aquascaping

[vsnsofadrgn]

how does my aquascaping look? too many caves? i would have liked some more height, but i need to get more rock i guess.......

[Brenden]

Yes to many caves. Looks too "stacked". I would probably build up some in the corners and leave the center more open.

[vsnsofadrgn]

thanks, thats what i thought...... and im goin to school for interior design, lol. this is not as easy as it seems.......

[dorian965]

i hate stacking my rock. every time i move a tank it murder for me to rearrange. now that all of my rock has some type of polyp on it , it has become even more difficult. i cant stack it so that it looks nice because of the corals being too close of zoos and mushrooms not getting enough light. i think its the most stressful thing in my life.

[WarEagleNR88]

Originally Posted by dorian965

i think its the most stressful thing in my life.

... I thought this was funny from someone with a child's picture as the avatar. I take it your own child and if so, how is that not more stressful?

[melosu58]

And yes I believe you could use more LR

[vsnsofadrgn]

well i redid it again and it still looks terrible. i guess i have some work to do tonight. im trying to get it right because ill be upgrading my lighting so i can get some corals and they need a place to call home. very frustrating. im hoping to get more rocks from hirocks soon....

[mp3z24]

one thing you may try is to build a support structure out of pvc piping. then you can zip-tie the rock to the support structure. this will allow you to add some elevation to the rock without having to buy a ton of rock. more rock is obvioiusly better than less rock, but if you stack your rocks i a pile, you will not have good circulation around most of the rock's surface.

im planning on building one of these pvc supports in my tank, but ive been pretty lazy on aqaurium projects lately.

~mike

[Brenden]

Since this tank is new you need to forget about corals for right now and work on the LR and keeping your tank stable.

[vsnsofadrgn]

i wasnt planning on getting them right away, have to get the water where it needs to be and then ill be waiting a year after that. i just dont want to reaquascape....

[Brenden]

Since you have more rock coming I would not worry about aquascaping until it arrives. You will probably get some larger pieces you will want on the bottom etc. and just end up tearing it apart again.

[Maurice2]

My hap'worth: Rockscaping is quite hard, and even harder in seawater. The rocks you have are artificial which makes things even more difficult. Suggestion:
- Buy a lot of live rock. It'll survive a few hours out-of-water
- Empty your tank
- Experiment with how the pieces could jig together, outside the tank
- Spread a towel on the floor and on it, build a jigsaw of interesting pieces, figuring how they would fit together in the "big picture"
- Transfer your assemblies into the tank, each building on it's predeccesor
- Re-fill the tank

[vsnsofadrgn]

they are base rocks from hirocks.com, and i will be ordering 30 more lbs of base rock because that is all i can afford. i will play with them outside the tank though to see if i get come up with something that way...

[vsnsofadrgn]

ok, i couldnt look at it like that anymore, so how is this?? i like it... just need to order more base rock and ill basically do the same when it comes....

[Brenden]

Much better.

[SharkMan]

I like it!

[Reese]

I like it better that way. Once you add some more rock to that to give it some more depth it will look great.

I love having "caves". Something I did, that you might want to consider is building a "central cave" out of base rock that is siliconed together. Then you have a stable foundation to stack off of. Also, another thing that looks pretty good is having caves that are only obvious from different angles, not all from dead on front and center. Doing that provides more depth also...