# Custom Rimless Tank -- Start



## Steven_Chong (Mar 17, 2005)

In the past I've tried to use digital drawings to give me a sense of what I wanted to do in an aquascape. This time though, I decided to do a painting instead:









The motif here is a stream running through the forest in Miyajima-- it's fall, and the maple trees have turned a bright red. For this I wanted a deeper tank.



















Measurements are 12"x12"x8"!! Super deep!! lol

First I used a good amount of old aquasoil from my 60cm.









Initial Hardscape:









And the finally . . . 









You can't see at all in there!! Haha!! More later . . .


----------



## Tankman (Feb 19, 2006)

Looking forward to a better photo once the water clears


----------



## lljdma06 (Sep 11, 2005)

Me, too. What plant did you use to capture the red? 

By the way, that's a pretty good painting. I like the use of colors. What medium? Looks like oils to me, but I could be wrong. 

llj


----------



## Steven_Chong (Mar 17, 2005)

I can't wait to see it when the dust settles too. XD

You got it about the paint-- it's oil.

As for the tank, to be honest my initial impression is . . . I don't like it. 

But after thinking about it a bit, I think this is just one of those lay outs where it won't look good at all until the stems are trained, and the real trick to the end result will be in the shaping of the stems because there are so many. 90+% of the plants in this tank are red stems.

Plant list:
Nesea sp.
Ludwigia arcuata (right now in green emersed form)
Rotala rotundifolia (normal, not green)
Combomba furcata

The plants are listed in their order in the tank from front to back. With this tank, I tried to do some "perspective" tricks in the planting.

When you do a painting (or when you look around you) things that are close appear "big" while things that are far away appear "small." Because of "perspective" things get smaller and blurrier as they recede into the distance. You can see it in this painting too-- I used the texture of the oil paint to really "pop out" the leaves closest to the viewer, and tried to decrease texture as it recedes.

One of the questions that pops up from time to time in aquascaping discussion is, "Considering the well-known rule of perspective, why do we always plant small plants in front, and large plants in back!?" It's very contrary to a very old composition rule after all. Generally, the answer has been that since aquascaping is "3d," there should naturally be a recession from the front to the back, according to how far away from the viewer the plants are.

My issue with that arguement, is that most of us aren't going for the natural size and depth-- we're trying to make the aquarium look a lot bigger. If that's the case, than maybe (_maybe_ since I don't really have the experience to _know_) it's better to plant to give the illusion of perspective. This is what I've tried to do in this lay out, and what I will try to do in the 60cm once the rest of the plants for that tank arrive.

For me, the trick here is leaf size.

In the front, I've used nesea-- a relatively large-leafed plant. I think it's short stature (relative to other stems) also makes it suitable for this "mid-ground" position. The fact is that the plant is practically in the foreground since there's no other plants in front of it (though I do plan on some moss by the edges of some rocks and by the roots of the nesea), but I think it's size will make it work out.

Next is the major "foundation" plant of the tank-- Rotala rotundifolia. A sturdy, easily trained plant with the history of excellence in aquaria. It might be hard to really get it to go red, but I think it's not only the cheapest pick, but the best pick as well. It's semi-creeping abilities will be important for pulling it together.

On the left there's a group of ludwigia arcuata. They will give some contrast to the rotala and nesea, and act as a highlight since I'm planning on letting them grow taller than the others.

The rotala takes up quite a bit of room until the very back where cabomba has been planted. The cobomba will be thickened, but in the end allowed to grow to the surface in the back corners of the tank. It's job is to "fuzzy" the background, in an attempt to give the illusion of blurring decreasing leaf size with distance. Getting this to work will require that the rotala and cabomba thicken and work together-- in other words, be pretty testing of my trimming skills. XD

The tank is a "U" shape tank. Though traditionally aquascapers haven't thought about perspective with plant choice, the "U" shape lay out with larger plant groups on the left and right shortening to disappear into a "vanishing" point in the background has always been our tip of the hat to acknowledge this idea of perspective. My hope is to combine these ideas to get a lay out that truly looks much larger than it is.

As Amano mentions in Nature Aquarium v.2, small tanks are the most demanding when it comes to the need to make visual complexity.


----------



## Jubs (Mar 24, 2006)

Very nice! I wish I had a way to envision what I want like that. I am getting better at it but nothing close to where you are coming from. 

What is the lighting you are using over the tank?


