Aquascaping

So over the years I've learned how to keep fish, then how to grow plants, and all the tips and tricks and D.I.Y. methods that come with these things, but one thing that I think goes overlooked on this site is aquascaping.

Its such a vast topic, I know, but the thing about it is that for the most part, it can not simply be researched. I know you can find things like "Don't center your focal point", and "tall plants in the back and short plants in the front". But thats not what i'm getting at.

What I want to know is how do people make these huge hills with out a massive rockslide, how they make mountains and trees and rock ledges. All these things are more methods and secrets we develop over time and we need to start sharing them.

I know most beginners will probably not be interested in this at the moment because they will be to busy trying to get their amazon swords to grow, rather than where to put them, but I think once everyone on this site starts to realize the importance of aquascaping and how much there is to learn about it, we can turn our crappy bedroom fishtanks into something we're finally allowed to display in the living room.

I mean don't you look at tanks like these and think "Wow, I suck."

Ps. I was going to post this in the aquascaping section of the forum like I would on other sites, till i realized we don't even have one!

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Comment by Peter on August 13, 2013 at 1:29am: i know what you mean. But aquascaping doesnt really have rules to follow. these amazing tanks that make our tanks look like we just found out wat plants are take alot of uptake to be picture ready. That said.....

Ive read how you have to use geometry in ur aquarium like soo. theres other ways to plan out ur tank layout to be geometric and nice. but as u can see w/ the pic i linked some times thses rules dont apply to the layouts.

Comment by alex9j4m on August 13, 2013 at 2:25am: Yea I just am getting board with my tanks with a flat ground and a row of plants and some drift wood. I dont think that for something to be considered a aquascape it has to be like these prize winning tanks that take daily maintenance, I think we just need to add some hills and rocks and stuff and just make it more interesting. But thats why I brought this up because I know most of us on this site like to do two things, 1) Do every thing for cheep and 2) keep everything pretty maintenance free. So what im hoping is people share their techniques on how to keep a successful aquascape thats interesting and low tech, because to be honest it would be easy to scape hills with ada soil or eco because its all just one thing but for us dirt users how do we scape hills with out making a mudslide, having them flatten out, or avoid making the plants take the impossible journey of getting through 3 inches of gravel before they reach dirt. Those are the kind of things I'm interested in learning about.

Comment by Marnie George on August 15, 2013 at 2:12pm: i love your tanks guys !!! Peter is that really yours? Alex, yours is stunning too ! im LEARNING and would love to have us a once a week online aquascaping session, with those who are learning like me and those who have a bit more experience. id love to post the pictures of what im working on and get some input on what i can do to get more impact.

Comment by seth roach on August 17, 2013 at 6:52pm: dont forget a lot of said aquascaped tanks are done for a set amount of time and tend to be for a show or pictures and once they get overgrown look just like most of our tanks or more often than not broken down...also a lot of them are probably spending absurd amount of money on there tanks. that being said yeah there pretty awesome. different strokes for different folks.