Feedback on Scape

[sonfahig]

Hi there - brand new to reef keeping and working on my first tank. I wanted some feedback on my scape before I epoxy it all together. I’m going for something like a bonsai aesthetic. I have a 32 gallon Fiji Marine AIO that I am planning on placing it in. The green tape is the dimensions of the tank itself and the blue tape is the bounds I was trying to stay within. Planning on putting a couple of clowns, a pistol shrimp/goby, and an aqua cultured mandarin along with soft corals and LPS and macro algae. Hoping I posted this to the right thread. Let me know if you have
suggestions please!

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Welcome!

Really liking the aquscape but I do have one concern. The top! I've made the mistake of building the aquascape to look really cool and it be to tall for corals. You need room to mount corals and then they have space to grow. By the looks of your tape, even a small acro frag mounted top of rock is going to be close to the waterline. Plus the amount of light those corals are going to get it going to be extreme!

Overall beautiful but I would bring the height down.

 

[edsbeaker]

^ This for sure!
Also the right side looks like it may be close to the side glass and you may have a difficult time having room to fit in a glass scrapper.

I love the shelf rock look, though. Really well done!!!

 

[kevgib67]

Really beautiful design but as mentioned above, no space for corals and top since they would just below the water surface. Oh and by the way 0-H!

 

[NyteRyder1]

I’m a noob so take this with a tablespoon of salt, but echoing what @revhtree said, I’ve heard Ryan in the BRS videos say to leave 6 inches of space above the rock work for coral growth. Given where your tape is located, I’m not sure that is possible.

That said, I like the look of the scape.

I’ll be following along as I’m interested in the advice you receive and how things develop.

 

[NyteRyder1]

Really beautiful design but as mentioned above, no space for corals and top since they would just below the water surface. Oh and by the way 0-H!

I-O!

 

[sonfahig]

Not sure the video is doing the best job capturing the dimensions -

Does this still look really off? I know it’s a little high I’m just not really sure how to fix it. For what it’s worth I’m not planning on having any SPS in this tank - want to get some more experience before I tackle anything like that.

 

[NyteRyder1]

What is the clearance between the top of the rocks and the waterline? From the still photo I guess about 4 inches but it’s hard to judge. I’ll leave it to more experienced reefers to suggest if that’s enough.

 

[edsbeaker]

Here’s some perspective that may help.
The photos below are one of my older softies tank from 2018. My rock work only went 1/2 up the height of the tank as you can see from when it was first scaped.

The second photo is showing some softies that are still basically frags, and will double in height very quickly.

The third I had gorgonians that grow extremely tall. They are 2” from the surface.

If you are going to have things like mushrooms or zoas at the top you will be fine with the rock height. If you want some leathers like nepthea, toadstools, Kenya tree, etc. you will probably want at least 8-10” clearance to the water line… not the top of the tank.

So, It really depends on what you are thinking you want to keep.

Hope this helps a bit!

 

[sonfahig]

Thanks that helps a lot! I took a closer look and I think there is a section I can break in the middle and remove a few pieces while keeping the majority of the vibe I was going for. Really appreciate everyone’s advice! I’ll post a new pic once I get it squared away

 

[sonfahig]

Scape height is now at about 9” vs tank height of 15.75”

 

[BryanM]

Definitely better!

 

[edsbeaker]

Looks great! You will be much happier finding places to mount coral now!