Inspiration needed to rescape juwel lido

[JenBird]

I’m so uninspired by my current setup. It’s kind of just been left to do whatever now.

Looking for some inspiration but it’s hard as the lido 120 proportionally is so tall. I’m going to be upgrading my lights and finally setting up co2 so that should open my options up a lot more.

So any inspiration/ideas for a tank this shape would be greatly appreciated

 

[Simmo]

I’m having the same torment with my Lido 200! I really like yours, the areas of clear water in particular, this is something i need to add to mine. I’m not much of a scaper but you might benefit from some chunky hardscape? Also, perhaps some tall vertical elements with plants or hardscape would work? Floaters add something IMO, frogbit is a fascinating plant and easy. I will follow with interest!

 

[shangman]

I know it must be hard cos the low and wide tank style is really in, but I think this is a lovely proportioned tank, with it's own advantages. I think at the moment what isn't work is that the tank is tall, but your substrate is flat and close to the bottom, so you can't really take advantage of all that space, other than with tall plants like the balansae. It looks like you have some wood that goes halfway up, but I think to really make it look awesome you should be bold and do big, dramatic hardscape that goes at least halfway up the tank and provides different interest at different heights. Your plants look really healthy, so you don't have to worry about that! A really good example of this is the <Spring Passage journal>, where they use dramatic large rocks to create height, but still leave a sliver of the whole back showing which is super dramatic.

Some more inspo:

You could also look at longer tanks and just.. take half the scape as inspo, like this one:


Or something like this:

Another option, which is potentially crazy and not at all what you want, but you never know... is that you lower the water level to 30-40cm, and then use the above water as a terrarium/paludarium. I totally get if that's too drastic, but these tanks are beautiful. This <splash tetra paludarium> is a great example, and with a lid you could use really amazing high humidity plants. Can send more pics if you're into it.

 

[mort]

My brother has the same tank and as it's so high we made the use of that height as a feature like in some of the great scapes above, simply with some thin branches that go near to the water surface. They have plants two thirds of the way up on then so it doesn't block the flow too much.
Some wood/stone to break up the flat substrate would also help add a little but I think its a nice looking tank so wouldn't do anything to drastic.

 

[Tim Harrison]

It's a great creative opportunity. Non-standard measurements, whether shallow or tall can look really effective if scaped appropriately. Go big and bold and you can't go far wrong

 

[JenBird]

Thanks so much guys!! Yeah I definitely need more either bare branches or rocks. There are hilariously some in there even a branch that goes all the way to the top but truly the plants have taken over completely.