How many times have you walked into a local fish store, someone’s home or perusing the forums and a beautiful reef tank has stopped you dead in your tracks?
Stop on by and find out the 16 tips for Reef Aquascaping your tank.
1. Inspiration – Google/Pinterest
This cannot be overestimated enough. Get looking around to find something that takes your breath away the moment you see it. If it’s not online, take a photo of it. Inspiration is key to finding the look you are after and if that look will fit in your home.
Gone are the days of just piling rocks into a wall against the back glass in an aquarium! By following these tips you can craft something that is not only unique but adds that extra level of WOW to your living room.
2. The Rule Of Thirds
The Rule Of Thirds is a design composition technique used by many artists, photographers, architects, and other professionals to create a balance to the eye and make the piece they are crafting more dynamic and interesting.
The technique is to split up the area in question into 9 equally sized squares with 4 intersecting points where the lines cross. The idea is to create your aquascape using these lines and plan to have or place something interesting at each of the intersecting points.
I tried to keep the squares equal when planning my tank but I found it bunched all the rock together and left no swimming room for the Yellow Tang I ‘Had To Have’. I ended up slightly stretching my center squares to become rectangles to help create a balance between the rule of thirds and my aquarium shape.
3. Create Depth
Crafting an aquascape with depth can be tricky in an aquarium due to the width of most aquariums. Cubes and ‘Deep-Dimension’ aquariums make this easier because you have the width to create valleys to lead the eye, but what about the rest of us?
The goal here is to trick the eye by using some clever rock placements to create the impression of depth.
Take this mountain photograph for example. We have depth because we have focal points in the foreground (Waterfall and stream), we have multiple layers of mountains sitting in one another helping to create the depth and finally, we have a valley to draw the eye into the distance. But how do we craft this into our aquarium?
Credits:
My name is Richard and I have been an avid aquarist for over 30 years. My journey began, like many others, with the introduction of two goldfish and a small aquarium. I was hooked!
Over the first 15 years, I kept everything from Koi Ponds, Turtles, Tropical Freshwater, Tropical Planted and eventually found my life in a position where I could dedicate the time and resources to move into a Saltwater Aquarium.
I have spent time working as an Aquarium Maintenence Technician for Aquatic Escapes in Vancouver, Canada installing, maintaining and troubleshooting aquariums of all sizes and types. This part of my career gave me a great insight into what works and what doesn’t with saltwater systems and how a few simple tweaks can make a huge difference.
My interest in electronics also gave me an opportunity to design and build an aquarium controller. This was at the time when aquarium controllers were in their infancy within the hobby and I wanted to automate as much as I could with my reef.
You can find me on the following Awesome Saltwater Forums:
Reef Central = Vancouver Reefr
Nano-Reef = Vancouver Reefer
CanReef = Vancouver Reefer
My aim with this site is to pass on as much information in an easy to find, easy to understand way so that I can hopefully make your entry to the world of saltwater aquariums as smooth as possible.
Thanks,
San Diego Marine Aquarists (SDMA) 