more aquascaping help

This is my tank a month ago. I now have all live plants, and no airstones.

I have converted it to a planted tank - no fake plants at all anymore (yay!). I know it's going to be a while until things fill in, but I'm really not happy with the over all layout. The cave on the left there is big, and leaves a plant free zone. I'm probably goign to get some java fern for it though. Anyway.

So here is the question. Do you thing that it would look better if I moved the cave to the middle of the tank, and instead of being a corner thing, stretched out lengthwise? Then I could plant more heavily on the sides easing up in the middle. I could also get another piece of driftwood to balance the sides out (im wierd with symetry. I like things to balance out.)

Oops. It helps if you post the pic

Well, i love real plants, so its good to see you have moved away from the plastic crap and gotten urself some real ones!! YAY.

As for your question, its up too you. Personal taste is alot of it in this hobby. But can u post some pics.

Personally i would keep it to the side, because i dont like symetry lol! Wait until uve seen it with the java fern on it and it might cahnge your mind.

It doesn't look too bad where it is; you should just go with the Java Fern.

if its symmatry u want, u could balance with different things. for example, to balance that cave on the left side, move it a little toward the right so that its not dead in the corner of the tank, then to the right side add some rounded stones.

also imo that wood piece looks fine by itself, and the stones around it are crowding instead of anchoring; since the piece itself is botton-heavy, adding weight to the bottom is not neccessary.

course, thats just my opinion.

Thanks for the thoughts handsome. The idea with the stone around the wood was to make it look like smaller rocks had collected in the area between the wood and the upright pieces of slate in a current or something. At that time I was trying to look natural (forgetting of course the obvious man made cave). In the water changes following that picture, those stones have sunken under sand.

if im correct i see an amazon sword in there. keep in mind how big this will be when it fills out. mine recently just sprouted 5 babies (yay free plants) heres a pic of my amazon sword. I think your tank looks good....give it time to grow.