When they first got to Thailand, they wanted to experience the huge market in Bangkok. They had heard stories about the size and quality of the aquarium-related stands setup there. After much walking, they finally came to some of the dealers, finding rack after rack of aquariums filled with aquatic plants. Karen said that they could pretty much locate any aquarium plant known to the hobby in that market, in addition to some new ones.

Take for example this variegated fern shown above, which was purportedly a form of Java Fern. Unfortunately, with several weeks ahead of them, they weren’t confident they any plants bought in the market would survive to make it back to their homes. In addition to the plants, the markets had an amazing selection of other materials including rocks, wood, equipment, and even an insane variety of gravel. (shown below)

I can only imagine what it must be like to walk through so many shops who really get it in terms of aquatic plants. From there, Karen and Christel traveled throughout the country, collecting various crypts and other plants trying and find something new. They did find some interesting stuff, which she promised we’ll hear more about soon.

The next day, Sunday, was an all-day auction. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a thousand bags of plants spread across 4-5 rows of tables. I took 30 bags of plants myself to sell, but only came home with four. There was pretty good variety present in the auction, and prices were all over the map. In the beginning, prices tend to be a little bit inflated, but as the day wore on, several folks got some really good deals. It’s interesting to see relatively well-known plants, such as Anubias barteri var. nana, go for high prices while lesser known new plants go for less than they’d sell for online. Every auction is different, however, and I had a great time chatting with folks, while occasionally placing a bid. After 4-5 hours, I was off to the airport, after enjoying a fantastic convention. I highly recommend that every aquatic plant enthusiast try to attend at least one of these conventions in the future.

He then added the substrate, and positioned moss-covered-rocks along the line between the two types of substrate. After positioning the driftwood, he began positioning ferns and Anubias into the hardscape. One thing with Mr. Amano, is that he plants incredibly densely, so that when he’s done, it looks like a near finished aquascape. (Often times hobbyists don’t have the luxury of having that many plants available to scape with, and have to grow them out within the aquascape.)

Once the more static plants were in place, Amano partially filled up the tank with water, and began planting the stem and other background plants. Again, he planted very densely, so that it would only require a couple trims before the aquascape was completely full and lush.

After filling up the tank, and allowing the water to clear, below is his finished scape. It’s amazing what he was able to pull off in just about an hour. Beautiful!

Running an aquarium service company, Jeff often has to harmonize the aquarium equipment and aquascape with the rest of the room. Above, you can see how Jeff matched the style of the aquarium stand and wood type with the rest of the room. The aquascape itself, is also an open-style scape, just like the open floorplan of the room. Jeff also stressed that design should not have to suffer due to maintenance issues. In his experience, aquariums require water changes regardless of whether they’re high tech or low tech, full of plants, or not. He doesn’t see trimming as a barrier to upkeeping a design. That said, he’s not afraid to use a beautiful ADA setup with zero plants, such as the tank below.

In fact, this tank might be more like the angelfish’s natural habitat in the Amazon River, minus the tannin-stained-water, than a heavily planted tank would be. Still, the wood makes it an interesting tank to look at, as does the top-end equipment. All-in-all, Jeff Senske just wants all of us to design our aquariums with purpose.

He started by showing a picture which was featured on the cover of Tropical Fish Hobbyist and given the title “Amano Magic!” He stated that it they called it magic because to the human eye it’s believable that this could be a natural habitat for those angelfish. He then said that this was incorrect.

He stated that it’s easy to fool a human eye, but the true test of an aquascape is whether or not the aquascaper has fooled the fish inhabitants that this is a natural environment. This could be discerned by looking at the coloration and interaction of the fish in the tank.

He showed a number of his tanks, such as my favorite one above, which are truly extraordinary, both in aquascape and photography. He flipped through a number of aquariums, demonstrating different types of aquascapes.

Some were more heavily planted, with moss covered wood as the focal point. He didn’t spend any time talking about the photography side of his aquarium pictures, but clearly he knows what he’s doing. I’ve read elsewhere that the ripple effect on the water’s surface was created using a hairdryer.

Amano also described how to create an iwagumi aquarium layout, such as in picture above. This is a more traditional iwagumi scape, utilizing only one or two types of plants, allowing the rocks to be the focal point.

He also showed that it was possible to create a nice iwagumi with more plants in more of a hybrid way, utililizing background and accent plants. Of course, the rocks are still the primary focus of the scape. Rock positioning and selection either make or break this type of scape.

This final aquascape was one of the ones that he showed from start to finish. As you can kind of see above, he started with a bare tank, and used poster board to keep the Aquasoil and Bright Sand separate. The two substrates were further separated by moss covered stones, and accented by driftwood. The tank is then planted, and allowed to grow in. After a rather harsh trimming, the plants grow back more bushy, and a few months later, you have your final aquascape below.

Mr. Amano ended his presentation talking about some non-aquarium-related work that he has been doing, nature photography. As you may know from his beautiful picture-books of the Amazon and Rio Negro, Amano is an expert photographer. He had two of his works displayed at the G8 Summit recently held in Japan with many world leaders.

The particular photograph displayed in the background above is of a huge tree in one of Japan’s ancient forests. He then answered a number of questions from convention attendees, and finished his presentation. Overall, it was a very insightful presentation, which some beautiful aquascapes on display.

The obvious headlining speaker at the Aquatic Gardener’s 2008 Convention was Takashi Amano. Aided by his translator, Mr. Amano gave a very insightful view into the mind of a judge for his ADA Aquascaping Contest. As someone who has entered these competitions before, this information is very helpful for when I design my future aquascapes. Therefore, I wanted to share a number of slides from his presentation, as well as, his comments for what the entrant could have done better to receive a higher placing.

