The 2010 Acuavida Aquascaping Content results have been announced and are online. The overall winners are listed here. To view the actual gallery of results, please use the following link:

http://www.aac.acuavida.com/gallery/AAC_2010/

Here are the top contestant’s aquariums…

Mini Sized Aquariums

1st Place

2nd Place

3rd Place

Medium Sized Aquariums

1st Place

2nd Place

3rd Place

Large Sized Aquariums

1st Place

2nd Place

3rd Place

Many more fantastic aquascapes from the AAC contest online here…

Two months ago, I tore down the Riparium that was in my 20H, and replaced it with a more traditional aquascape. I was using it as more of a practice aquascape in advance of an aquascaping demonstration I was giving at the time, rather than an earnest attempt at producing the best scape ever. Despite not fitting that description, I’m rather pleased with how it’s shaping up.

For starters, I’ve always been more successful with larger aquariums in the 40G-75G range, while the 10-20G aquariums never seemed to return the results I was looking for. I think I’ve finally managed to balance out the lighting, CO2, and dosing for this 20H as I don’t have any algae, and the plants are looking really good. I had some initial problems where the plants were melting, but after raising up my metal halide light and adjusting the fan, I think I can attribute that problem to excessive heat.

I’m housing some Super Red Kribs in here along with some white clouds and zebra danios. A few of these fish will likely end up out in my pond for mosquito control very soon. The Ranalisma rostrata has nearly filled in the foreground. The Blyxa aubertii is contantly sending up flowers, and the Bacopa sp. ‘Araguaia’ is poking out of water surface. Comments/critique welcome!

About a month ago, I order my first rimless aquarium from Green Leaf Aquariums down in Florida. The aquarium that I had been eying for some time was their “bookshelf tank,” which is a 36″x8.3″x9.4″ rimless aquarium; dimensions that are unique to GLA’s product line. The alluring and challenging thing about these dimensions are the fact that it is such a wide tank, without very much depth to create a smooth transition from foreground to background.

Three and a half weeks ago, I decommissioned my 20L aquarium that was sitting on a wire shelf and began preparing to setup the new 12G bookshelf tank. Since rimless aquariums generally need more support than traditional designs, I built a small platform out of 2x4s and plywood to for the aquarium to rest on. For padding and aesthetics, I cut down a green yoga mat and laid it over the platform. Now that I didn’t have to worry about the wire-rack bowing and causing a leak in my new aquarium, I set out aquascaping it.

I decided to go with a minimalistic approach for this aquascape, consisting solely of a locally collected crumbly slate, and only two plants species – Eleocharis sp. ‘Japan’ and Blyxa japonica. For substrate, I combined several different bags of old ADA Aquasoil consisting of Amazonia, Africana, and Malaya, and set to work positioning the rock. I built up a prominent structure on the right side, leaving an expansion of loosely united pieces on the left.

Three weeks later, the Blyxa japonica is growing wonderfully, while the Eleocharis sp. ‘Japan’ is exhibiting the same slow growth that I’ve seen in other aquariums. That’s okay, however, as I really like the look of the three mixed Aquasoil types against the Blyxa background.

Click for larger image

For filtration, I’m using a miniature ZooMed canister filter, and have a Hydor Koralia Nano running for added circulation. The tank shares a 20 pound canister with three other aquariums so it has pressurized CO2 running throughout the day. I’m very pleased with the aquarium itself, being a very clear, well constructed, and attractive unit. Comments/critique welcome!

Last fall, a couple GWAPA members got together at Paul’s house to help him aquascape his 90G aquarium. To remind you, just after planting, the new aquascape looked like this below. Obviously, the initial planting did not feature many stems in the background.

Just after planting...

Now, several month later, the tank has really grown in. Paul made a few minor adjustments to the original placement of the wood in the aquarium, which I think now looks better than one day one. The foreground is growing in very nicely, and the Sagittaria subulata in the middle background is adding a very nice jungle look. The Cryptocoryne looks especially healthy in this aquarium.

Currently...

I think the hardscape, foreground, and mid-ground look pretty good. The background looks good, but I probably took the picture about a week past its prime. I think that when Paul trims the stem plants, and they grow back up to about 3-4 inches above the tallest rock, it’ll be perfect. What does everyone else think of this aquascape? I will pass any comments onto Paul…

On Saturday, a fellow GWAPA member, Rico, invited a few of us over to help him aquascape a new 75G aquarium that he had just bought. Originally, we were going to aquascape his 90G aquarium, but a leak developed in that tank, and he had to replace it with the 75G. My friend Cavan and I showed up mid-afternoon and helped Rico finish transferring stuff out of his 90G, bring in the the new 75G, and off we went. Rico had some manzanita wood and dark river rocks to use as hardscape items.

