GotCrabs
Member
Is that George Farmer's "One Pot Iwagumi"? Great hardscape and amazing end result isn't it.
I sat down again today and pulled everything out again, put the tank aside and started playing with hardscapes on a towel on the table, came up with something I was pleased with then tried to transfer it to the tank and the tank was too small, so had to work around that, end result is something I'm pretty happy with, added a few smaller stones here and there, to make things look a little more rough, un-natural.
I'm thinking too much for sure.
Is there any possibility you could buy more rocks ? My biggest mistake was buying a few kilo of seryiu,ohko,pagoda, bassalt when I first started in the hobby and I'm left with a box full of rocks that just don't fit togetherinstead of an iwagumi a nice piece of redmoor or manzi driftwood would complement those rocks well, and let you get on with the business of growing plants
Yeah I could get more stone, but it would have to be by mail as the closest aquarium store is roughly 4 hours away, I think I've come up with something I'm really happy with.
Hi GotCrabs,
you have a good selection of rocks there with some nice textures. You may be lacking a main stone though which makes scaping difficult. To overcome this try grouping a couple of stones together to give the illusion of a larger focal stone 'Oyaishi' and work from there.
As i said earlier you may have to alter your layout to get something your happy with.
In the first image the supporting rock to the left of my Oyaishi stone just didnt work, however i liked the rest of the layout so i played nice with a few more rocks until i found something that worked better.....
Its about trying to get rocks which compliment each other, work from a focal rock (or cluster rocks which fit nicely together) and your layout will begin to take a shape from which you can add complimentary rocks. You can add mounding, or slopes to your substrate to gain height if your rocks rant tall enough and try to use the rule of thirds for focal points
Stick with it, it'll come together in the end.
Cheerio,
Ady.
Thanks Ady, that hardscape is great, love it, I know what you mean though, as said above I sat down and pulled everything out and had another play around with a scape, added more smaller stones here and there for an un-natural look, a lot of rock crammed together, I've come up with a hardscape I'm quite happy with and am looking forward to fully planting out with HC, perhaps some Dwarf Hair Grass at back, also removed most of the substrate I had in the tank, made a level surface instead of a slope and worked with that, added a few cups of substrate to the back to create a background for planting, end result, I'm happy with what I've come up with, I'll post photos once planting is started and I'll create a journal also.
Thanks all for the help, much appreciated.
