I still am trying to figure it out. Its funny that we can take all the elements and put it together and it looks wrong yet it just all falls in place in nature and never looks wrong.
Maybe try hucking it in there and blast it with the hose for a couple hours to see where it lands? Worked for nature
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It's always a challenge to me too trying to figure out how to mimick something that looks like a more plant dense nature. I understand all the crazy aquascape "rules" for Dutch, Taiwanese, Iwagumi, jungle and nature but I can't justify sticking to them. Just make it work. I don't know how to say let the plants grow where they find their place with plastic plants, but if I were to run a tank that required that, I would start with a zoned theme. Tall plants don't usually find root beds in rock gardens, but you might need more of those rocks, and maybe various heights of the plants you have. possibly sloping from side to center, or maybe started center of one side, with some browning towards the center as the "seeds" tried to spread to the rock zone only to find stunted roots. In sightly stagnating water though the nutrients would tunnel to the sides and edges of the rocks so it would be normal to see dense but stunted plants at the borders as the nutrient bed is dense, but slim.
Today, I've been destroying, and redesign on my false rock backgrounds. I'm struggling with the above mentioned thoughts. I have used planter bowls built into my previous designs, and in dry arrid nature; basalt columns will typically see naturally occurring shelves with sparse low moisture plants. Underwater and with full growth though, I think my design looks not so possible(naturally). I mean I could un-naturally force it to work, allot of people would probably like it but I don't really right now. Combine the unrealistic fauna density on a rock wall with the crazy lighting effect that I'm planning to use behind it and I just can't justify the time if I were to "cement it" permanently into those tanks. Bleh. I have all the filter supplies, heaters and pumps collecting dust while I fight myself on an asthetics, but I do expect to leave each show tank I set up for 5-7 years without significant redesigns, it seems like an attainable cycle and let's things fall into place at the speed they grow in my nutrient and carbon limited systems.
In other news, trimming plants, cleaning tanks and getting ready to bring a few long fin bnp into the collection has me pretty happy about the general direction. Now I just need to hunt down a location to offload a couple dozen endlers that have made full color this last month.