Any thoughts on my hardscape build?

[MikeCRK]

Hey!

Just after few hours of playing with rocks I came up with this build.
I will be fixing and completing details tomorrow, wanted to ask what do you think?

Two arches, plenty of shelves and tried to make it look NSA natural. I will be trying to glue in more shelves and then left space for islands too.

Any thoughts welcome! It is my first ever!

PS. it is stable, no worries

PPS. very stable

 

[Jax3545]

Hey!

Just after few hours of playing with rocks I came up with this build.
I will be fixing and completing details tomorrow, wanted to ask what do you think?

Two arches, plenty of shelves and tried to make it look NSA natural. I will be trying to glue in more shelves and then left space for islands too.

Any thoughts welcome! It is my first ever!

PS. it is stable, no worries

PPS. very stable

I like how it looks. I currently have a pile of rock and little imagination. Totally thought the pink chair was part of it and read "natural" lol I'd love to see it in place when you're done

 

[Propane]

Looks really awesome. Can’t wait to see the build thread!

 

[zheka757]

Very clean look, I'd add a little more arches, but that's just me!

 

[CoastalTownLayabout]

Nice work. Have a think about drilling some shallow frag plug sized holes with a masonry bit on any smooth vertical surfaces you know you’ll want to place coral.

 

[RocketEngineer]

May want to look into including hiding spots for fish. While I realize you were going for an NSA, you also should consider the needs of the animal for a space that lets them feel safe. With what I see they might feel very exposed.

 

[MikeCRK]

Thanks everyone!

- Good shout with plug holes! I will try to make some on the pieces at the bottom, the main structure may not survive me drilling. I generally was planning to cut the plugs before gluing them.
- What annoys me is two arches not three... but this is small tank (48G) I might overwork it if I would add one more
- I have some rubble left for making some caves (which there are few alright there), the tank will be predominantly for corals. I am thinking of adding it in the middle back section, the way that the critters will have a hideout, but in "plain sight". I also left cracks and did not fill the gaps fully. I will work out the hiding places when I move the main stuff over to the tank (would be easier for me to see if those would look natural enough).
- The whole thing is actually three pieces, so I can rearrange it slightly. I am thinking of adding some extra little shelves too

Still did not move it over. Please let me know more!

 

[MikeCRK]

Ok, so I ended up with something like this. Tried to drill some holes for the plugs but after cracking two pieces I gave up, anyway I usually cut those off
Fro two it came to three arches, two caves and plenty of cracks too. Should be fine.

Thanks for help!

 

[CoastalTownLayabout]

Your AIO build has turned up very clean. Elite workmanship mate.

 

[Fishnut]

Impressive build

 

[RocketEngineer]

Well done.

 

[Sebastiancrab]

Love your design but I feel like Rocket Engineer. It looks like you don't have any caves for the fish to hide in. Mine disappear every evening and my royal gramma has his permanent hangout all the time. It will greatly stress them if they are not able to spread out and hide when they feel like it. I used oyster shells to create mine.

 

[MikeCRK]

Love your design but I feel like Rocket Engineer. It looks like you don't have any caves for the fish to hide in. Mine disappear every evening and my royal gramma has his permanent hangout all the time. It will greatly stress them if they are not able to spread out and hide when they feel like it. I used oyster shells to create mine.

Hey,

I do not focus on fish. However, your points are valid (I already addressed them few times). I applied rules from freshwater aquascaping (have "some" ADA experience). Apart from trying to follow all the rules of thumb, I adjusted this setup slightly after initial comments on NSA being a challenge to fish etc.

- I have introduced there few caves and hiding spots. The trick is. Those are done the way you do not see it
- I am a big fan of using three-point-technique instead of building unnatural looking constructions (three walls and a roof). The rule of thumb is to ensure that the fish has safe place to hide and relax. Those critters need the place where are not visible from three points (think about it as a hiding spot in the corner). Fish will be happy if can focus on monitoring other animals activity with three directions covered by whatever obstacles (can be arch, stone, big coral - you name it, just to break the line of sight)
- I am aiming at smaller species and did some research on behaviour of the reef small critters. I found that most of them would prefer hiding in "natural" cracks of the rock - including the blenny I have in my cube (and where there was zero aquascpaing applied). I recreated the same, giving a bit more space
- I also made some space for adding additional pieces of hardscape to compose into the general vibe and feel. Basically I will build up more natural looking hideouts, corners, obstacles. But first I want to see how the flow would be
- The hardscape itself is just a rock. I also planned how I will add some corals (mostly montis) to build up additional layer of hardscape for fish use. Like right back will build an extra shade, left side is set for LPS. The way I am trying to arrange it is also to apply simple pones like gorgonians to make good looking background which would also be functional.

Lets see how would that work and thank you for your post! Let me know what you think with this more context!

Greetings from Ireland!

 

[jda]

One of my tenants on fish disease is to provide stacked up rock where the fish can get away to totally and feel totally comfortable. I do not treat for parasites and I do more of a disease management thing. It works for me and I have had no signs of disease for decades. The arches and caves that people make are not good for fish and can add extra stress to some of them - not all care about hiding and will stay in the open all day.

 

[exnisstech]

Nice!

 

[MikeCRK]

One of my tenants on fish disease is to provide stacked up rock where the fish can get away to totally and feel totally comfortable. I do not treat for parasites and I do more of a disease management thing. It works for me and I have had no signs of disease for decades. The arches and caves that people make are not good for fish and can add extra stress to some of them - not all care about hiding and will stay in the open all day.

You have really nice SPS in your tank - well done! You also have fishes which I am not planning to have (my tank is 48G). Can you share a photo of your full tank for me? From what can be seen in your build thread, you are not into aquascaping but rather SPS+fish. What fish you were referring to?

