Simple Tips & Tricks To Make Better Hardscapes! 

Today we are diving into the topic of hardscape! I'm going to prepare the hardscape for my new OASE ScaperLine 90, and share all my tips and tricks to make better hardscape layouts. Equipment I like to use (affiliate links) Tank US: bit.ly/3EbkdxH EU: bit.ly/3S3y9ht Light US: bit.ly/3S2WxjC EU: bit.ly/3z6R16F Filter US: bit.ly/3yxFttR EU: bit.ly/3eoYxUn Clear Filter Pipes US: bit.ly/3RsFJkT EU: bit.ly/3AL5oyv Substrate US: bit.ly/3bux8yR EU: bit.ly/3qhHDt4 Wood (similar) US: bit.ly/3VmDUJ0 EU: bit.ly/3MwgKfm Rocks (similar) US: bit.ly/3yAO7Yk EU: bit.ly/3Tn0tLX Dwarf Hairgrass (Eleocharis parvula) US: bit.ly/3VsJIR5 Umbrella Hair Grass (Eleocharis Vivipara) US: bit.ly/3MpO9br Riccardia moss US: bit.ly/3SR3Zy9 Juncus repens US: bit.ly/3yyJjmo Crypt parva US: bit.ly/3Cs0APn Crypt lutea US: bit.ly/3yBGDo7 Crypt walkeri US: bit.ly/3rSxBzu 🚨Watch this next!🚨 Inspiration playlist! • Build Videos CO2 buying guide! • BEST CO2 SYSTEM F... How to SETUP your CO2! • EVERYTHING YOU NE... Simple fertilizer dosing! • SIMPLE AQUARIUM P... 👉🏻Cool Aquascaping T-shirts: mosscotton.com/ Code: mjaqua10 👉🏻Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to my RU-vid channel: / mjaquascaping 👉🏻 Use Code ''MJAMSTERDAM'' for 10% off Fzone products #plantedtank #aquascape #mjaquascaping

The large piece of wood just on on the substrate in the right side is perfect. Keep this wood visible❤

Hi MJ: your videos drop first thing in the morning here in California. A great way to start the day. I get my coffee and watch away. This design is beautiful. So calm. Who knew some sticks and rocks would become something so nice. I look forward to seeing it planted, then of course with the fish. This is going to be very cool!

Hej! Thank you for very educative video! My tip for all: use paper box which your aquarium comes with som scaping dojo 😁. During scaping process especially with rocks risk for scratching the glass is relatively high. I use to scape outside the aquarium to minimise the risk och afterwards place hardscape elements in.

Now this is a proper tutorial. Great explanations on how you decide your scapes. Thank you for sharing

You are THEE aquascape RU-vid channel for beginners. If only ALL beginners knew about you, instead of MR. Sand capper. I do my best to spread the word.

Your hobby of aquascaping got me into it as well. From regular aquarium fish to live plants now. I love your videos and I can’t wait on how you would plant this hardscape. Much love from Toronto.

Looks awesome. Looking forward to the plants and your selection.

Oh yeeeeeah one of my favourite parts of setting up a new tank, gonna enjoy this.

What a brilliant idea regarding the gap for the pipes in the cabinet!

Another awesome video! Can't wait to get more into this hobby. So enjoy watching - thank you.

Loved this video and that tank is awesome already even without plants. Looking forward to seeing it completed

A calm voice, great backround music, a very relaxing video!👍😌

Hi mark! This is great content 🙏🙏 Just started 2 weeks ago about my first real aquascape. Hope to see the planting soon! Have a great evening🙏

Looks awesome MJ. Clean simple beautiful. Nice work

Simple but beautiful I always take inspiration from your scapes I’m going to try DSM and hope for the best thanks for the info your videos are great

Will come in very hand as I'm setting up 5 new tanks❤

I really appreciate that you showed the wood in different configurations - I still find it hard to see in my mind what the final layout could look like and your examples are very helpful. My last tank set up is 36x18 inch base and I had only a few large pieces of hardscape available - one huge piece of wood and 6 rather large pieces of rock. I broke up one of the rocks and started playing. Chose concave layout. Love your videos.

