Aquascaping a cube

[AndyL]

Hey all,

Well with the boiling of the nano, maybe it's time for an upgrade... I've got 3 24"x24"x16" tanks sitting here empty, Thinking of turning one into the new 'nano'.

I can't see a decent way to aquascape them though, I've always prefered tall tanks - so this is a bit of a departure for me.

Anyone have some ideas on aquascaping a cube tank?

[geopod]

Boiling of the nano........ Andy.....what happened?

george

[Ruth]

Andy for my 44g cube I just made a center "mountain" of rock. When I re-do this I am thinking about building a square structure out of pvc and stacking the rocks on and around it. It should help to open up more of the bottom and make building caves and overhangs easier. I think that cubes are easier to aquascape as you are not looking at one long structure and have more options. For my new tank which is a 300g cube I decided to go with a center overflow which I am thinking about also building some pvc structures to stack rocks on and have it viewable from all 4 sides. Still in the planning/equipment gathering phase for this tank so far. I have the tank, lights (most of them) and 2 Tunze 6200. Will be interested to see what you come up with for this one.

[AndyL]

Originally Posted by geopod

Boiling of the nano........ Andy.....what happened?

Stuck heater... Was off the thermometer's scale that goes to 35c - no survivors.

[Fish]

Dang sorry to hear about that one Andy. Can I ask what kind of heater it was... I know it can happen to any of us...

I have a 7.5 cube and the rockwork is in the center so it is viewable from all four sides.

- Chad

[Matt]

We struggled a while with ours, and tried a bunch of options, but we settled on a "reef wall' at the back, with a little crescent extending out left and right -- but mainly a wall. That means that ours is optimized for front viewing, but it looks pretty good from the side. We put a powerhead behind the "wall" to keep dead spots to a minimum.

Matthew

[Delphinus]

FWIW, on page 2 of this thread you can see how I tried to make a "flat top" bommie in my cube tank. If it weren't for the anemone I would have made it a more tapered mountain. I got lucky, I had visions of needing to make a PVC or eggcrate substructure to keep it open but I managed to make it fairly open yet stable just by stacking. There are lots of caves and you can even see through to the other side in places. My cucumber is constantly in and out of the caves. Anyhow I've always been partial to the bommie style aquascaping and I think a cube lends itself well to this style, although if done right the backwall style can work well too.

Snoop Dog did an awesome job of aquascaping in his cube, which you can see on page 6 of this thread. His seems to be a hybrid of the bommie and backwall styles but what I really like is how he managed to make so many coral attachment shelves. If I was going for a SPS tank I'd want to make it something like that, that's awesome.

Anyhow HTH. cheers

[deacon hemp]

If i had a tank of your dimentions i'd definetly do a scaled down copy of the rainbow lagoon II.I might try and do it in the future as its my idol tank. Japanese tanks are the best!

http://www.zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4865

[AndyL]

Suppose I should have clarified, while I do love the center spire look - the tank will be in a corner, and i'd like a better use of space (I have a coral habit...)

Love snoop's aquascaping, it works in a true cube, but this tanks only 16" high, which is what really works against it.

The rainbow lagoon does nothing for me personally...

Andy

[digital-audiophile]

This is how I have my new cube aquascaped so far. I still have 10-15lbs in my 10g that I want to transfer over so I might have to change this a bit.. but so far so good IMO.