Thanks Lawnman!

Watch out indeed~

Free swimmers in a 10 gallon is tough. Awesome rock, good luck!

Wowza!!

I'm comin for ya Maria lookout~

Here's another shot, but they all look the same with only rock lol.


Here's a morsel for those asking about stocking:
One thing I will be adding to the tank is...
















GSP muahahahaha. Are you scared now?

i love the bonsai idea! good luck!

I like anything that is unique and this is definitely unique. Going to be really interested to see how you fill the rock out with corals. As far as fish are concerned that are free swimmers. Maybe some Green Chromis or other damsels. Would be interested to see what a wrasse would do in here too, though they usually stick to the rocks. If you weren't as concerned with the swimming, some Bangai Cardinals would be pretty sick too.

Yeah I've been considering Damsels. One of my LFS usually stocks the more unusual varieties; black and white striped, jewelled, etc. for $5 each.

I was also looking at a rainford goby or yellow assessor though I dunno how large they get.

I'm ready

!! GSP !! *fainted*

The GSP has arrived! Not really arrived, just plucked the mat from my 50g and cut it in half. It's placed right onto the glass bare bottom. It's still a bit traumatized from my tank crash last week and hasn't opened up to it's full glory.

It's gonna be like a grassy meadow <3

I love the direction you are going so far with your tank...very zen like!

I was hoping that was the direction you were going with this. I didn't want to say anything in case you hadn't thought of it, you know, since you are competition!

Awesome idea. I love it.

Thanks Maria ~

I did want to go with a more minimalistic "zen" approach. One of our LFS has a 180 that looks totally different than any large tank I've ever seen. The large acro colonies are "bonsai'd" and trimmed to look totally different than their natural "bushy" counterparts. This was the beginning of my inspiration.

TBH after spending 3-4 hours a day cruising N-R, RC, R2R, etc., I feel like I've seen it all and everything is starting to look the same. I think it's time we start thinking outside the box and approach reefing differently. This tank is a small experiment and opportunity to try some new ideas in aquascaping and making a reef more like a sculpture.

Just got back from the LFS and they had two cool tiny little fishes that I couldn't resist, so I added trimma and court jester gobies. The court jester is quick but looks just like this

... and here's the trimma. He is SMALL! Those are closed GSP polyps around him (I had to turn on the light to get the pic).

Blue cloves w/ them GSP's?

Damn am I that predictable?

Heh. It was a suggestion.

OMG I love gobies!!! I have never seen the Trimma gobies at any LFS near me

He is so cute!! I had a Jester goby once and he didn't make it, I was bummed.

I'm still waiting on a dendro/sun coral.

Yeah, I've got blue clovers, yellow tipped clovers, and green eyed daisies ready, just haven't had time to get them in yet. The centerpieces will be stony corals though and they're still secret! At least for a few more days...

Here are some of my inspirations from when I was brainstorming for the contest.







Dude, a non-ps concept was one of my top 3, but the potential water quality issue was a minus and my whole tank will be filled with frags of stuff I have so budget or not, this set up will cost me $200 actual out-of-pocket.

The dendros and suns are staying in my 50g for now...

Darn. I understand.

wow awesome idea, cant wait to see it completed.

Your aquascape is definitely incredible... the idea of rethinking aquascape is inspiring. I'm hoping to get my first live rock this weekend and I'll be aiming for something creative... though this is way over my head! I'll be following your tank's progression for sure! Good luck!

This is going to be awesome!

the aquascape

Very creative! At first I was wondering why no sand but now I am like . I cant wait to see what else you do.

*watching*

its like your capturing a miniature of a middle section of a reef (i hope that came out cohesively lol)
seriously though without the sand and then the way the rock is laid out its like a diorama of a section of the reef! i like it

Thanks for all the comments everyone, I truly appreciate the feedback. I've only been dabbling in aquariums for 8 months so all of my tanks have been inspired by folks like you on sites like these.

