Question About Aquascaping

[tothe kids]

I just read somewhere about leaning LR on the glass and not to do it. Is this necessary for flow or longevity of the seals on the tank? I have some of my LR in the back of the tank actually leaning on the glass and I’m thinking now I may have to move it.

[WaterKeeper]

Not a question of stress on the tank but rather one of maintenance. It is hard to scrape the glass if you have rock leaning against it. If you plan on having algae on the rear glass, as many reefers do, then resting it against the glass is fine.

[papagimp]

fwiw, I recently had a nice large chunk of rock slip and "tap" the back glass on my 29g, cracked it and spilled about 24 out of 29g onto my floor. Was not a pleasant day for me. so if it's not leaning on the glass, be sure it's secure where it's going to sit!

[an411]

leaning on the glass is ok.have had mine like that with no bad effects

[WaterKeeper]

:lol:

See what I mean? Another reefkeeper with algae encrusted glass. :D

[mchembree]

Can I add a (slightly) related question? We're wondering if we've set up our LR properly. It's in a 24g cube. About 22-25 lbs in the main tank, another 10 lbs of rubble in 2 of the back chambers.

One of the pieces we have in the main tank is pretty big; it has one or two small holes all the way through it, and the surface of the rock is pretty hunky-chunky, lots of grooves/chasms, and no smooth sides. It is currently sitting approximately in the center of the tank, pointing up and down; the rock's shape suits this arrangement, as it's bigger/wider at the bottom, and tapers to an irregular tapered wedge at the top. The top of this rock is about 3-4 inches below the water's surface. The big rock is balanced securely on several medium-sized rocks.

It looks good like this. But are our future fish and/or corals (well, zoas, frogspawn or torch, no SPS) going to feel at home? Or do we need to add some ledges somehow? There are a couple of very nice "caves" between the sand and the bottom of the big rock, where it sits on the smaller rocks, but no large caves or arches higher up in the big rock.

Seems like most people set their rock up in a horizontal layout, rather than a vertical one like ours. We thought it would be okay, because it looks good and will give fish a lot of room to swim around all sides of the rock. But maybe we're looking for trouble somehow?

Thanks. (Yes, a picture would be good, wouldn't it? But that would mean finding the cable to download the pictures from the camera to the computer, and I don't have time to do that just now!)

[papagimp]

the corals don't have "eyes" so they don't care what the rockwork looks like, as long as they get sufficeint flow/lighting/nutrients, they'll do fine. The troulble you may run into with more verticle space in the rock vs. horizontal layouts, is the stuff mounted up higher in the tank may shade out the specimens lower in the tank. Just place corals appropriately and it'll be fine. my 75g has more verticle pillars than the typical horizontal layout that my 55g has. Both work great!

[mchembree]

Thanks papagimp! Yes, it was the human eyes we were considering, not the corals' or the fishes'!!! :)

To avoid the "shading" you're mentioning (good point!), I guess we'd want to put our bigger corals in the lower areas of the tank? Leaving the sides of the big rock to host zoas? Mmmmm, don't want to redo the landscaping (it DOES look good, and we were just going to get our first coral or fish this weekend), but I wonder if this set up is good ...

[papagimp]

Check out my Blog, (the little red house www button above my posts) and you'll see what i've done with my pillars vs. coral placement. It's very doable, you just have to take the light requirments of your particular species into consideration. Put the lower light/shade lovers in the lower parts of the tank and put any high light guys up high. Some of the best tanks I've seen use a combo of horizotnal layouts along with very verticle pillars/columns. As long as you think it's pretty you can work with it.

Just dont confuse a bigger coral for a low light coral. for instance, lets say you stick a plating monitpora on the lower part of the rockwork, stick a few acro above him, when the acros' shade over much of the montipora, the part that does not receive enough lighting may bleach or die off leaving the living tissue area's out towards the light.

[mchembree]

Well, I can see that that's where the problem would come up -- if we keep this layout, we'll be limited in terms of adding "bigger/spreading" corals that like more light, because they will want to be in the middle or top of the tank, and could end up shading lower-placed corals too much.

Lovely "red house" pix, papagimp -- I'm getting some ideas! Thanks much.

[papagimp]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10983467#post10983467 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mchembree
Lovely "red house" pix, papagimp -- I'm getting some ideas! Thanks much.

I can't stress enough how many great idea's you'll get from looking through the blogs and previous tank of the month winners here on RC. So many ideas from such a wide variety of people. Gaurantee that at least once you'll end up saying "why didn't i think of that?!?"

[tothe kids]

Thanks everyone for all your responses. I will have to think about this one whether I want to tear down the tank and reaquascape or not. I'm leaning towards just making sure evrything is super secure.

[papagimp]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10984126#post10984126 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by tothe kids
I'm leaning towards just making sure evrything is super secure.

HoldFast underwater Epoxy, and simlar items as well as zip ties. They can help alot.

[WaterKeeper]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10983354#post10983354 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by papagimp
the corals don't have "eyes" so they don't care what the rockwork looks like

But they have feelings. :D