Aquascaping demystified
Aquascapes
What is an Aquascape?
An aquascape is more than just chucking a pile of live rock into a tank, it lets your creative side show, it gives us all a chance to fine tune the look and feel of you marine tank, Many different styles can be achieved. There is many different ways you can create your aquascape. Some examples are:
Things to remember
Some Different styles of Aquascapes Are
Rock Bommies
The rock bommie look is extremely popular in larger tanks, its often a bommie on a far end of the tank that is on its own with lots of substrate around it. Bommies can be created from using the acrylic rod (below image is one of my favourite tanks!)
Shelfs
Often layers to create the look of a “shelf” with overhangs and similar. Large shelf on the top,
Minimalistic
Minimalistic is for the more advanced and experience reefers, due to the low amount of live rock the tank must be stable and able to filter the nutrients without the large amounts of liverock (biological filtration) this style often limits the amount of fish as you there isn’t as many places for the fish to hide, this can cause aggression. When pulled off correctly this style can look very different and can be extremely unique.
(not the best photo of minimalistic, but I would still class it as)
Gully
Usually is created in large footprint tanks that are very wide and long, you will have lots of spaces to also place coral but this scape has to be done carefully to get a true gully effect
Elevated
The elevated look is great to fit lots of corals into a tank. It gives lots of rock surface space to stick corals down and provides a “ladder” towards the surface of the water, this means high light corals can be placed near the top such as SPS, and all lower light corals can be further down the elevation such as morphs.
Stacked rocks
Stacked rocks usually create lots of holes for fish to swim through
Stacked bommie
A stacked bommie is when it is close to another bommie and isn’t out on its own,
Discussion in this thread welcome!
Hopefully this topic has given members something to think about, maybe even given you ideas for your next scape, this is everyone’s chance to be an individual and create your eco system the way that you want it to be seen, try something different it could work out great, it could even look horrible, it’s all trial and error.
Be careful don’t sit rocks where they can fall and damage the glass, remember if your rocks are too close to the glass you can’t clean it with a magnet cleaner (don’t laugh I did it once and had to start all over again.
Personally I love the tank pictured under “Gully”. What is everyone else’s favourite scape?
Written by Matt Green. Images used from various sources
What is an Aquascape?
An aquascape is more than just chucking a pile of live rock into a tank, it lets your creative side show, it gives us all a chance to fine tune the look and feel of you marine tank, Many different styles can be achieved. There is many different ways you can create your aquascape. Some examples are:
- pile rocks together, although this option isn’t very good in terms of rock stability.
- drill the rocks and insert plastic pvc or acrylic rod to hold it together, this is a great option for creating rock bomies.
- live rock can be puttied together with coral putty forming unusual shapes and a nice natural look.
- stands can be used to hold rock up, they are usually clear acrylic shelves that can support the weight of the rock, this option helps create caves on the inside of the rock although you need to hide the stands.
Things to remember
- having to much rock can block flow and cause a build up of detritus
- really open scapes can cause sand storms in high flow
- open scapes usually allow better flow around the tank EG for sps dominant setups.
- having limited live rock limits the areas where fish can hide.
Some Different styles of Aquascapes Are
Rock Bommies
The rock bommie look is extremely popular in larger tanks, its often a bommie on a far end of the tank that is on its own with lots of substrate around it. Bommies can be created from using the acrylic rod (below image is one of my favourite tanks!)
Shelfs
Often layers to create the look of a “shelf” with overhangs and similar. Large shelf on the top,
Minimalistic
Minimalistic is for the more advanced and experience reefers, due to the low amount of live rock the tank must be stable and able to filter the nutrients without the large amounts of liverock (biological filtration) this style often limits the amount of fish as you there isn’t as many places for the fish to hide, this can cause aggression. When pulled off correctly this style can look very different and can be extremely unique.
(not the best photo of minimalistic, but I would still class it as)
Gully
Usually is created in large footprint tanks that are very wide and long, you will have lots of spaces to also place coral but this scape has to be done carefully to get a true gully effect
Elevated
The elevated look is great to fit lots of corals into a tank. It gives lots of rock surface space to stick corals down and provides a “ladder” towards the surface of the water, this means high light corals can be placed near the top such as SPS, and all lower light corals can be further down the elevation such as morphs.
Stacked rocks
Stacked rocks usually create lots of holes for fish to swim through
Stacked bommie
A stacked bommie is when it is close to another bommie and isn’t out on its own,
Discussion in this thread welcome!
Hopefully this topic has given members something to think about, maybe even given you ideas for your next scape, this is everyone’s chance to be an individual and create your eco system the way that you want it to be seen, try something different it could work out great, it could even look horrible, it’s all trial and error.
Be careful don’t sit rocks where they can fall and damage the glass, remember if your rocks are too close to the glass you can’t clean it with a magnet cleaner (don’t laugh I did it once and had to start all over again.
Personally I love the tank pictured under “Gully”. What is everyone else’s favourite scape?
Written by Matt Green. Images used from various sources
