Hate it hate it hate it.

[atoll]

OK some people will love it. Now move on.

When I aquascape I do it for 3 reasons primarily for my fish then corals and finally and much less importantly to the other 2, myself.
Oh! I tried the minimalistic look when I first set up my latest tank and while I was waiting for more rock.

I moved all my rock from the previous Red Sea 250 into my new D-D 1500 Pro reef so couldn't do much more until I aquaired extra rock. I tried various scapes with the rock I had to hand but nothing worked for me. Strange as it all look so good in the Red Sea 250.

Back in the day we always had plenty of rock in our tanks so you may suggest that I am stuck in the 80s but not a bit of it. I did try but hated most of the minimalistic scapes I had seen and still consider them a fashion fad, well I hope so.

Plenty will disagree with me but I have good reason for my likes and dislikes. Do I need to go through them yet again here? I have stated my reasons many times. But the first 2 considerations for my reefscape say a lot about them.

I copied the following pic from a Facebook group all of the comments at least so far are in favour and very favourable to it. Me, well as you may guess I hate it. I haven't comment on the post, the guy hadn't asked for comments so I refrained had he done so then I may have had to.

 

[SteveMM62Reef]

I have Snorkeled and Scuba in the Florida Keys, Biscanye Bay, Bimini, Oahu, on the Big Island. I’ve never saw Arches on a Reef. Saw Rock Out Cropping of various sizes, surrounded by a mixed media, rubble/sand beds.

 

[vetteguy53081]

OK some people will love it. Now move on.

When I aquascape I do it for 3 reasons primarily for my fish then corals and finally and much less importantly to the other 2, myself.
Oh! I tried the minimalistic look when I first set up my latest tank and while I was waiting for more rock.

I moved all my rock from the previous Red Sea 250 into my new D-D 1500 Pro reef so couldn't do much more until I aquaired extra rock. I tried various scapes with the rock I had to hand but nothing worked for me. Strange as it all look so good in the Red Sea 250.

Back in the day we always had plenty of rock in our tanks so you may suggest that I am stuck in the 80s but not a bit of it. I did try but hated most of the minimalistic scapes I had seen and still consider them a fashion fad, well I hope so.

Plenty will disagree with me but I have good reason for my likes and dislikes. Do I need to go through them yet again here? I have stated my reasons many times. But the first 2 considerations for my reefscape say a lot about them.

I copied the following pic from a Facebook group all of the comments at least so far are in favour and very favourable to it. Me, well as you may guess I hate it. I haven't comment on the post, the guy hadn't asked for comments so I refrained had he done so then I may have had to.

Looks good and its your creation, not the ocean

 

[Dburr1014]

I have Snorkeled and Scuba in the Florida Keys, Biscanye Bay, Bimini, Oahu, on the Big Island. I’ve never saw Arches on a Reef. Saw Rock Out Cropping of various sizes, surrounded by a mixed media, rubble/sand beds.

I wanted to say this but didn't know how. Thanks, you did it perfectly.
Kinda what I have, 2 main column like structures with caves in them. Couple branches leaning on them also. Plenty hiding, plenty swimming...

 

[WVNed]

It's not what I would do. It makes me thing of Dr Seuss.
I did what I wanted to do in my reef. Other people should do the same. I have 240 pounds of rock in a 240 gallon tank.
It doesn't look like a wall. My fish can swim behind, above and through it. Except for the ones that got big. They just have to go behind to hide now.

 

[John Neuzil]

I hate it too. Also didn't comment on Facebook because he didn't ask.

 

[Idech]

Not my style but I can see why some people might like it. I like my fish to have caves to live in.

 

[MaxTremors]

It’s very unnatural looking. As mentioned, you just don’t see arches like that in nature. One way to kind of keep the arches but make them look more natural is not connecting them (ie have a piece sort of jut out but not connect to anything). If it were my tank, I’d make 2-3 bommies (piles of rock) with lots of holes and areas for fish to hide). As you get corals, the empty sandbed areas will fill out, and you can add little islands here and there. But the NSA arch look just doesn’t look natural or provide places for fish to hide, which is very important for fish to feel comfortable and exhibit natural behaviors.

 

[MoshJosh]

I don't hate it but don't love it either. . . once it's covered it coral it all looks good. . .

 

[LovinlifeinGuam]

Yeah, I agree with the majority, it looks very unnatural...not that anything is necessarily wrong with the arch idea but maybe just the overly even distribution of rock or something along those lines just doesn't look quite right...also I personally prefer real live rock which I feel adds to the natural look automatically

 

[atoll]

Looks good and its your creation, not the ocean

Not my creation in fact the opposite.
This is my current tank and reefscape. Space behind the reefscape, lots of caves overhangs and space to swim.

