Thank you very much!!
It makes the time I spend on my reef even more worthwhile when others enjoy it too.
Merri
PS to melliot re: aquascaping.
Welcome to the Board
I put my sand in first, and I moved my rocks around so much for the first couple of months (before I had any inhabitants besides crabs and snails) it's funny!
I just sort of fit it all together like a jigsaw puzzle, keeping in mind that I wanted lots of holes for the fish to swim thru, (sounds silly but I wanted my fish to have lots of places to swim thru and play around -- I imagine it could get pretty boring being cooped up in such a small space, like, forever
) ....and for visual interest. ....plus as a bonus it's good for water circulation. I added my live rock slowly, a few pieces at a time, and was picky about which ones I selected.
I remember being shocked when at my LFS a man came in and said, "I'll take 50 pounds of that rock," without even choosing which pieces he wanted! hehehe Now I realize I was probably a real pain-in-the-butt to the LFS guy, but he was really nice about it anyway.
As far as piecing it together, make sure that the rocks are wedged together really well, or they will topple, and even crabs, snails, sea urchins and brittlestars can knock over rocks. There is an underwater epoxy that you can buy to help keep them in place once you have them where you want them. I recommend it, especially for your higher rocks. It won't withstand a hard knock, but helps, plus it can be broken easily when you want to move them.
There are some good books about aquascaping, and the different landscapes you can make for your reef, depending on what type corals you want to put in it.
The New Marine Aquarium by M. Paletta has a section on it. He also suggests the use of PVC pipe to support the rocks. A good idea, tho unfortunately, mine was all finished before I got the book....I would now do a few things differently.
My best advice would be to just keep working with it until you think it looks great even without fish and corals in it. And good luck!
Merri