With the popular aquascaping store and company "Green Aqua" recently releasing a 3 part series on the production of their sci-fi inspired aquascape, it got me thinking about how widespread this new type of aquascaping could actually be!
There are a few tell-tale signs of Sci-Fi Aquascaping and I'll be listing them here as well as my attempt at making one myself.
1. There is a concept art designed with a sense of the unreal
Concept art is a beautiful flourishing type of art that comes straight from the mind of an artist. With Sci-fi aquascapes in particular, look for concept art that either escapes the blandness of reality or find one that compliments it. These aspects will garner a particularly interesting aquascape. In the Green Aqua three part series, they provide their concept artist with high quality stock photos of the plants they plan to use. This way the concept art is realistic with the limitations of aquatic plants.
2. Play with Perspective
Perspective aquascapes play with your mind. They're difficult to create at first and are undoubtedly a showmanship of skill. A way to train is to take an empty tank, and use a mix of sand and rock. Play with the different ways the rock impacts your perspective. The aquascape above goes to the extreme by making their tank look as if it stretches on forever and gives us the impression of being very very small.
3. Pick something true to you
Aquascaping is a representation of your soul. You express what you want the world to see in your tank. Whether its a floating rock with monte carlo dangling from it or a star wars crash site covered in moss, your expression is you and you alone. I do advise you to incorporate plants and nature into whatever environment you plan(t) to create because of the obvious benefits to live plants and their importance in maintaining balance in a live plant tank.
Here is my attempt at a sci-fi tank. I decided to tackle this with my 9-gallon Fluval Flex.
I purchased this large Eevee figure from a convention and I'm not sure how well it will hold up in the aquarium environment but I'll update this post if I notice any sort of negative impacts on the tank. Here is my attempt at concept art using photoshop and some stock images I was able to gather from Google.
My inspiration for this tank was creating a multi-layer environment by building up the substrate and holding it back using the front layer of seriyu stone. I want to use hydrocotyle tripartia to carpet in front of the rocks. I really LOVE hydrocotyle tripartia but I can never get it to stay clumped or really carpet. Other than that, I planned to use dwarf hair grass in the midground carpet. Behind the stones, I'd love to introduce a Alternanthera Reineckii red. Then, I'm taking a stab at the popular moss wall trend.
This is the finished product. You never really realize how little space you actually have! I added the moss balls because the shrimp love them and they add another layer of depth to the aquarium. I didn't want the figure to be the center of attention but rather a complimentary feature. The moss wall will obviously need time to grow in and the rose quartz was a quick addition simply because I had it and I haven't had the opportunity to use rose quartz in an aquascape before.
I'll post updates as the tank continues to mature but in the meantime, I highly recommend trying out the scifi style. If you do, shoot me an email and I'd love to feature your tank on my instagram story @LyudaAquatics .
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