Threads like this need to happen. I wish i read this when I was aquascaping my tank a month ago! Shame on me for not looking around more.
After building up all the influence from pictures I saw of other peoples reefs online, I decided to check out how things are done in the ocean. So I went scuba diving. I'm not an artist and I hate taking other peoples ideas (although the end result of my rockwork surely has been seen before). I decided to approach it from a more engineering perspective. Sticking to what I know!
I observed how living things vibe with their surroundings and what they like to do within their environment. I noticed fish are curious but cautious, love to play in open areas and hide in closed areas. Some love to swim through structures, the invertebrates love the rocks and find their homes with in them. So me and my fiancee took that mixed with what we found online, mixed with our boxes filled with 130 pounds rock for our 130 gallon tank and went to work. We ended up making an all connecting structure with caves on either side and swim-throughs in the middle. The stacking ended up creating a few nice little overhang spots that created cool little "coves" and dark places which my coral banded shrimp just loves. Anyway the thought I put into it pretty much doesn't reflect the way it came out. I blame my dimensions (5 x 2.5 x 1.5) for not being able to have more DOF as my tank doesn't really have much depth to begin with.
This thread would've really helped me put some more art into it. I reaaaaally tossed up between doing an island build but I think it's the depth of the tank that makes those builds so attractive (bows down to charlietunas build). I will have a tank with more depth in the future, but until then, here's how it turned out:
Future coral may have to end up replacing some of the lone rocks in the front which I don't really want to do. I love all the rock so much D: I can't wait to get nice and vibrant colors in there.
It's worked out so far so good. The creatures love it, the fish get curious and sleep in the rocks at night. My snails that are supposed to be sand sifting snails decided to take up rock climbing (not sure if that's a good thing or not lol). There's adequate flow throughout the entire tank. There isn't a place I cant stick a hose into. The setbacks are I want to eventually have lots of coral to make the environment very vibrant and I'm a bit limited for space. One important underlying thing about this thread is space. All of the examples used imply lots of space which is what you need for coral growth. I'll have to either kick some rock to the sump or sell it =\
I wouldn't worry to much about it and just work with it as you go some metallic green clove polyps would look great in there and spread over the rock work to make it pop I had the same issue with my tank though ended up having to move the pieces attached to live already into the rock work without killing the look of the tank and still being at the right level for the coral to grow I just set up a small tank with a minimal amount of rock to do a more open layout
I think to have a very MINIMAL about of rock work and more filled in with corals. Every tank I've seen that has amazing rock work has to do with using small amounts and over the months or years. Depending on the bank balance, lol, is to fill those empty areas up with corals that will take up that space.
Hi everyone so like I said I'm trying to put up my reef tank I just got I'm trying to think what to do first because I need to put all my live stock n all from my 50gal hex aquarium to my 75gal now which came with over flow....so all sand live rock n stock has to be moved over from one tank to new tank?!?! PLEASE SOMEONE ADVICE!!!!????!!!!! Thank you all mi gente
Here is my aquascape from my 75g tank. 48"x18"x20". I used dry rock everywhere. In this tank I wanted to have the least amount base rock touching the sand to keep the detritus build up. The centre Arch was the most pain the the butt to do. I first I had to find the heaviest the biggest rocks on the far left and right side to keep the arch stable. Second, I took a 1/2" acrylic rod and found pieces that would slide into the rod. Some rocks had to be drilled, which made a bigger mess then excepted and loss of some good pieces because they cracked. Anywho, once I got the desired length of the arch with rocks placed, I used a propane torch to heat the 1/2" acrylic rod and started to form the arch. Hope you guys like it.