Driftwood placement

Driftwood placement is a big area of interest for me, since my last three layouts all have very dramatic wood arrangements. I use mostly thin, branchy pieces of wood.

Some tips I can offer:

1) Practice. Each arrangement you make gets better and better. Plan an idea for your arrangement, draw it out. Know what plants you will use. It will save a lot of time, trust me. It took me 30 minutes to redo a design for my 20g when I knew what direction I would take. A cube I was working on took me a couple hours, since I had no idea what direction to take. No, it's not the cube I have in the journal. That layout is history.

2) Always use odd numbers. Never use four branches, especially.

3) Position each branch so that it complements the others somehow --something you learn with a little practice, experience, and visualization. Never add a piece of driftwood just because it looks nice. Add it because it performs some function (balances the layout, adds interest, etc).

Other than that, it's hard to give any hard set guidelines. Be creative and see what you get. IME, it's hard forcing a wood arrangement in an already established/laid out tank with plants. I would personally start from scratch.

Carlos

Much nicer although a bit to symetrical to me. At lesat as far as the location of each piece is concerned. Have you decided on any plants or an overall "shape" for hte tank. By shape I mean triangular, mound, concave, etc.

The problem I see with the wood as it is now is the you have n some ways 2 seperate focal points. I would try to set it up so that the eye is drawn to one spot in the aquarium but alo lead away from it by other pieces of the scape. Amano's tanks are like that. You will notice that he uses alot of smaller "accent" branches in his layouts. These act as kind of visual highways. You look at one area of the tank and you eye automaticly starts to follow a branch back to the focal point of the whole aquarium, where it then picks up on another branch and is lead away to another part. The is a good write up of this somewhere, i think on the Amano website although I could be wrong.

It seems to me that a good aquascape will be harmonious (relaxing and not to busy) and have a good flow(the visual highways wich do not have to be branches. They can be rocks, a plant or grouping, shadow lines and even the lines created where the plant meet the substrate or othe plants). Everything will look in it's place and nothing will be distracting while at the same time there will be a subtle starting point (the focal point).

Give yourself a bit of credit You are just starting out. As for hte shape check out this thread by Tsunami http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42 I found it to be very helpful. Also check out the AGA (aquatic gardners association) nad AB (aqua botanic) web sites. They both have galleries of past years contest entrants. These can be very inspiring nad really help to get the creative juices going. Just practice, practice practice. It does bot need to be woiht an actual tank. It can all be in your head, or on paper. It may be difficult at first but eventually you will realize that it has gotten easy. To me design is sort of like drawing. Get a basic idea and then produce something fast. When your mind is in a good place to come up wiht ideas, run wiht it. Make fast skeches to get your ideas down then go vack and work with them. Refine them. ANd one thing I am finally starting to learn, don't forget to stand back. You must look at what you are doing. I find I have a tendency to sort of do things willy milly and then look at hte results withh dissapointment. But, if I do them slowly, force myself to really "see" and take my time, then I am much happier

Just some more ramblings

The actual "visual" centerpoint of the layout should be ~5/8 from one side. In your case that is 30" It should also be aroung 1/3 the the height of the tank (from the bottom at the gravel's surface). As far as the wood goes I think I would loose one of the smaller peices. Also, I would try flipping everything 90 degrees, so the large piece was on the left side with the high side of it on the left and the angle it forms pointing down to the right. This may be just me but I think all of the triangle layouts I have seen look best with the high side on the right. They seem to have less tension.

The ~30" piont would be at about 2/3 the length of the piece of wood. That would be your focal point. At that point I would do something a bit more dramatic, like completely negative space or some smaller branches behind that create "flow" (remember those visual highways through out the composition. You might also use a more dramatic plant at that point. That, of course, is based on you and your plant choices.

Hope I don't sound like I know it all. I am really not trying to tell you what to do. I am thinking out loud more thn anything. Ultimately, this is your tank and what matters is that your are happy (or as happy as we can ever be right?