Walter,
For me, aquascaping is one of the most exciting things about putting together a reef. I take my time doing it. Sometimes it'll take two mornings to get the right look and have the rock REALLY stable.
Over the past few months, I've had a lot of practice aquascaping my 72g bowfront, the tank of doom where I've had horrible luck with fish and disease
Now that my fish are in a Q-tank, I plan on going back into the 72g to rearrange the rock yet again. The two main factors I keep in mind are the habits of the fish I intend to keep in the tank and having enough places to put the various mushrooms and xenia I already have.
The fish, in the case of the 72g, are a yellow tailed angel, a blue sided fairy wrasse, as well as fish I have not yet decided on. The two fish I currently have like lots of passages through the rockwork, so I stack the rock so they can go back and forth, up and down, and back to front through the rock. Plus, I want at least one open area so I can get a good look at them when I need to. The new fish, whatever they will be, will probably also be chosen to utilize the intricate rockwork tunnels and passages.
This makes for an interesting challenge to utilize all my rock (no sump or refug) in such a way that the fish will be satisfied with their home, once they are out of QT, and to have obvious and stable places for my shrooms and xenia.
My 42g hex reef has the rock relatively tightly packed with a lot of space on the sandbed under and around the main rock structure for our goby. The other fish in that tank are a pair each of skunk and ocellaris clowns, and a blue-green chromis that shools with the ocellaris pair. Corals range from green star polyps to a few lps and a couple of sps. For the corals, I make sure that there are stable ledges or places to wedge the lps that have stalks.
I have aquascaped tanks one day to find out that, overnight, the structure wasn't as stable as I thought and corals/rocks have fallen over so I've had to take the thing apart and put it back together again. Oh well, at least I like the challenge
Anyway, take your time. Aquascape your tank a few times until you get it both looking right and having it stable enough to withstand the flow of your powerheads.
And take pics for us when you're done
