Lesson 2 : use of rocks and wood
Rocks and/or wood makes an aquascape not only interesting, but also gives you a guideline for planting and arranging your plants.
Personal preference is very important. E.g. I do like wood very much and rocks are so-so.
Further the combination wood - rock is difficult and wrong choices in rock can ruine your aquascape.
It is easier to start with wood OR rocks and not both !
Zen is used to place rocks in a certain position / height, based on Japan theory (Zen). It is often used in Japanese gardens en therefore a link with some examples of arranging stones :
example stones - japan
If you compare these "Japanese" arrangement with a picture of Amano,
you can see the following (roughly) :
Note : this picture is "borrowed" from MARC and I only used it as an learning example.
You clearly can see some use of focus-points (see lesson 1) and height-lines and the use of rocks in a triangel, which can be seen in Japanese gardens (link above).
Also follow the lines of the rocks : the eye is forced to watch the biggest rock.
In a bigger tank you can use 2 groups of rocks, mostly in triangel or use 3 rocks in the left and one "bigger" rock (shaped as a triangel) on the right.
Watch also that the rock has a "face" pointing towards you. So you can actually see on top of the rock !
Example 2 :
Wood
Wood is a very interesting material to use. You can plant javavern or javamos on it or use it bare.
The shape is very important and must really help you in your aquascape. Interesting pieces of wood are sometimes hard to find.
The next example is interesting because there is use of branched wood. But discover how it was used !
All the branches are pointing towards the strong focus-point and even the height of the branches are matching the height-lines (0,618 rule, see lesson 1).
Even the plants in the background were used to help this aquascape-wood-thing !
Wood as substrate for plants is also very interesting and is powerfull because you can lift certain species in the "air" ehhh, water.
Look carefully again : branches are pointing to the javavern. The javavern is the focus-point in this aquascape.
Also see that the height of the javavern matches between the height-lines (see 0,618 rule).
Also this is an example of using rock & wood together. The smal "stone" (see picture above) is carefully planted towards the right wood / javavern - in line.
The combination wood-rock is tricky. Use always matching colors or use rocks that have colors not dominating the wood !
Gr. PJAN