It took us a little while to figure out what direction we would take with the hardscape material at hand. The problem we originally ran into was figuring out how to get enough height in the hardscape, but we ultimately discovered the right combination of manzanita branches, zip-tied them together, and solved that problem. After the wood was in place, we filled in underneath it with the river rocks. Never having scaped with river rocks before, I wasn’t exactly sure how it would turn out, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The rocks match Flourite Black Sand almost perfectly!

For plants, we used Ranalisma rostrata in the foreground, which should fill in as a nice short grassy lawn. In the mid-ground, we used Blyxa japonica and Hygrophila sp. ‘Kompackt’. As a transition plant between the foreground and mid-ground, we used Staurogyne sp. ‘Porta Vehlo’. Finally, in the background, we used Blyxa aubertii and a broad-leafed Sagittaria species. Ultimately, I hope Rico will remove the Sagittaria altogether and replace it with just Blyxa aubertii, but we didn’t have enough of that plant to do it in the beginning. Finally, for a little bit of color, Rico had some stems of Limnophila aromatica, which aren’t visible in the picture, but should be very nice to the right of the B. aubertii on the left.

Above is the picture a few hours later after Rico filled it up and added back in the fish. Please ignore the three rocks placed on top of the manzanita to keep it from floating — those will be removed in a few days after the wood is waterlogged. So, how did we do? Comments/suggestions welcome!

I wanted to post a small update on my 75G since my latest post. In that post I talked about how my original intent was to make three separate mounds with pathways between them. I still have that, but the more I looked at the tank, the more I felt that the right side wasn’t strong enough. So, I pulled out the remaining pieces of African bogwood that I had, and started toying around.

75G: Click for Larger Image

What I ended up with was an arch connecting the two mounds on the right. The mounds themselves haven’t changed, but the archway adds more height, making the right side the dominant side of the aquascape. The arch also mirrors a smaller arch on the left side. The only downside is that this essentially turned the scape into a two mound aquascape again, which is what I was originally trying to avoid. That said, I think it’s unique enough to let it grow in for awhile. Also, the  Glosso is starting to spread rapidly, and the Cryptocoryne and Trident Java Fern are slowly starting to recover from being moved around and hydrogen peroxide sprayed for algae. Comments welcome!

Back in September, a fellow GWAPA member, Michael, asked me to come and take pictures of his beautiful 210G aquarium so that he would have something to submit to the AGA competition. I previously blogged about this experience, but at the time, didn’t want to post the pictures until after the AGA competition had been decided. Below are a few more pictures from the shoot:

The 210G gallon aquarium acts as a room divider between Michael’s living room and dining room so that it is visible from three sides. This provides the unique challenge of making all three sides equally pleasing to look at. The picture above is what Michael considered the “front.” This shot was a lot of fun to take because I was behind the camera holding a flash up in the air toward the ceiling to bounce light from the ceiling into the tank. His wife was holding a hair dryer over-top of the water, creating the ripple effect, and Michael was to the right of tank trying to coax his pet discus to line up in a nice row like you see.

The “front” side of the aquarium is dominated by a beautiful stand of Nymphea lotus, with a really nice portion of Lagenandra meeboldii ‘pink’ to the left of it. The “back” of the aquarium(above) was much less vibrant in coloration, but still showed tremendous growth in the Cryptocoryne lutea and Blyxa aubertii. I’ve since heard that he has drastically thinned out these plants to provide more space for the discus.

The full cabinet that the aquarium sits on was custom made, and is very well done. I don’t know how he keeps the white stand looking so nice, but he does. I also really like how he used emersed growing Anubias to obscure drip-tube that provide new water to the tank daily.

Finally, with quite a few nice discus shots, I couldn’t help myself from trying to get a little bit artsy with one of them. I especially liked the shot above because it reminded me of the pictures I looked at as a child in old black-and-white aquarium books from the library. In any case, I promised that I would share more photos was the AGA released their results, so I wanted to keep good on that word. You can find more technical information about Michael’s aquarium, as well as, the AGA judges’ comments on the Aquatic Gardener’s website.

