My tank wasn’t ugly, but something about it didn’t click. I looked at pages and pages of images of beautiful aquariums online. I always wondered what they had and I didn’t. I finally stumbled upon the Golden Ratio – 1.618. (Wikipedia Entry) This ratio is often used in design and occurs naturally in nature. I wanted to see if applying this ratio to my aqua-scape would make a difference.

This was my tank beforehand – not ugly, but not great.

I used an app on my phone to plug in the measurements for my tank, it’s called “Design Tools“. My tank measures 48″ x 18”. The measurements it gave me were 29.67″ and 11.12″ respectively. I used a dry erase marker to make small marks at each measurement.

I then taped a piece of string across the marks.

I re-positioned the rocks so that the corner of the large one met at the lower-right intersection. I stood up all of the smaller rocks and pointed them towards the vertical string. On the left side, I positioned the wood so that the fern “touched” the upper-left intersection of the string. Below are the results.

And without the strings.

A “side by side” before and after.

I’m open to any suggestions, let me know what you think! I know I need a solid background. This background is currently there to stop the sunlight from coming in, there’s a window behind the tank.

Thanks for looking!

– B1gMattAttack