Reef Design / Live Rock Placement

[yodatravis]

I am looking for some ideas, opinions, or websites concerning reef design and live rock placement. (especially for nanos)

I setup my fresh water aquarium (12G Eclipse) about a year ago and found a ton of usefull info on substate design and plant / wood / rock placement. This was very helpful in creating a natural looking aquascape for my FW setup. However I have yet to find a Saltwater equivalent.

I will be starting to set up my first SW tank in about a month ( 24G JBJ Nano Cube ) and I have done a ton of research, so I know all about how to physically set up a nano: how much rock, cycling, water quality, corals, lighting, filtration, etc. But if anyone can help with reef aquascaping I would appreciate it.

 

[blastprimo]

I haven't found too many places like you are talking about but I thinking about the same stuff and started doing some searching for scuba pictures because that is about the ultimate guide. Sorry I don't have links for any right now but if I find some of them again I will post. I would also go through the picture section and see what people have done that you like and don't like. You can get some pretty good ideas like that.

 

[Vafik]

Are you looking for rock work designs or are you going for a natural habitat for you fish?

 

[yodatravis]

When I thought originally about having an aquarium I was pretty turned off by rainbow colored substrate in tanks with scuba men, plastic/fake looking plants, and 20 fish all from different species. Then I discovered websites that showed natural looking underwater scenes that used live plants and real wood with just one or two species of fish.

My current tank has natural river rock, a cool looking cedar driftwood, live java fern, amazon swords, filigree, 5 tiger barbs, and 1 oto. I'll try to get a postable pic up soon. It's not the greatest tank ever, but it looks similar to something you could see in nature. (although technically the plants and fish are from different parts of the planet)

My new tank will be live rock, corals, crabs, snails, shrimp, and probably an ocellaris, a domino, and a watchman. I want it to look like a reef you could stumble upon in nature.

Only having a couple of fish and making the corals the focal point, will go a long way in the natural direction, but how do I place the rock/ corals to actually make it look like a reef instead of a pile of rocks? That is my basic question.

 

[skipm]

Try to find pics of a reef from the area hwere the fish you want to keep come from. As fas as the layout of the LR, remember that nature (through waves, current, and storm action) is the one who lays the LR out on a reef. The main thing to try and duplicate is the type of reef, whether it be an atoll or a lagoon type reef. It also may be good to try and keep fish all from a certain part of the world, for example you may want to try and duplicate an indopacific reef or a carribean reef. You would then want to add fish and inverts native to those areas.
One thing I try to do when adding LR to a tank is to make several swim throughs and caves, it seems to help keep things looking more interesting and not just a random pile of rock. HTH, Skip

 

[Vafik]

Reefs are formed randomly. Just new growth over old. It's all random so there really is no TRUE reef design. Depending on what fish you plan on keeping if any would depend on your rock work. Some fish need caves to hide in and some need rocks to perch on. Same goes for corals. Some corals need more light then others so a nice shaded over hang would work. It's not uncommon for ppl to redo there rock work many times before coming up with something they like. Since reefs are HUGE you really cant recreate them in a small nano tank. Well maybe thats not true since a nano more or less looks like the sandy shallows of a reef. But since they are made for viewing from generally the front the rock is stacked in the back and not spread out evenly in the foot print of the tank. Tanks seem to be more 2D and not 3D. Best thing for you to do is look up as many pics of Nanos and natural reef formations till you come up with something that catches your eye.

 

[yodatravis]

I just found a lil'bit of what I am talking about. "The Conscientious Marine Aquarist: A Commonsense Handbook for Successful Saltwater Hobbyists" has a page on what I am talking about it shows several different basic layouts for reefs. Although, $40 is a lot for a book that just tells you a bunch of stuff that you can learn by just browsing the net ... so I didn't buy it.

 

[blastprimo]

You can get a lot of the info in that book on the net however, it is a good book to be able to referance instead of spending the time searching on RC and sites like that. Just my 2 cents and justifying my purchase of the book a few years ago. The internet information has some advantages and disadvantages just like the books do. If you combine them both, I think you can make more educated decisions regarding your tanks.