Tank Aquascaping project

[brleong]

Hello all,

I just thought I'd share a work in progress. I recently started aquascaping my tank, as when I first setup the tank, i honestly had no idea what I was doing. I am about 90% of the way done now, and thought I'd show the progress! I've attached a before picture, from when the tank was about 1 year old. Now here it is about 6 months later. Aquascaping has been going on for about 1 month with slowly removing old rocks, and being careful not to stir up too much detritus or trapped gases. New rocks have also gone in slowly to not cause any ammonia spikes. Any feedback or tips?

 

[HiFidelity]

Looking good, is that eggcrate on the back inside the tank? if it is what's the purpose? if it's to grow corals I imagine that will be one heck of an awesome background for a reef tank.

 

[brleong]

I mainly put the egg crate there to keep the rocks from leaning against the glass and having any sharp points against it.. I'm paranoid, I know. But you have a great idea on growing corals off there! I was originally thinking of letting my GSP grow along the back since it spreads like weeds.

 

[HiFidelity]

Great minds think alike I was looking at your pic thinking "it would be crazy if that eggcrate was covered in GSP hehe.

For future reference in case you end up hating the eggcrate back there another method to "cushion" the rocks that touch glass is to put a pad of epoxy against the edge that touches the glass, I personally laid all my rocks directly against the glass but whoever built my tank used glass that's about twice as thick as necessary so I'm not too worried about cracking it.

 

[brleong]

my main concern with the GSP is that they spread like weeds. I would love for it to stay on the egg crate/back glass, but how do i prevent it from spreading to the rocks leaning against the glass? I just glued over a patch on a rock that it spread to so that it wouldn't "infect" the rest of the tank. GSP apocalypse!

 

[yellojello]

I just recently rescaped after my tank crash. Funny, I went the opposite way. Your before picture looks like my after picture, and your after picture looks like my before picture

I would be careful with GSP, although I never had it before. But my whole back wall was covered with xenia, and then purple cloves took over all my rocks and overflow slowly overtaking the glass. I tried to treat my tank to get rid of them with dewormer tabs, but ended up nuking my tank killing all my fish and almost all my coral, although the xenia and purple cloves are now extinct. Sad to start over, but after a good 3 year run, I learned somewhat how to plan for growth.

 

[HiFidelity]

I never had GSP grow much, in fact I think I need GSP because what little GSP I did have has almost disappeared (my tank seems to do better with sticks than softies) so if it was my tank I'd try it but for some reason everyone else I know complains that their GSP grew too crazy. I imagine if you prop the rocks with acrylic rods it would make it very hard for the gsp to grow across and even if it makes it to the rods it's easy to dab the rods w/ super glue. It's probably too late to do all that since rods would require drilling the rocks and epoxying them in there and against the glass/aggcrate. Yellow is right though, if it started growing into the overflow that would mean disaster in the making.

I had pom poms in my tank before it had a semi-crash and the suckers were growing stuck against plain glass, it was bizarre...

 

[brleong]

My GSP is like the bird flu. It sends out feelers to other rocks nearby and tries to hook onto them (very slowly of course). I had to snip some yesterady to prevent it from spreading onto some nearby rocks. My overflow is pretty safe from their growth since there's not enough light there and they don't venture into the darkness. maybe I'll just end up hooking a bunch of smaller rocks onto the egg crate.