How Do You Do It?

[Miss Wiggle]

seen in a few scapes people will have a little path type thing of gravel running through the tank, how do you keep that seperate from the rest of your substrate and stop them merging into 1?

 

[Fillet 'O' Fish]

Hi Wiggle.

Stand a piece of card or flexible plastic vertically in the bottom in the shape you want and place the different colour gravel either side of the divider. Then carefully slide out vertically.

 

[Dubby]

To add to what F-of-f has said, leave the dividers in, so the gravel doenst mix. People have used dividers made from slate etc.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

cool thanks, wasn't sure what to use and if i should leave it in or not


guess you have to be really careful with water changes not to disturb it all yeah?

 

[Themuleous]

Yeh, once the gravel and plants are in, leave well alone, tinkering will only make it worse.

Sam

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Yeh, once the gravel and plants are in, leave well alone, tinkering will only make it worse.

Sam

so if i wanna do it then i should make sure the scape is right first time and not mess around with it much then.

good thing what i've got in mind is quite simple then!!

 

[Themuleous]

You can move stuff, its just that that normally just mixes the substrates you so carefully separated, that's all

Simple hey? Sounds like my kind of layout, looking forward to seeing it all up and running

Sam

 

[Miss Wiggle]

simple, classy and spacious..... in my mind anyway

it's quite spacious in my mind actually

i think it might unintentionally be that iguana/origama thingy, i won't even pretend i understand it but it my mind it looks sort of like some of those scapes

 

[leecara]

I tried this at the begining, failed miserably, we had a nice grey path and black gravel, eventually it got all mixed up and looked poo!!

 

[xing]

I tried this at the begining, failed miserably, we had a nice grey path and black gravel, eventually it got all mixed up and looked poo!!

ditto - action of the filter re water flow (i think) moved everything around and even levelled my substrate over a period of time (couple of months IIRC), which started off banked up to the rear. never bothered again with any subsequent tanks

 

[mlawson]

Here are some examples of how effective paths can be:

Path 1

Path 2

Sort of path 3

 

[mikey12421]

You can also create a path with plants like glosso or riccia. It's more of a "dirty" path in that the plants creep on to it on the edges (and I'm sure you have to prune it a lot to keep the path look) but I think that could be remedied with small stones. Check this one out from David Chow of the CAU, you'll notice the substrate never changes but he gives the illusion of a path.

http/www.cau-aqua.net/index.php?option=c...key=4&hit=1