I was a little iffy about the barebottom thing, but I was much happier with the idea of painting the bottom black. My end goal is to be able to remove the liverock structure fully during cleaning and scrape the entire box with a razor to prevent coralline creep. I am actually very pleased with the cleaning so far. The light detritus stays suspended and is captured by the ac110; it's a lot of flow with a great spread for a 10g tank. I won't even need a supplementary powerhead. The heavier detritus and life rock bits just get sucked out with a turkey baster.

My vision for the bonsai reef is GSP "grass" on the bottom glass. "Flowers" will spread across the base rock and include as many types of clavularia as I can find. I'm thinking a mix of the larger clove polyps; green tipped, green eyed daisies, and orange tipped cloves with a healthy cover of blue clovers mixed in will create a cool perspective. Since they all grow via runners, I think they will all blend and not choke each other out.

I'm still working on stony corals for the branches. My original idea was a Montipora study including 3 different digi's, 3 different caps, setosa, undata, and spongodes. However, all those frags were in my 50g when it got nuked by the defective heater and I can't afford to re-buy those pieces. Either way, I hope to finish shopping this week and start introducing the focal corals this weekend.

In the meantime, my ATI Sunpower came in today so I'm gonna fiddle with that tonight over the 50g, then stare and drool.

Very nice setup. I'll be watching, for sure. Watch that budget!
Good Luck!

watching

you know, there's a freshwater planted tank out there with this exact same scape and concept.

i thought you were inspired by that.

That's cool, do you have a link? I've never really been into FW but it would be worth seeing.

Going to try and get my clavularia in this morning before work.

Do you have a pic?

Yeah one sec...

Here are some shots of the 180 at one of our LFS "The Reef Shoppe". The pics aren't the best and I didn't take them, but the tank is amazing to see in person. It's very open feeling with minimal LR. The colonies are huge but there aren't tons of them. There's a green acro left of center and a green hydno right of center that have been pruned and trained to grow in unnatural and unusual formations.

They also keep all sides pristine and clear of coralline. Several aspects of this tank inspired me and I am building on those inspirations for my nano.

I was able to add 3 clavularia frags this morning. The branches up near the light and getting some serious diatoms so I may scrounge up some chaeto and a small CUC from my other systems tomorrow. Ammonia and Nitrates still showing 0. I'm going to have to superglue the GSP on the left right to the glass, the flow from the ac110 dialed all the way down is still scooting it around.

I was also able to grab a clear shot of the rainford's goby. Here are today's shots:

Blue clovers

Green clovers

Green eyed daisies

i don't remember the link to the original thread off the top of my head, and i didn't feel like digging it up, but here's a picture:



(Sorry, it's horizontally inverted, but same concept... i think...)

Wow, awesome aquarium! That's gonna look a lot better than mine lol. I suppose I could go the same direction with some sand and macros, but I haven't been able to convince my girl that "seaweeds" are cool yet...

Thanks for sharing Mew.

Haha, that's why I said hammer + long strand gsp = win!

I don't know why I'm helping competition.

Cloves!!

Ok so I had my money on Maria but this is just awesome! Sorry Maria, you better come up with something real good to compete with this .

that is going to be beautiful. fml

This is gonna be beautiful. I think you've given me some inspiration on some aquascaping when I get my tank up and running.

The tree is a tonga branch right?

really pink zoa. for flowers on the tree gonna look sick. its like cherry blossom

I think Candy Apple Reds would look nice...

speechless

great concept - what do you plan to encrust the branches with?

Looking good. It'll be interesting to watch this tank grow out.

here ya go http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumap...nura-60l-3.html
it really is cool watching the thing evolve

I <3 this tank already

Very cool concept pisces!! I see your vision in full bloom

really cool idea. post a fts

~ Thanks maria, kramer

Prolly won't look as cool as I'd hope as my whole sps collection was decimated two weeks ago in my main system. Nearly all my funds went into re-stocking that tank leaving me with few choices for the branches. If you are familiar with my 50g thread, you could probably figure out which pieces are going in the branches.

The 'tree' is made from 3 small pieces of fiji rock for the trunk and 3 pieces of tonga branch held together with a lot of epoxy putty and superglue.