Design your aquarium layout, calculate CO₂ & lighting, check plant compatibility — all in your browser, nothing uploaded.
palette pick type → click canvas place → drag move → sliders resize/rotate → Ctrl+Z undo
Aquascaping is the art of arranging aquatic plants, rocks, driftwood, and substrate inside an aquarium to create a natural or artistic underwater landscape. Planning the layout before buying materials saves money and prevents the common mistake of placing the focal hardscape dead-centre (which looks static). The rule-of-thirds and golden-ratio guides in this tool highlight the compositionally strongest positions. Visualising side and top views together also reveals front-to-back depth layering that flat photo references cannot show.
Rule of Thirds divides the canvas into a 3×3 grid; placing focal points (main rock, tallest plant, key driftwood) near the intersection lines creates pleasing asymmetry. Golden Ratio marks the φ vertical at 61.8% of tank width — the most famous harmonic division. Many contest aquascapes place their primary focal stone exactly here. Iwagumi guide draws the recommended stone-placement zones for the Nature Aquarium Iwagumi style: the main stone (Oyaishi) near the golden point, secondary stone (Fukuishi) on the opposite side.
No data leaves your browser. When you click Share link, the entire layout is serialised as JSON, then base64-encoded and embedded in the URL hash (#…). Anyone who opens that URL has the full layout decoded and rendered locally — zero server requests. The link works indefinitely as long as the recipient can open it in a browser. Very large layouts (100+ elements) produce a longer URL that some apps may truncate.
Rock — angular hardscape for Iwagumi or Dutch style. Driftwood — organic branching shape; tilt diagonally for natural flow. Stem plant — tall columnar background plants (Rotala, Bacopa, Ludwigia). Rosette — broad-leaved mid/foreground plants (Echinodorus, Cryptocoryne). Moss — low spreading groundcover; attach to rocks and wood or use as a carpet. Substrate mound — the slope of the substrate; use multiple to show depth and elevation change (higher at the back). Foreground carpet — low, wide-spreading plants (Hemianthus callitrichoides, Glossostigma) that hug the front glass.
Yes — and that is the recommended workflow. Switch to the Water & CO₂ tab and input your pH and KH to find how much CO₂ is currently dissolved and whether you need injection. Then switch to the Lighting tab to check whether your light delivers enough PAR for the plants you have chosen in the Plant List. High-light plants require both strong light AND injected CO₂ — if you run high PAR without CO₂ you will get algae instead of growth.
Browse 40+ common aquarium plants with light, CO₂, and growth rate requirements. Filter to find plants that match your setup.
| Plant | Position | Light | CO₂ | Growth | Difficulty |
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Enter your current pH and carbonate hardness (KH) to calculate dissolved CO₂ in the water.
Calculate your tank volume and recommended water change schedule.
The Henderson-Hasselbalch equation relates CO₂, pH, and KH: CO₂ (ppm) = 3 × KH × 10^(7.0 − pH). At a given KH, each 0.3 pH unit drop doubles the dissolved CO₂.
Target range for planted tanks: 20–30 ppm. Below 15 ppm plants will struggle; above 35 ppm fish begin to show stress. Use a drop checker (bromo blue dye) to monitor in real-time: green = ~30 ppm, yellow = too high, blue = too low.
Bubble rate rule of thumb: start at 1 bubble per second (bps) per 50 L. Increase gradually by 0.5 bps until your drop checker is green. CO₂ injection should start 1–2 hours before lights on and stop 1 hour before lights off.
Estimate PAR at substrate and whether your lighting suits your intended plant difficulty.
How long to run your lights each day, and when.
PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) measured at substrate is the most reliable metric. Watt-per-litre is a rough proxy — PAR at substrate depends on depth, spread angle, and reflection.