How to make an aquarium - Part 4 designing the layout

So I'm a little bit fed up of looking at a completely empty fish tank so this weekend I went out and got myself some substrate. I opted for Manado soil from JBL however I was wanting to get Flora-base by columbo  but nowhere near by stocks it and the shipping costs make it just too expensive for me. Manado soil is a clay based substrate free from N and P but has a nice grain size and a fairly good CEC. I will be buying a small amount of base layer substrate before I add this though.

I decided to open up my bag of lava rock that's been sat in my shed for over a year. Double bagged in thick heavy duty rubble sacks. To my surprise one of the rocks had some very healthy growth of java moss. For it's shear determination to stay alive this will be featuring in my finished setup. 

The toughest moss in town

So I got the rocks out and started messing about with them trying to find which pieces had the most character, which would make good base rocks and so on. I split them up in to sizes as well to make it easier to find the piece I wanted when I started trying to make a composition.

My review platform

I didn't want to mess about trying to put together a scape in my aquarium just now because I don't want to damage the glass and I figured this might take some time, putting stuff in and pulling it back out again; so I put this template together. If you look closely you will see a pencil line on the base, this is the outline for the tank.

Birds eye view

If you look down from the top here you can see I've done something very strange, the pile of rocks on the left come to almost exactly half way, this kind of goes against basic design concepts. If you look at the enclosed part of this rock pile though, where the planting will be you can see that comes to about 1/3 of the way across. The secondary pile of rocks on the right hand side also comes about 1/3 of the way from the edge.

I like lava rock it has so much character

When you look at the composition front on you can see (going from left to right) a steep rise that peaks about 1/3 of the way along followed by a gradual drop along the rock line to the other side of the tank. Now I know this composition looks like it's going to be one of those valleys with cosmetic sand running down the middle but I plan on using Alternanthera reineckii sp. mini to fill this valley creating a floor of red. On the left hand side I want to use Proserpinaca palustris. Bolbitis heteroclita will be attached to the rocks to fill in the gaps. On the right hand side I plan on using either Ammania sp. bonsai or Pogostamen helferi sp. wicked.

However even the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, so who knows.

Stay in touch and watch out for my new video.