Wow jealous of that shop.

Great inspirational video! As I mentioned under a previous video, I am in the process of setting up a 55l Dennerle tank, and it has been cycling for the last week, but I am not happy with the layout and I am thinking of tearing it down and trying again. With a small tank it is not nearly as much work as with a bigger tank. Looking forward to the planting and stocking of this one!

This is great one MJ! I love it.

Man what a great store!

Excellent...thank you!!

Awesome tips for me as a Aquascape beginner!

I love the look of your tanks🤩your explanations are just what I need to attempt my first scape 🤣I've been keeping fish for 15 years with plants and substrate in the tanks with no set scape😱 excited and terrified but you're giving me the courage to just trust myself and try ... thanks 😃

Hoi MJ. Ziet er weer strak uit. Vind het erg leuk om een Nederlander hier te hebben. Helemaal dat je vertelde welke winkels je heen bent gegaan voor de stenen en het hout. Ga gelijk langs zaterdag. Ga zo door.

great guide, helped me

Great information and tips. I like to boil my wood since it’ll reduce the tannins released and help with the reduction of fungus growth. Problem is not having a huge pot for larger pieces.

Thanks for the tips! Subscribed!

Great job, that store is beautiful also

"Less is more" - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Nice job as always MJ 😎🙂

I ordered a new tank with the same dimensions as yours about a week before you uploaded the first video, for the same reasons, I live in an apartment, I was looking for the 120p but was worried about the weight. As soon as I scape it, I will send you pictures and a vídeo vía Facebook messenger. Nice job again bro!!!!

Looking like the new aquarium is going to be a great scape. I enjoy your valuable tips, and im looking forwards to the finished tank. Your videos have reinspired me in the hobby, and im now in the process of cleaning up my 130x50x50. I went to Helmond aquatics and came away with a new CO2 setup. Although Helmond is abit of a drive, (i live in south Limburg), it was worth it, as i came away with some good advice from the young owner. many thanks for the informative videos, and keep up the good work. groetjes Del.

Beautiful job. Hoping to visit that store when we come to NL in the next two weeks. Looks amazing compared with the stores we have in New Zealand. Thanks for all the energy you put into your videos. The result truly speaks for itself! 🙌

Great educational video,I enjoyed it,well done!!...👌👍

Great video and the background music was nice and relaxing too

Hello, you always create great content. I'm watching every video to develop my Aquascaping skills for almost in 2 years it's been that long 😅... For the next experiment, would you try to grow some aquatic plants with the emersed or dry method indoors or hydroponic maybe? I'm always curious about that to find the best way to choose the substrate, fertilizer, lighting, and some stuff. Thanks!

I've been waiting for this.. Great video Mark. Really nice to see your process. Have to say the spider wood was a pretty safe option and I'm not sure the rocks are going to be big or high enough in the composition to be seen by the time the plants have matured. It was kind of what I was expecting from you though, simple, minimal hardscape layout for a composition with the emphasis on the plants. Nothing wrong with that but nothing you haven't done a million times before. Really exciting to see you take on a bigger aquarium though. Glad you're going to go for some sort of carpet, a mixed carpet like the one in your Dwarf Pea Puffer Paradise could look really good on a bigger scale. Also glad you left plenty of room for stems at the back too. I know that your plant choice is going to be great so I'm really looking forward to seeing the planting and watching it all grow out in future videos.

Love your videos!

Great tips and tricks

i like your creativity i hope i can do those aquascape

I love the way lava rocks look in planted tanks. They help the green color pop. Also, that was a fantastic store! I don't have anything like that around here. Next time I plant a tank I am going to take my time. I rushed my first one, because everything came in the mail at once, and I just wanted to do it. It looks okay, and I love watching the fish swim in the plants, but the next one is going to be way more planned out. I learned a lot just doing the first one.