----------



## Amsterdam (Sep 17, 2006)

Bravo ! Stephen
I have to say, i admire youre skills and creativity.
And looking at the pace of youre projects, youre amazingly energetic.
Please keep the projects comming!


----------



## slickwillislim (Oct 11, 2005)

Nice tank. I really like the deep shallow tank. Definetly a good idea if your trying to accomplish a sence of depth through different layers of stems. 

I am a fan of small leaves plants in the back. I think the smaller leaves leading to the almost furry furcata is a very unique and hopefully lovely looking idea. I think you are right about the trimming being key. I hope you can accomplish this with such a small tank. I would think a bigger tank would allow more plant choices and make it easier to fade back. Cant wait to see pictures of the end result. 

I like the hardscape too. Maybe a little symmetrical but I can't see the underwater pic to well. The rocks in the middle do a good job of resembling a stream.


----------



## tao (Jun 15, 2005)

I like the idea, the only problem I can see is that they are different kinds of plant. An oak tree a long way away looks different than a pine tree close up. so stem size would also be a problem. 

I thought the reason that we plant small plants in front was some combo of the jump from dutch to amano (the invention of the covered foreground) and the fact that you cant see a small plant hidden by a big one.

How about the idea of a standard of some kind, a feature (rock/wood/killer!plant) that draws your attention early on and forces you to measure size on everything else in the tank based on the standard), which works well if it can give you get depth to other things in the tank. The rocks could really pull this off well, if they were different sizes. I also really like the mixed integration with the cabomba.

Am frightened of U-shape design. Its very symmetrical.


----------



## Steven_Chong (Mar 17, 2005)

My second impression is . . . I like it 










A step back:










Wild cherries










The dust's settled, the plants from Aquaspot world arrived so I put some moss in some of the nooks and crannies in the hardscape in hopes they'll grow in with time. I also moved the hardscape and plants a bit-- it really was _too_ semetrical. I'm much happier with it now.

Even though the tank's just started now and the stems need training, I'm already liking what I see-- from this I think the theory of receding stem size is really going to work!

BTW-- since the ASW plants came in, I also finished planting the 60cm so look for an update on that soon.

Jubs-- You flatter me. It's nothing special. You'll definitely get there if you try. Continuous practice-- you can teach anyone to paint or draw if they'll work hard. As for the lighting, it's 26w (2x13w) PC made by Jalli.

Amsterdam-- The thing about doing a lot of work is just a need to get it out of my system (in referring to my winter work).  I've been preparing for the 2 aquascapes for this spring for a while!

Will-- It WAS too symmetrical. Hopefully the adjustments I made were enough to fix that a bit. I thought you might be a fan of the perspective idea. I remember we had some discussions about it before.

Tao-- I'm really impressed at the intelligence and insight of your post considering that you'd expect someone with 9 posts to be a beginner.

I thought that someone might mention that different plants look different no matter what (the whole oak v. pine idea). However, we have no option (short of genetically altering plants to be smaller) except to use different plants or give up the idea of trying to use perspective altogether. Therefore, I might as well try it. 

There is an evolution to foreground plants, however recently people have taken a step back from that as well! The invention of the sand foreground that is. Sand gives an even lower level to foreground plants and can create the illusion of water. It's true that you can't see a smaller plant hidden by a bigger one, which is why when making different "sized" plants, I tried to use the concept in regard to leaf-shape, and not height. Even glossostigma is a relatively "large" plant in leaf-shape to cabomba. Aside from perspective play though, this scape also has the goal of imitating a miyajima stream. For that purpose also, the plants have been chosen to give the textures and atmosphere of that place.

The idea of standard is very cool. Why don't you try making an aquascape with that in mind? Unfortunately, I don't have a huge stash of these rocks to choose from so I used what I had.

U-shape doesn't necessarily mean symmetrical. U-shape rerfers to any layout with background on both sides coming to a vanishing point-- however, one side may be made bigger than the other. As for this layout, I tried to make the hardscape less symmetrical (though it's actually quite hard to do while still leaving adaquate space for plants), and it will come down to trimming to make the stems less symmetrical. 

Thanks all, and please continue following this!


----------



## humper (Jan 26, 2007)

Wow Im amazed. I need to start reading up on this wonderful hobby. Nice work and thanks for helping me get hooked on the hobby.