 

[Pneumatic_Addict]

Lights are off so I suppose a video screenshot will do.

I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. Definitely not a fan of the aquascapes like you posted, but also think some of the negative aquascapes are stunning. The “shelf” SPS scapes can be pretty sweet too.

I do think less is more sometimes. But I still try and put the fish first. That left structure has a cave on the bottom left and right. Right structure has a larger cave on left. The female scribbled and my larger regal flare up occasionally, so it was important to have structures the smaller angels can duck into.

 

[Paul B]

I don't think the scape means much until you see the finished product. Here is mine as I was aquascaping when I moved here almost 5 years ago. I put everything in vats of seawater and threw it in a truck for the 60 mile ride.



My 6' reef is composed of tunnels where the fish can traverse the entire tank without me seeing them. The entire structure is lifted off the bottom on thin concrete "pillars" that I designed for that purpose.

The base or backbone of my reef are these "rocks" I built out of real rock and cement to keep things off the bottom.
The two of them are about 5' long together. (thats a 4X6" piece of lumber holding it up)





I aquascape, like Atoll does for the health of the fish. I know that if the fish can see me, they are not happy.

My reef looks like this now and I can see under the structure in many places all the way to the back so the fish have plenty of places to hide and the mandarins/pipefish have places to hunt.

 

[SoggyNW]

I think it will look fine after it gets covered in coral. That being said, there are a few points that I think can made.

First it looks very 2 dimensional. It's a side to side aquascape without much going on front to back. Hard to do much about that if you don't have a very deep tank.

Second, the whole structure is pretty uniform. Uniform height, uniform arches, uniform density. Uniformity in in an aquascape doesn't look very natural.

Third, it's all one structure and doesn't really draw the eye. If it were broken up into a few different sized islands it would be easier to focus the eye.

I'm a big fan of the negative space aquascape when it is done we'll. The challenge is that it is hard to do well. People should look at the rule of thirds, photo composition, forgeound-backgroud composition, etc. The saving grace of the whole thing is that once the coral grows in most "bad" aquascape look pretty good regardless.

 

[kados]

Looks good and its your creation, not the ocean

100% agree with this statement

 

[Tyler Flynn]

OK some people will love it. Now move on.

When I aquascape I do it for 3 reasons primarily for my fish then corals and finally and much less importantly to the other 2, myself.
Oh! I tried the minimalistic look when I first set up my latest tank and while I was waiting for more rock.

I moved all my rock from the previous Red Sea 250 into my new D-D 1500 Pro reef so couldn't do much more until I aquaired extra rock. I tried various scapes with the rock I had to hand but nothing worked for me. Strange as it all look so good in the Red Sea 250.

Back in the day we always had plenty of rock in our tanks so you may suggest that I am stuck in the 80s but not a bit of it. I did try but hated most of the minimalistic scapes I had seen and still consider them a fashion fad, well I hope so.

Plenty will disagree with me but I have good reason for my likes and dislikes. Do I need to go through them yet again here? I have stated my reasons many times. But the first 2 considerations for my reefscape say a lot about them.

I copied the following pic from a Facebook group all of the comments at least so far are in favour and very favourable to it. Me, well as you may guess I hate it. I haven't comment on the post, the guy hadn't asked for comments so I refrained had he done so then I may have had to.

I've never liked that style of rockscape. It looks so fake and forced, but everybody has their own likes and dislikes

 

[i cant think]

There is only one type of minimalistic scape I will ever do. Other than that I prefer the “rock pile” look… in the wild you never see perfect looking scapes, you’ll always see some rocks that just look like they’ve fallen onto eachother. I tried to replicate this in my 4’ tank, and i personally love it.

As for the minimalistic scape… If I were to do one it would be similar to this.


I wanted to do this for my 3’ nano (And still do). Where you just have the basic pillars and once you get large colonies you begin to get the true look of if you were to go swimming through a reef.

 

[Waters]

I kind of feel like it spells something.....I just can't figure out what :).

 

[doubleshot00]

I recently went to a guys house that had a 120 gal tank with an aquascape like what the op posted. The fish had absolutely no where to hide. They were all trying to hide under one section of rock several times. He said he's owned reef tanks for years and wanted a minimalist rock work. But his fish/tang gang looked very stress. Literally no matter where you looked you could find all the fish. Mines not perfect but my fish can hide.

 

[Aqua Man]

Looks like a poodle on the far right!