Easy, unusual 125g aquascaping ideas?

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Shay

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Dec 28, 2002
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I’ve had some beautiful tanks. I’ve done plants. I’ve done wood. I’ve done rocks (300 lbs in my 10y/o 125g right now [stupid, I know]).
I’ve got an itch to try something less organic (and less time consuming). I visited a public aquarium in London several years ago and was impressed by a few sunken-city tanks I saw there. Sunken-city is great for a massive aquarium, but I don’t want miniatures in my tank. I want something inorganic that fits at full scale in a 6-foot tank. I can fire ceramics, so there might be an idea there.
A flower-pot tank would be heading in the right direction, but I want my tank to be more full. I like lots of stuff and a few fish.

No CO2. I've got a baby at home and don't have time to spend every weekend with my arms in the tank.

Any ideas?
 
You could do a pollution themed tank. Plastic soda rings, glass bottles, and Styrofoam plates. That's on my bucket list :thm:
 
As gabe said, a pollution tank is a good bet for "inorganic" but you could also try out a Glass Tank. That is, a tank with glass pillars, glass bottles, glass fish (either live or fake). Another idea is one I've always wanted to do but never been able to manage: Ancient Ruin Tank. Stone pillars, some half broke, others toppled over, with tiles that are cracked or partially buried (or both), a roof that is partially caved in... that would also be able to have some smaller plants (java moss to replicate vines, maybe some smaller plant like Anubas Nana to be overgrown bushes) but mostly the tank would be rock and sand. I'd suggest going for a bright rock/sand combination for such a tank.
 
Ancient ruins is probably a good idea, if you know how to fire the columns, amphorae and other similar pieces. It may behoove you to pick a theme if you go this route, such as Egyptian or Greco/Roman.
 
I've considered ruins, but I can't think of a way to do ruins at 1:1 scale. Columns in a six-foot tank? Not going to fit. Not even column bases would fit (18" front-to-back). A fallen-over, partially-destroyed statue arm and head would be cool, but nothing I have the resources to pull off.

I want something attractive, so trash (though it's a thematically interesting concept) really isn't under consideration. There must be some abstract tank-décor examples out there, but I haven't found them--not large ones, at least.
 
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Maybe a bar? Martini glasses look good with sand in them. (Forgot the breeder who did this for more ground surface ares) Beer bottles, liquor bottles, neon beer logo and wood paneling as the background lol. You could put colored resin in the bottles and shot glasses to look like they're in use. A nice shelf along the back for the bottles. Idk how to make the substrate look like a table tho
 
Glabe said:
Maybe a bar? Martini glasses look good with sand in them. (Forgot the breeder who did this for more ground surface ares) Beer bottles, liquor bottles, neon beer logo and wood paneling as the background lol. You could put colored resin in the bottles and shot glasses to look like they're in use. A nice shelf along the back for the bottles. Idk how to make the substrate look like a table tho
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That was happypoet who did that in a goby tank, I think. I like the Lego idea. If you're a gamer, then you can use a poster of a game you like or game case labels for a background and action figures to look like they are combatting the fish. Another thought, small piles of rock and trash metal pieces would look like a wasteland and be fun to watch fish swim in.
 
Doing a 1:1 scale makes it pretty difficult. You will probably have to do a small chunk of something large. One idea would be a shipwreck. The background of the tank could be a section of the boats hull with a giant crack or hole in the middle with the anchor and debris spread around the tank. That would be really cool but could be difficult to replicate and expensive depending on the materials. Metal would not work because it would contaminate the water but you could get around that by making it with a material (cement?) that looks like rusted metal or metal with stuff growing on it.

An idea for ancient ruins could be a stone wall on the back of the tank and a sand bottom with broken vases and stone bricks scattered around. Maybe even add some gold and hieroglyphics to make it Egyptian themed!
 
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