK, I'm looking for some input on the direction of my aquascape. My goals are..

1. Minimalist approach.
2. Large sand bed (shallow.)
3. Plenty of swim room for fish.
4. Lots of surface area for coral placement
5. Plenty of room for coral growth and water flow.
6. No rock touching any walls of tank. (May not stick with this one.)
7. 2 viewing areas - front and right side.

Here was my first attempt. The idea is that the fish can swim all around the islands and there is a flow channel in between. Also the top is fairly flat for coral placement.

After looking at this for a while and also looking at other tanks, I thought about adding a couple of additional rocks at the top rear of each island that would lean against the glass to give one more high spot for corals, and then I would also shift the structures so they ran more diagonally left to right. This picture doesn't exactly show my vision but I think you can get the gist of what I am doing. Basically if you were looking at the tank from the front you would see 2 diagonal structures running left to right and from the right side the two structures would almost be coming at you.

So again, thanks for any input on these layouts.

Pat

 

[Patrick Cox]

Well, I am making another change to my aquascape. With what I am looking to do with my corals and the size of my tank, I am thinking that the aquarium will look best with corals spanning the full length of the tank, so I have added a bridge component to connect the two sides of the tank. One other change I am considering is to add another rock to the back of the right structure to give a bit more height, but not sure yet.

Any comments/suggestions appreciated. Again from my perspective, the look of the rock right now is not what is important but rather considering the rock as a platform for corals and allowing adequate flow and negative space.

Sorry for the poor quality of the iphone pictures!

Thanks!

Front:

Side:

 

[knight2255]

Picture w/o lights

I can't believe how similar ours look! Love the bridge you have going on....is your rock a diy concrete mix? What corals do you plan to put on the overhangs?

Here is mine....just about done cycling. Going to put mainly softies up on the overhangs. I like corals with a lot of sway.