This is a topic that is really a personal preference topic. At the end of the day, you are the one who has to look at your tank day in and day out, you have to like it… no one else!
It doesn’t matter if you don’t follow the rule of thirds or the golden spiral, all that matters is that you enjoy looking at it and it is suitable for the fish you are planning to keep.
For those of you who would like to read more about technical aquascaping, I would suggest the following site:
https://www.aquasabi.com/aquascaping-wiki_aquascaping_aquascaping-with-the-golden-ratio
For the rest of us, its all about your choice. But how do you make your choice? I spent hours upon hour looking through google images, Pinterest, Instagram, and posted a request on a large Facebook group for inspiration and I saw some lovely tanks. I won’t lie, there were some shockingly bad (in my opinion) tanks, but when you read what the poster had to say about their tank, no matter how ugly I thought it was, they loved it! And often received comments from other posters saying they thought it was beautiful too.
The problem I found was that I saw elements of tanks that I thought were amazing, but there was always something I didn’t like about every tank I saw. There wasn’t one tank I could copy.
So, I just built my tank. I stuck the rocks in and moved them around until I was happy… I walked away, came back and found myself unhappy with some aspect of it.
This cycle continues even now… Two weeks into “aquascaping” and I am just about ready to launch the rocks at the tank. Every time I walk away from what I think looks great, I come back just to hate it.
I have settled with the design you can see in the pictures in this post. And I say settled because I still don’t love it! I like it, but I don’t love it. The reason, I tried to build a bridge, the bridge collapsed… now I really want a bridge and have no sensible way of building one.
I have in my head that once this tank is full of beautiful corals I will then love it, that’s why I don’t love it because it’s just a pile of rocks. I guess, we wait and see. Maybe I will learn to love it, maybe I won’t. I wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to tell me it’s no good, I put my heart and soul into it!
I guess the point of this post is, no matter how hard I try to get the “perfect” look in my tank, I can’t. It’s not for lack of trying, I just can’t get it to look right, and you know what, maybe that’s ok? Maybe, it’s ok that it’s not perfect because now I have more of a reason to keep an eye on it and keep thinking about how I can change little bits here & there to try and achieve perfection. And isn’t that the point of a hobby? To keep you interested, to keep you engrossed and take up your spare time?
I can live with my “aquascape” if you can call it that. No one else has to look at it and love it, just me.
This wasn’t the post I wanted to write about here really, I wanted to be able to part with such wisdom that you would all have your perfect scapes… But I can’t do that. The only wisdom I can part with is…
If you love it, who else matters! Just enjoy your tank and enjoy this hobby!