Stacked up rocks to me are simply looking fake (different likes - I get it). Through decades of taking active part in freshwater aquascaping I did learn few tricks. Like for example, the way of hiding things (such as caves which you cannot see on the photo) or even hiding something in the plain sight I really want to use the cross-experience, as I found so far that marine culture is very hermetic and quite often orthodox. I understand it as stability is the key, many reef keepers are old school etc.

Hardscape is the skeleton of the project, which will grow on its own (well with keeper's help obviously), so pure rocks after a while will turn into different habitat to critters living there. My philosophy is to not only use the rocks but also corals to build as friendly place as possible.

Thank you for taking part in discussion!

PS. I will try to find nice representation what three point approach means for getting sanctuary to fish. If I fail, I will try to prepare my own to share.

Please take into account, that the complete hardscape will be visible after sand will be added and additional small pieces be placed there

 

[jda]

Most clowns, gobies, blennies tend to say out in the open more. Tangs and angels like to just get away and totally hide from us and their tank mates - these are the ones that you have to worry about more with diseases even though they all can get/have them.

Captive bred fish don't seem to care as much. This is the largest difference between FW and SW, IME, where wild fish of the same species did tend to hide a lot more than CB ones. The CB fish never had to hide and never had hiding places.

My three part disease management system is 1). introduction tank to get fish acclimated and eating, 2). live rock to introduce a diverse microfauna to eat diseases when they fall off of the fish and 3). real hiding places where they can totally escape and calm down. This is not eradication. I feel that all three of these things are as important as another.

I don't care about aquascaping. Once the corals get going, you cannot see the rock anyway and you have to constantly remove, add, chisel and break that none of it lasts for long anyway. The first time that some coral that you don't like ends up on the top of one of those arches and you have to break the rock out of there to get the coral out, then it will change a ton. In the end, if I am looking at rocks instead of corals, then I have lost.

 

[MikeCRK]

Most clowns, gobies, blennies tend to say out in the open more. Tangs and angels like to just get away and totally hide from us and their tank mates - these are the ones that you have to worry about more with diseases even though they all can get/have them.

Gotchya That what I was suspecting, my setup is small, I want to get a small school of cardinals as a dominant species. Some wrasse, blenny and goby too. We will see what life will bring (it is extremely hard to get good stock in Ireland). These small species are mostly rock dwellers, so I prepared some cracks for them (apart from two caves).

Captive bred fish don't seem to care as much. This is the largest difference between FW and SW, IME, where wild fish of the same species did tend to hide a lot more than CB ones. The CB fish never had to hide and never had hiding places.

Agree! My last three setups were with wild stock imported from Colombia (Rio Negro basin). They act different to the captivity-bred ones for sure! More fragile and quite easy to catch diseases.

My three part disease management system is 1). introduction tank to get fish acclimated and eating, 2). live rock to introduce a diverse microfauna to eat diseases when they fall off of the fish and 3). real hiding places where they can totally escape and calm down. This is not eradication. I feel that all three of these things are as important as another.

Yeap, all that is well on my list, no rushing (I have a small cube I experiment on) - not being afraid!

I don't care about aquascaping. Once the corals get going, you cannot see the rock anyway and you have to constantly remove, add, chisel and break that none of it lasts for long anyway. The first time that some coral that you don't like ends up on the top of one of those arches and you have to break the rock out of there to get the coral out, then it will change a ton. In the end, if I am looking at rocks instead of corals, then I have lost.

The idea is basically to get rock overtaken by from the bottom up by zoas, palys. mushrooms etc. Something like ivy going up the tree trunks. The spacing in the back, I am hoping to fill with some plating montis. Gorgonians in the background for having nice background with breaking the overall patterns. All the islands and shelves are meant to be populated by softies and LPS. As I do not know how will that go, I got some space for SPS on top to get them more PAR. The light I am going to use would be AI blade grow at start, That will allow me to stack more later if needed. But for the start there is no need I'd say

 

[jda]

I know that you have built your structure, but making it segmented with rods and easy to replace might help you down the line. Somewhere in your prized Krak zoas might be a Texas Trash Paly that nobody sees... it grows, takes over and starts to kill your more prized stuff. You try and scrape, kalk and otherwise kill it and nothing works. Eventually, you decide that the rock needs to come out. If you can just separate the rocks, then this is better because cutting or banging on them with a hammer makes the whole thing crash. Once you have colonies of nice things touching one often will start to overtake the other, so you have to decide which one you are going to remove.

In the end, if you are really good at growing these corals, the rocks will come and go as much as the corals do.

Also, stacked up rubble behind the rocks is a great place for pods, worms, starfish and other beneficial microfauna to make condos.

 

[MikeCRK]

This is actually 5 pieces setup, it looks like one, but is not all pieces at the bottom are also made with tiny hatches (I spent some time carving it hahaha).

Yes, I learnt it on the small cube, have some invasive corals there, put them the way to see what will block them. Lost easy SPS due to paly poisoning... when I had to clean it from some sponges...

I kept some small porous builders to do "a rubble" at the back. But need to wait until I kick start with water to see the flow. So far it is set with margins to be able to get to the glass easy

Thank you for a really very helpful discussion!

edit: gimmie a sec, let me try to show the back of it.

Here it is:

Side/back (visible):

From the top (partially visible), this is the rubble and the back of the cave:

And here is the view under the arches:

I am much better with dry natural rock than all the fancy artificial ones as those are much more porous and irregular, giving plenty of space for worms and other critters. In that rubble I think I will set a small colony of dusters.