Paul B
NJRC Member
OK, not that I am an expert on anything but I am old and have an old tank that I think is natural looking. Of course that is my opinion and it certainly is not the nicest tank or most natural looking tank but I thought it would make for good conversation.
There are plenty of really nice looking tanks out there, some are wall to wall corals and some are rather sparse but that doesn't matter as long as it resembles a small part of the sea. Not all of us dive but we have all seen pictures of underwater scenes and in all of those pictures thate are a few things we "rarely ever" see.
One of those things is that we hardly ever see is a hole through the ocean where we can see our dog or the 1955 Oldsmobile our neighbor is working on in his driveway. To remedy that, either put a dark background on the back of the tank or have the rocks cover that up as it is the largest distraction in a tank that I can think of. Of course if your tank is a room divider, that is a different scenario and looking through that type of tank adds a degree of interest and is totally fine. But a tank against a wall or back yard window looks very un natural if you can see those things.
There are exceptions, if Christie Brinkly lives next door then it is actually acceptable to look through the tank at her.
The next thing that detracts from the naturalness of a tank are those stupod cement plugs that frags come on. If you don't see it in the sea, it really should not be in a tank. Just break the thing off the plug and glue the coral to a rock. That glue is not very strong and the coral can be moved again if it outgrows that rock.
I won't mention sunken chests or submarines but there are things you can add that will inhance the look. I have 9 antique bottles in my tank, all of them have coral growing on them.
Don't like the look of bottles? That is fine but resist the temptation of adding something where the size is wrong, like a WW2 aircraft carrier. Unless you have a tank large enough to put in a real aircraft carrier. You can however get a dish, screw, part of a torpedo or some part of that ship that will look more natural. The New York Aquarium has a ship wreck tank but it is an interior part of one room in a sunken ship and it looks very natural.
Another no no when trying to make a realistic picture of your tank are those lettuce clips. That is another thing I have never seen in the sea.
Just remove the thing for the picture, the tangs can wait.
We tend to pile rocks all over the place and the sea is like this but in a tank that is not the best thing for circulation so I built structures that hold almost all my rock off the substrait. You don't see this in my tank, but although my rockwork looks massive in the pictures, it is actually more like lace with more open spaces than solid rock. To get this result I purposely darken the back of my tank by putting a light shield over the top back of my tank. I use an algar trough for that that is about 4" wide and prevents my lights to get to the back of the tank but before that, I just used plywood. The sea darkens as you look through it or at least goes blurry and that is the look I am going for.
Here is a spokes model I hired in Hawaii recently. No matter how hard you look, you don't see any Oldsmobiles or bicycles past him.
There are plenty of really nice looking tanks out there, some are wall to wall corals and some are rather sparse but that doesn't matter as long as it resembles a small part of the sea. Not all of us dive but we have all seen pictures of underwater scenes and in all of those pictures thate are a few things we "rarely ever" see.
One of those things is that we hardly ever see is a hole through the ocean where we can see our dog or the 1955 Oldsmobile our neighbor is working on in his driveway. To remedy that, either put a dark background on the back of the tank or have the rocks cover that up as it is the largest distraction in a tank that I can think of. Of course if your tank is a room divider, that is a different scenario and looking through that type of tank adds a degree of interest and is totally fine. But a tank against a wall or back yard window looks very un natural if you can see those things.
There are exceptions, if Christie Brinkly lives next door then it is actually acceptable to look through the tank at her.
The next thing that detracts from the naturalness of a tank are those stupod cement plugs that frags come on. If you don't see it in the sea, it really should not be in a tank. Just break the thing off the plug and glue the coral to a rock. That glue is not very strong and the coral can be moved again if it outgrows that rock.
I won't mention sunken chests or submarines but there are things you can add that will inhance the look. I have 9 antique bottles in my tank, all of them have coral growing on them.
Don't like the look of bottles? That is fine but resist the temptation of adding something where the size is wrong, like a WW2 aircraft carrier. Unless you have a tank large enough to put in a real aircraft carrier. You can however get a dish, screw, part of a torpedo or some part of that ship that will look more natural. The New York Aquarium has a ship wreck tank but it is an interior part of one room in a sunken ship and it looks very natural.
Another no no when trying to make a realistic picture of your tank are those lettuce clips. That is another thing I have never seen in the sea.
Just remove the thing for the picture, the tangs can wait.
We tend to pile rocks all over the place and the sea is like this but in a tank that is not the best thing for circulation so I built structures that hold almost all my rock off the substrait. You don't see this in my tank, but although my rockwork looks massive in the pictures, it is actually more like lace with more open spaces than solid rock. To get this result I purposely darken the back of my tank by putting a light shield over the top back of my tank. I use an algar trough for that that is about 4" wide and prevents my lights to get to the back of the tank but before that, I just used plywood. The sea darkens as you look through it or at least goes blurry and that is the look I am going for.
Here is a spokes model I hired in Hawaii recently. No matter how hard you look, you don't see any Oldsmobiles or bicycles past him.
