Aquascaping question

jonh5150

jonh5150

New member
I see all these great designs and I may want to redo mine. My question is , I have some epoxy that I got from my LFS for gluing in frags. Is it a good idea to put a little on the rocks to keep them in place or is it really not necessary. Right now everything is just stacked.
 
If you want to defy gravity with your scape, use the epoxy. Otherwise a solid stacking is plenty to keep the rocks in a nice pile.
 
it all depends on how you want it to look. some 'scapes need epoxy/putty to be stable and other don't. i usually mess around with a bunch of different angles and formations without anything first, but if i stumble across a cool formation that's not stable then i'll use whatever i need to make it work.

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i got lucky enough that almost all of my rocks "locked" together really well so the only place i need to add some putty is in the middle right at the back (the white rock to the left of the split in the shade).
 
The thing that sucks about gluing rocks together is it is complicated to move them later if there is a problem. Keeping in mind that is is usually easy to break rocks free that are glued together but a PITA. I have my rocks (in my 29 gal nanno) all sitting on a pvc frame I made. I drilled holes in the rocks and put zip ties to pvc frame. other rocks are stacked freely on top of zip tied rocks. It is a double edged sword either way you look at it there are benefits and downfalls.

I chose the pvc frame method because I read a lot about detriment (food and poo ect.) getting trapped between the rocks and sand bed which in turn can become toxic over the years. I have minimal amounts of rock touching my sand bed.
 
If youre new, you will probably be changing things around alot. I advise against gluing/epoxying your rockwork together.
 
I've tried various ways of aquascaping. I've used PVC pipe, cable ties, pin and epoxy, etc. and to be honest I've never been extremely happy with any of them. They can be a pain to clean and I have found that when they are all tied together they can all tip over and come crashing down together. One time I built a PVC structure, cable tied lots of dead live rock to it, used that spray foam you can get at Home Depot, and covered it in live sand and an extremely expensive epoxy paint that was specifically for marine aquariums. It looked kind of cool but when I was putting it in my tank I didn't notice that it made my Gold-heart Trigger jump out. When I found it the next day I pulled the structure out and never used it again.

One of the BEST aquascaping articles I have ever read is at http://www.h2oplusomething.com/inde...72:aquascaping&catid=52:aquascaping&Itemid=64

I have been working on an aquascape based off of the ideas in this article and have been able to do it without anything but plain old stacking. I did saw a few areas on the bottom of my rock to make them completely flat. This made them extremely stable. Now I have IMO a really interesting layout from a composition perspective and it is not going to come crashing down unless I am trying to make it come crashing down. I'll post pictures as soon as I can.

I think the MOST important thing required is TIME. Take the time to try lots of different configurations until you get one you like that is also (no pun intended) rock solid. Make sure that you set it up in a way that if you have to pull off one of the top rocks the whole thing doesn't come crashing down.
 
I forgot to mention that I made sure the rocks that were touching the bottom are touching glass so when my Dusky Jawfish digs the rocks won't be affected.
 
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