I love it! It may be simple but it looks super effective and i cant wait to see it planted!

very good explenations and video not to complicated i would like to see u make a "cliff style" aquascape in a decent size tank :)))

im never this early. Loving the videos bro 🙏

I like the wood you choose. It's reminiscent of a dancer in mid-pose.

This looks amazing, looking forward to seeing the plants you choose. This might be a silly question but what do you use to fill up your tanks? Is it just a regular hose attached to a tap? Thanks!

Nice video. Salute

I habe lava rocks. I have spiderwood. I need to rescape my 60L ... Let's do it! Thank you for the video, it really helped envisioning things! What I do every time, because I can design quite good in 2D but not in 3D: I take pictures from the front. Then I look at the pictures and can decide how I turn the wood or angle a stone. Thanks again!

خسته نباشید زیباست 😍

What a beautiful scape! Do you have any tips on how to scape a bowfront aquarium? I find certain angles get exaggerated, and it warps the view. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you 😊

de maanvis 😮 ik volg je videos al een tijdje weet nupas zeker dat je een landgenoot bent 🧡😄

Elegant !

90U guy here. I was looking forward to this build, but so far it kind of feels like you were filming me. Mine opens up to a family area to the left, reverse the triangle comp. I was concerned about the extra height of the "U", so my larger piece of wood enters at the surface and branches down. My rock work needs work. In the US everyone cuts their teeth with big, mean fish that like to dig in the dirt. Rockwork must have a firm foundation, especially when using paper thin mass produced tanks. It's going to be a hard habit to break. But, firm is in the eye of the fish living there. To make my de ja vu worse...I had never used aqua soil before, and my last tank crashed from a fishy piece of driftwood. My tank sat for 4 or 5 weeks just like yours at the end of the video, just to be sure every thing was fine.😂

An amazing video MJ. Love the channel and content. Every time you post, it makes me want to go out and try my hand at real aquascaping. We need a video where you show us how to convince our wives to let us throw up more than one aquarium in the house 😂. Cheers

Mooie lay-out succes met beplanten🎗

Wish there were any aqua scaping stores near me. Only like 2 in the US.

Nice hardscape layout.. I would suggest you use the left over aquasoil 1st then top it off with the new one. you can really see the different sizes/colors/texture of the different aquasoil when you get close to the tank. it would still be covered with plants but when you look at your tank for a long time.. if would look kinda off.. for me, that is my experience

Weer top gemaakt. Misschien wel advies om einde van de tak af te breken om niet zo stompen einde te krijgen. Teven ben ik weer benieuwd na je planten keuze.

One tip that helped me getting better at hardscaping: Slightly overdoing it with the size of my hardscape/setup. When the setup looks good without plants it needs to be a little bit bigger, because when you have a lot of plants the hardscape disappears. You have to be at the point where you think "nah, that's a little bit too much". Then it's exactly the right size.

Hi MJ, I like the hardscape. A question, were do you get the nice glass foil? I have seen similar backgrounds before in black or white. It really adds another dimension to the tank having one.

Looking good. I found that the tank wasn't centered under the light.... have you checked that before filling it?

Do like that . Would you mix different styles of drift wood with spider wood to get a different colours an texture in your aquascape?

I often go to the riverside to collect hardscape :3

Looking forward to the planting process! Love being a part of this community. How do you go about tearing down scapes and setting up new ones, fish included? I’ve got a 20gal long that’s got some algae issues and the Fluval stratum is like mush and covered with brown diatoms.. I’m thinking of buying a 40gal breeder + canister + cO2 in-line atomizer but don’t know what to do with my existing tank :(

We need an update on this one MJ.

Hey can I make suggestion/idea get another piece of drift wood nail it to the wall and put and orchid on it above the tank on the left side

netlea soil is currently the best for me, no dust, less debris, heavy soil & not easy to crumble

🤩🤩🤩

Looks great so far , does the return hose / glass inlet go down to the aqua soil ?? Or two inches above?? Does it matter???