Happy New Year! —  I hope everyone had a nice holiday! I’ve been mostly offline for the last two weeks painting about 90% of my house. We’ve lived in our house for 8 years and had done a fair number of home improvement projects during that time, but somehow, painting wasn’t one of them. As you can imagine, aquariums can make home improvement projects such as these quite difficult, as a full aquarium is not very amenable to moving so that you can paint behind it. Therefore, a couple days before Christmas, I moved my 75G from our family room into my fish-room where all of my other tank are now congregated. This was the perfect time to do a quick new aquascape.

75G - Scaped 12/20/2009 - Click for Larger Image

I decided to try and make this aquascape fairly low maintenance, so besides the Staurogyne sp. ‘Porto Vehlo’ and Glossostigma elatinoides used in the foreground, I didn’t use any stem plants. The past couple of aquascapes I’ve done seem to consist of two mounds on either side of the aquarium, one larger than the other, with a pathway down the middle. I decided to try something a bit differently this time making three mounds, several pathways, and a fairly low profile so that the pathways could continue directly from the front to the back of the tank uninhibited. I reused most of the hardscape and plants that were previously in the 75G, and unfortunately, many of those had hair algae. Being distracted by my painting task, I pretty much neglected to dose for the last two weeks. Plus, I used some extra used Aquasoil I had in a bucket to make more of a slope in the mounds, which added a lot of silt to the substrate, creating cloudy water anytime one of the fish was spooked. So, I’m now faced with the difficult task of eliminating algae in a planted tank with slow growing and newly planted plants which likely won’t be able to outcompete it for the next little while. I’m hopeful that frequent water changes, Seachem Excel and H202 spot treatments, and cranked CO2 will hold the algae at bay and get the Glosso and S. ‘Porto Vehlo‘ going to outgrow the algae. Right now the Cryptocoryne and Trident Java Fern are looking a little sad from the transplanting, but hopefully they’ll fill in and create a nice lush aquascape. Comments/critiques welcome!

This weekend, Jason Baliban, award-winning aquascaper and recent judge of the AGA contest, invited a few GWAPA and DVAGA members to his home to aquascape a brand new 180G aquarium. He had obtained the aquarium a few months ago, and spent that time acquiring the materials needed to set it up.

When I arrived, he already had his hardscape setup and ready to go. He had the patience to spend much of the past few months tweaking the hardscape so that it would be perfect. This is always the hardest and most critical element in aquascaping, but as you can see below, the rocks and wood look pretty solid.

One of the goals for this tank was to set it up and let it mature without much regular maintenance. Therefore, he choose to only use four types of easy plants: Needle-Leaf Java Fern, Trident Java Fern, Bolbitis, and Anubias. Due to the very large size of the tank (roughly 6’x2’x2′), he had to amass a significant number of plants.

Since none of these plants were to be rooted in the substrate, he only used pool filter sand as a substrate. Of course, this means that Jason will need to fertilize the aquarium regularly to provide nutrition to the plants. Pretty much all of the plants were positioned in the aquarium by using zip-ties to attach them to rocks, then placing the rocks into the hardscape.

Jason placed Anubias in the front of the tank, letting Bolbitis and Java Fern in the background. He decided to leave the wood free of moss, at least for the time-being. We planted the aquarium 100% dry, so the plants needed to be sprayed with a water bottle periodically to prevent them from drying out.

Due to Jason’s great planning and preparation, it probably only took 20-30 minutes to plant the aquarium. You can see below that it looked pretty darn good even without water in the tank.

Filling a tank with 180 gallons of water takes a long time! We sat around talking about plants, aquascaping, and sports while we waited over an hour for the water to reach the rim. Jason was a little worried that the wood might float, so you can see that he weighed down a few pieces with extra rocks to let them saturate with water.

I’m really glad that I was able to make it up to Jason’s house for this aquascaping. As one of the premier aquascapers in the U.S., there’s always something you can learn from him. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a quality person as well! Be sure to pop over to Jason’s website at ProjectAquarium.com to let him know what you think of the scape. (You can leave comments here too.)

The results of the Aquatic Gardener’s Association’s 2009 Aquascaping Contest have been released. Michael G.W. Wong’s tank below one 1st place in the Large category, and took Best in Show. The folks from Hong Kong have really been cleaning up the aquascaping contests lately. The contest itself has a number of fantastic entries, including ones that didn’t win any prizes.

I’d suggest you click over to the AGA’s website to view all of this years’ entries:

http://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/2009.cgi