The 40 gallon community after a heavy trim. The foreground carpets (marsilea quadrifolia, narrow leaf microsword, and dwarf hairgrass) are coming back in after being totally removed last month. The CO2 regulator is back in working order, I am monitoring the tank for any leaks in the system.
Each of these lush landscapes looks like a photo taken in the vast wilds of Middle-earth, but they’re actually incredibly awesome aquariums. It’s been a year since we first discovered the world of competitive aquarium design, aka aquascaping, and the winners of the 2015 International Aquatic Plants Layout Contest (IAPLC) have just been announced.
Currently a nascent art form (begun in the 90s), aquascaping involves the painstaking arrangement of aquatic plants, rocks, driftwood, and other hardscape elements in massive tanks that take years to prepare. It’s underwater ornamental gardening, sometimes with fish as garden residents.
“The art of aquascaping is still a fledgling endeavor, first started in the 90s by Japanese wildlife photographer Takashi Amano. The annual IAPLC competition has grown dramatically since, with the 2015 contest seeing 2,545 entries from 69 countries. Japan, China, Brazil, and France dominate the top finalist spots (only 13 entries were from the United States).”
Japan’s Takayuki Fukada was the 2015 IAPLC grand prize winner with this beautiful aquarium entitled “Longing”:
Visit Colossal for additional photos and to learn more about the art of competitive aquascaping.
we never really covered the 2015 IAPLC – so here is something about it. After the death of Takashi Amano there was some speculations if his company will continue to organise and sponsor the probably highest profile competition of global aquascaping. Now, it seems they will, the announcement for the 2016 contest was made recently.
The world of competitive aquarium design, or aquascaping, is just as difficult, expensive, and cutthroat as any other sport but requires expertise in many different fields to guarantee success. Aquarium designers possess large amounts of expertise in biology, design, photography, and excel in the art of patience, as individual aquascapes can take months if not years to fully mature into a completed landscape.
