favorite scape items…

[Magnum Man]

I like my tanks to mostly look natural, and while not all ornaments are of nature, or look natural ( like the pagodas on my hillstream tank ) the pagodas offer good surfaces for algae to grow on ( as food for the fish in that tank ), but also structure… they are large resin pieces designed to place in gardens or flower beds…

in several of my tanks I have resin hollow logs, the ones I use are designed for use with reptiles… they are open on the bottom, so in my south American tetra tank, 2 of them are vertical, and are slid around the under gravel lift tubes to hide them that tank also has 2 horizontal on the bottom as caves, and while some tetras like the sailfins like to use them a lot, they are mostly used by the tetras to sleep in… most all my tanks, have at least one piece of “real” driftwood but the resin ones end up looking great, longer than the natural wood, but don’t offer anything in the way of water treatment ( tannins )

I’ve been buying resin “stump” pots for plants, for a long time, and have 3-4 different styles / sizes, all look like tree stumps but hold plants, lately I’ve bought some smaller ones ( 4 inch ), and like them, as they are easy to place, and move the plants around from…

and recently I’ve been buying these ceramic cichlid caves, that look like they were formed from molten rock, I have a pile of 5 of them in my African tank, and as a pile, they are hollow caves, but the pile creates caves between them, with enough space and privacy, that I have multiple species living in that “rock pile”

I’d be interested to hear about your favorite functional ornaments, and how you use them…

a few pictures…

this is one of the two pagodas in my hillstream tank, they are constantly used by the fish…

this is 2 of the styles of stump pots I use… the 1st contains a large coffeefola, and is in the same tank as the pagodas…. the 2nd ( actually 2 ), is in my 3 season porch tank, and contains a sword and a cryp…

this is one of many of my hollow logs… this one in my south American tetra tank…

and this is one of my cichlid caves, with some needle leaved java fern stuck on top…

 

[Jennet]

I like it. I too have bought some scape ornaments, but probably much smaller than yours on the whole, as my tank is tiny compared to most of yours. I do like to add interest, so as well as a large natural wood tree stump, I will be adding some of the decs along with a few natural stones along the way. In between, I will be testing the water to ensure there is not too much of a change.

Probably most will go in before the fish and alongside some plants, but not much sure how much longer I can hold out before getting fish.