I’m flattered to have some of my tanks featured on the Tank Tested YouTube channel. The first is my 150G Amazon inspired aquascape.

Here’s an updated shot of my recently rescaped Aquavas aquarium. This tank is the only tank that’s showcased in my home, in our living room, while the rest of them are consolidated in my fishroom.

The goal of this aquascape is to prominent feature something of a twisted old tree , while keeping the rest of the scape fairly minimalist. I had previous done sand foregrounds in this tank, so I wanted to change it up with an Eleocharis ‘Mini’ foreground this time around.

You can see above how the hardscape and planting came together. I try to plant as densely as possible to help the scape mature more quickly. I also had the luxory of wood that was reused from a previous scape and already had lots of moss and Anubias ‘petite’ attached to it.

Finally , above is what the scape looked like a day after planting. You can see that it’s already maturing a bit in a week or so by comparing to the first picture. Comments/critique welcome!

During my winter break I rescaped my Aquavas aquarium that previously been setup for over a year. Below is the new scape, utilizing lots of spiderwood and dragonstone. It’s a pretty simple scape in terms of plants

, using mostly weeping moss, Anubias barteri var. nana, Hygrophila corymbosa ‘Angustifolia’, and some crypts.

The old scape used pretty much the same plants, but had become very overgrown with moss and I was ready for a change.

The biggest challenge in the new scape is the darker area created under the branches. I like the intrigue that this area creates

, but it definitely makes it more difficult to photograph. The fish, just a few cardinal tetras, usually like to hang out there, however. I still need the Hygrophila to grow in more in the back left and perhaps get a bit more moss established on the wood. Comments/critiques welcome!

My 120G aquascape is growing in nicely! The wood has finally sunked after a couple of months , and the mounds are filling in the gaps between the various pieces of Rosewood. I’m happy with the jungle effect in this tank, with most of the species of plants intermixed throughout each other. I will need to be diligent to keep the Hygrophila pinnatifida from throwing out runners that consume everything, however.

The Stuarogyne ‘Bihar’ is another plant that could easily take over the scape. I may pull it out, anyways, opting for more Ludwigia ‘Cuba ,’ but I haven’t fully made that decision yet. Comments/critiques welcome!

I did a photoshoot of my 33g this weekend. Normally, I pull out my go-to 24-70mm lens for the majority of my shots, but unfortunately, this weekend that lens was in the shop, necessitating that I experiment with some other options. In doing so, I was amazed at how the exact same aquascape can look radically different based on the focal length of the lens used to shoot it.

33G Aquascape – Photographed with 11mm lens

Take the first shot above as an example. This was start with a super wide-angle lens at just 11mm. Of all of the shots, I love how dramatic it makes the hill look, with so much depth it’s amazing. However, if you submitted this to an aquascaping contest, you’d likely get points knocked off for too much distortion. Just look at the silicon line on the back left — it’s not even remotely a straight line like it should be.

33G Aquascape – Photographed with 13mm lens

Dialing it back a bit only 2mm to 13mm makes a lot of difference. You can see the distortion is not quite so profound

, albeit still present, and the warping of the hill itself is less so. Whether or not this is a good thing or not is up to you.

33G Aquascape – Photographed with 17mm lens

Now, jumping to 17mm the lines are much more natural but you still get a good amount of depth. Notice how there’s less and less reflection as the angle gets narrower. In the first shot, you get nearly the entire grouping of Rotala rotundifolia whereas as 17mm we only see the tops.

33G Aquascape – Photographed with 50mm lens

Finally, jumping all the way up to 50mm it almost looks like a totally different aquascape compared to the 11mm shot. There’s barely a foreground to speak of and the mound itself is compressed. The lack of depth is profound. This further demonstrates how important the photography aspect of aquascaping to ensure that you’re capturing the right version of the scape that you want to share with the world. I’d be very interested to hear what you’re personal favorite is of the photos above in the comment section.