De Maanvis located at the other end of the country. :)

Looks great, like they always do! I do have a question, its my first time in 8 or 9 years using wood in a hardscape (being inspired by your scapes) and is currently doing the dark cycling. However there are white mold spots growing above the water, under water there is no issue due to the less available oxygen i suspect. You ever had this issue? Im pouring boiled water from time to time on the wood, and it seems its get lesser by the week fortunately.

😮🔥🔥👍

No crees que para la densidad de plantas que sueles utilizar no necesitas algo más de aquasoil? Deseando ver el siguiente vídeo

I come to the same shop!

Simple and nice aquascape 👌👌 One question, what filter is, Biomaster 600 or 850?? Saludos desde España!!

When you were applying the background, was that water or alcohol in the spray bottle? Great content as always!

Just wondering when the next part will come. And voila, just show up.

boiling and baking lava rock can cause them to explode. its rare but being a know possibility washing is the only waay to go in my mind

Any advice for scaping for corydoras? I have 50L tank with aquasoil, some 10cm on the back and 1 cm in the front. Topped with 2cm of sand and gravel. Have stones and plants. Everything looked perfect until I brought corys. They mixed and rescaped everything up. Aquasoil is mixed with sand and it looks awful. They even level the ground, so now there is 5cm in the back and front.

Hey Brotha ,,, Cheers from CA ,, a question for you:: when it’s all said and done ,how much would you say this whole aqua scape weighs total, in lbs pls jk ,,, love your channel

What fabric are you using in-between the wood and rock that you are saturating with super glue

Have you tried etching your rocks with muriatic acid?

I understand increasing nutrients in the substrate rather than the water column but how does that impact epiphytes which need their nutrients from the water?

🖤☘️

Mot thing in life are practice, practice, practice for sure. But you can be born with characteristics that allow you to be creative more easily and quicker. There's definitely a genetic advantage for some things, but that shouldn't discourage anybody.

How long do you normally boil wood for before you put it in a tank? I have been soaking a piece for weeks and it’s still releasing tannins lol. I wanna put it in my tank but just now learned about boiling it.

where do I get that glass foil?

Can you help me i planted bucephalandras on stones and its 3 days now and they already have a sort of white stringy algy on them is this bad flow? Or too much light? Please help

Alright just curious, how much did you pay for that piece of wood ? :)

Please help me: Last sunday i have managed to setup new aquarium. Next morning my aquarium turned cloudy! Did water change next 3 days its turned more cloudy. This is first time have seen this in my last 6-7 set-ups. What to do? I know that it maybe because of bacterial bloom but what i can do to speed up that cycle and get clear water. Tissue culture plants are expensive here so please help.

Are you going to use a DIY CO2 system on the 90 ScaperLine? Really liked your cheap CO2 system review but like all cheap CO2 systems it's only good for nano aquariums. I remember you experimenting with a large scale DIY CO2 system ages ago. Your experiment failed but only because you didn't use a container designed for high pressure. If you had used a beer brewing barrel I think the experiment would have had dramatically different results. I'd love to see you come up with a cheap CO2 solution for your ScaperLine. Could be worth another try.

This is my problem when doing my hardscapes. I'm from Sweden and simplicity in design has really rubbed off on me. I hate filling my tanks with hardscape, I always feel like it's too much way before it's actually too much. But I do love to fill the place with plants, although, also, minimalistic style.

do u also have issues sometimes with rainbow raspora not eating enough and starving/gettin extremly skinny?

How about a black water tank

Hey bro, how come you went with a 90 instead of 120 :D seems like it would fit even better in that space

After filling with water to start the cycle I assume the lights will always be off, right?

Is het secondelijm wat je gebruikt om hout en stenen te binden?

what size oase biomaster is that please?

Any super glue works?