----------



## Skelley (Mar 4, 2006)

Beautiful!


----------



## apistaeasy (Jul 16, 2004)

It's interesting to see you push the boundaries a little Steven. I'm interested to see how this goes. Right now I'm having a hard time making my mind up on it - kinda looks a little chaotic to me right now. I do like the hardscape though


----------



## Steven_Chong (Mar 17, 2005)

Thanks guys.  Maybe I can help in the envisioning part. When preparing for this lay out, I looked through a lot of photos, especially this guy Theolonius on DA:

Theolonius.deviantart.com




























I got to say that looking at his photos really helped me to bring the ideas for this lay out together.


----------



## standoyo (Aug 25, 2005)

I think reference is great.


----------



## nswhite (Aug 25, 2006)

Very nice nano. Good luck


----------



## Steven_Chong (Mar 17, 2005)

sorry, double-post


----------



## Steven_Chong (Mar 17, 2005)

I've gotten some training done, and I'm really starting to feel like I have a little forest in my room.





































Just trimmed the cabomba so it's not much to look at from the front . . .


----------



## eklikewhoa (Jul 24, 2006)

Very nice!


----------



## TNguyen (Mar 20, 2005)

I've alway enjoy reading post like this. First come inspiration, planning, and executing it in bringing it to live. Great job!

Thanh


----------



## feistyfish (Aug 13, 2006)

the varying shades of gray really bring out the sense of the river. great job once again.


----------



## Jubs (Mar 24, 2006)

Very nice I love the wild cherries!


----------



## gnob (Feb 8, 2007)

what can I say..
Youre truly an artist..
Nice Tank Steven


----------



## slickwillislim (Oct 11, 2005)

Its only been two days and I already want an update.

Its looking good. You have some nice growth. I can't wait to see the final product. The rock work has really grown on me, its one of my favorite tanks that uses river rocks. 

I am not a big fan of Cabomba, it tends to get leggy and there are much better looking plants for fine leaf. IMO... I hope you can change my mind with this tank.


----------



## SpaceBug (Jan 10, 2007)

I don't know how I missed this thread! Very inspiring!


----------



## Steven_Chong (Mar 17, 2005)

slickwillislim said:


> Its only been two days and I already want an update.


Ask, and you shall receive.





































I made a few changes besides it just growing in-- I cleaned up the foreground a bit, getting rid of some AS there. I tied the moss in the closes foreground to sticks so I could train them a bit better (and also put some smaller sticks on top of the moss in the back so they wouldn't be as wild). I also received some ludwigia brevipes yet. You can't see them that well yet, but they'll grow in. You can see I planted a small bunch of them as in the front right corner in front of the Nesea.

I think we should change the plant finder to say:

Ludwigia Brevipes
Position: Foreground Plant.


----------



## slickwillislim (Oct 11, 2005)

thanks for the update. I like the brevipes, its a cool plant, nice addition.


----------



## Steven_Chong (Mar 17, 2005)

No prob, yeah I'm glad I added it to. I originally planted some arcuata, but only 1 stem survived the shift to aquatif form so . . .


----------



## Kelley (Aug 27, 2006)

Steven, this is definitely my favorite of your two tanks this semester. I can't believe how BIG it looks!


----------



## Steven_Chong (Mar 17, 2005)

I'm really enjoying this tank too so far Kelley. I'm starting to get algae in the other tank (on the moss of course-- it's just not as fast as other plants), and I'm not dosing anything.

This tank is going through 1/4th a hikari algae wafer a day (shrimp finish all, wow), a squirt of step 1 every other day, and small dosing of potassium. Still no algae. I'm not seeing as much growth out of the Nesea as I'd like but other than that, this tank is a lot of fun.

The nice thing about having 2 though is I tend to get all excited and focus on one, and then when I'm done with it, I turn around and I get a nice surprise as to how far the other's progressed!


----------



## Steven_Chong (Mar 17, 2005)

Time for an update-- though kind of an old one. These photos are from last week, I just haven't gotten around to posting them. I trimmed the tank after these photos.





































Still working to get those damn stems more red . . .


----------



## Afroturf (Apr 15, 2004)

Great tank as allways Steve, I love the cabomba in the backgroung but i do agree that the nesaea needs to become more red. One other little thing did you trim the moss in the stream it could do with a little trim just to keep it a little more compact and neat, but it is doing a very good job of impersonating a fern.


----------

