Urgent! Help Needed With Hardscape

[Staxx]

well i found some rocks/stones that i liked the look of in my mums garden so i brought them home. washed them and did the vinegar test. i also got 2 little terracotta plant pots thinking i could do something with them.

short story short i dont know what im doing. it looks horrible. ive been at it for hours.

with the pots

without the pots

the plants in the little black pots are ludwegia which i got today.

i think the rocks are a bit to big and seem to take over the tank. they wont break though ive threw them on the floor and all sorts. hit them with a hammer and chisel. this is the cheapest option as its all free stuff other than £5 for the plants. id like to try and salvage any of this if i can lol

 

[chigwellhammer]

I think the rocks look ok i think you need to maybe get some moss growing on them and get some more plants around the rocks and then it will start to take shape.

 

[fluttermoth]

I think your problem might be twofold.

First of all, I think you're arranging your rocks too symmetrically. To look more natural you want to group the rocks together, or have them roughly a third of the way along the tank.

Next, the rocks are leaning in different directions. In nature rocks usually have the strata going in the same direction, so if you can arrange yours so they point in the same direction, you might find that you get a more pleasing arrangement.

Best of luck!

 

[DrRob]

Without seeing a better picture, those rocks look like either a limestone or a sandstone, more likely a limestone. I have a garden full of the stuff, but it doesn't fizz if you put vinegar on it. It does however fizz if you put limescale cleaner on it. My OH is a geologist and couldn't understand why I was putting vinegar on a rock as they struggle to get reactions sometimes with stronger acids when they're testing limestones. So first up I'd advise you to get some stronger acid onto a chip and see if it reacts. The fresh surfaces tend to give the best results for reactions as well.

Otherwise your hardscape isn't horrible, it just isn't what you want. I'm guessing you're looking for a natural look, in which case you'd be looking to emulate a more natural stone formation. Rocks like that tend to be embedded properly, and your rock on the right is sitting on top of the sand, which is making it look somewhat unusual. The rock in the middle is also standing out a lot. Maybe consider leaning it over onto one of the other rocks, to make it look as though it had fallen there, which can also make some great cave effects. Whatever you do, make sure that they can't fall over and break your tank.

The other thing worth considering is that you've done what I tend to do, which is lean the hardscape against the back of the tank. This makes sense from the point of view of safety from falling rocks and it means that you can't lose fish behind them for half the time, but it does mean that when you've got your hardscape nicely arranged, it'll disappear behind your plants and you won't be able to see it.

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

What about laying one of the rocks on it's side, next to another one so you've got two grouped together and one on it's own?

 

[Staxx]

thank you for all the advice its really appreciated! i dont know how everyone comes up with such beautiful scapes! its not as easy as it looks.

my plan was to get the rocks how i like them. them slowly add plants around then over the coming weeks. kinda stretch the purse a bit if i can

im going to keep playing with it until i find something i like. i believe they are cornish sandstone but im not 100% sure. origional plan was to get some type of wood but its a bit out of my price range for now

 

[Staxx]

well after a couple of hours sleep and few more hours staring at the tank with a wet hand. this is what ive come up with for now still not 100% on it though.

in the hole in between the rocks is a plant pot for a little hide out. the other plant pot is behind one of the rocks half buried in sand on its side. it would help if i had more plants to kinda mask the rocks but i havent at the moment. i did want the rocks to me a dominant feature and to poke out the plants though thats why i picked the biggest ones.

i might take a bit of the sand out aswel it seems a bit deep to me. or is it ok?

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

Definite improvement! Well done

I would shift them forward a little so that you can place some tall, bachground plants behind them.

Yeah there is quite a bit of sand in there. It doesn't look bad but is more than needed and just reduces the amount of water in the tank

 

[Staxx]

yeah once i get the hardscape dialed when i do a vac il slowly syphon some out every WC.

im looking at maybe amazon sword i think its called for the back behind the rocks. its that plant and it grows really long accross the surface?

then some kind of carpet like java moss or star grass

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

There are a couple that grow really tall to sweep across the surface of the water but I wouldn't say amazon sword is one of them. Maybe a type of vallis or crypt (ballanse)? There are some others as well but I'm just a newb on plants

 

[Staxx]

ohh infact i think it was jungle val? im not good with plants either.

 

[DrRob]

You're probably thinking of the giant vallis for sweeping across the surface. Watch it doesn't cover too much of the light if you're planning carpets.

 

[Staxx]

You're probably thinking of the giant vallis for sweeping across the surface. Watch it doesn't cover too much of the light if you're planning carpets.

cheers for the advice mate. im just really beginning with plants and aquariums in general. only had my tank around 5 months now.

can you suggest anything?

 

[Alm0stAwesome]

I've got giant vallis in my tank, if you look back through the last few pages of my journal you can see pics

 

[Staxx]

yeah it was vallis ive just read the last 5 pages of the journal loool minnts full of banter