#31: The driftwood is too centered. If moved to the right a little bit, it would be been more balanced.

#32: The large rock is too far to the left, throwing off the balance of the aquascape.

#43: The wood is too centered, and too close together. Spacing the wood further apart would have helped.

#44: Not enough negative space in this aquascape. It looks too cramped.

#48: There are too many stem plants around this tree stump.

#49: The photographer used a wide angle lens when shooting this tank, making the driftwood appear distorted.

#61: The rock on the right is laying down too much. It should be pointing up at more of an angle to be balanced with the other rocks.

#63: The rocks are too much in a line. They should be staggered a little bit to look natural.

#69: The plant selection in the foreground and background are too different, making it look like the two don’t go together.

#72: The plants on the left don’t match the plants on the right. While both look very nice, they don’t go together.

#75: Nice scape, but the two pieces of driftwood nearly touch, which is distracting and unnatural looking.

#79: The left side is too heavy, and not following the principles of the golden ratio. Also, the slope of the trimmed plants on the right and left don’t match. The right slope is too steep.

#81: The moss is overgrown, and needs to be trimmed.

#85: This scape would be better if the skinny piece of driftwood just left of center was removed entirely. Lots of entrants used too much hardscape to their detriment.

#87: The mossy rock on the left is too close to the front of the glass creating a dark area.

#94: The driftwood is unnatural and doesn’t match. The left pieces are skinnier than the right — they should be the same size.

#98: Nice pieces of wood, but the whole scape should be shifted, as the wood is too centered.

#106: The left side is too heavy, too oppressive.

#110: Very progressive layout, but it’s lacking much open space.

#117: Too much rock was used in this aquascape.

#122: Lacks focus, with no particular place being the focal point. Plus, the rocks are misplaced.

#123: The driftwood is far to large for this aquascape.

He started his presentation detailing why it’s so difficult to identify mosses, and aquatic mosses in particular. Most aquatic mosses only grow their sexual growth under water. This means that your best guess at identifying them is by placing them under a light microscope so that you can look at cell structure, leaf shape, and branching patterns. Still, many times you still can’t be sure without the non-sexual growth of the moss.

Dr. Tan then described how Java Moss has been called many things in the hobby since it was introduced. Again, many of these problems stem from the inability of hobbyists to correctly identify mosses, especially when they can look different under different growing conditions. He also talked about a number of mosses currently being sold in Singapore.

He’s just recently started using DNA to try to identify various mosses, but described how even DNA presents its challenges. He said that DNA can almost always help you figure out an unknown moss’ genus, but you may still have to rely on more traditional methods to then determine the species. The reason for this, is that there are not enough known indicators for moss DNA to key on to find exact matches.

Dr. Tan also talked about a liverwort, Subwassertang, that’s been making its way throughout the hobby. What was most surprising is that despite its resemblance to Pellia, it is actually not a liverwort at all. In fact, Subwassertang is really a fern gametophyte that’s missing the female sex organs so it never matures to become an actual fern.

He’s done some research on the gametophyte, and believes that it is a fern from the Lomariopsis genus. What’s most peculiar, however, is that this type of fern is actually a branch climber, that lives entirely in trees. He doesn’t know why that type of fern would have an aquatic gametophyte for reproduction. Below is a picture of what the terrestial fern would likely look like.

Dr. Tan ended his presentation with a rather enticing slide with two aquatic mosses that he believes would make great additions to the hobby. Privately, when I asked him if he thinks they will actually make it into the hobby, he said that it’s only a matter of time.

Another one of my most anticipated talks, Dr. Benito Tan gave an excellent and informational presentation. In addition, he also had a sharp sense of humor, which aided him during his talk. And for everyone that see’s terrestial mosses on the forest floor, and tries to put them in the aquarium, Dr. Tan urges you to stop drowning mosses, for he’s in favor of a “Cruelity to Mosses” society to champion their right to live undisturbed. A great speaker, and a great talk.

Dr. Kane then proceeded to discuss in more detail how to propagate aquatic plants, specifically Cryptocoryne. One of the challenges of aquatic plants is obtaining a sterile source plant from which to work. For this reason, if it’s possible to do so, you ought to first convert your plant to emersed form, growing in a soiless potting mix. When the plant is ready, you need to further sterilize it by rinsing in water, soaking in 50% ethanol, and for 12 minutes in 20% bleach. Once complete, isolate the growing tip of the plant, and put it in your culture medium. This is a gelatinous substance containing nutrients, which will be placed in a sterile container. From here, they need to be grown out, and further split many times to ultimately end up with hundreds of individual plants. This is, of course, a gross simplification of the process.

Dr. Kane also detailed a number of ways that hobbyists could do tissue culturing in their own homes, using easily obtainable materials. In addition, he mentioned the he expects to be teaching a short 2-3 day course sometime next spring specifically on how to propagate aquatic plants. I would love to attend that course!

Throughout the talk, he offered a number of other useful tidbits. For instance, he mentioned that you can spray a Cryptocoryne with gibberellic acid to induce it to flower. He also stated the tissue culturing does not work for every plant, and even for some that do, it is incredibly slow (Anubias). Water lillies, for instance, are quite difficult to culture, as are true aquatic plants, which have no emersed form. This was one of the talks I was most looking forward to at this convention, and Dr. Michael Kane delivered.

Plants have a number of methods for obtaining, and then regulating the iron that is needed for growth. Ideally, iron should be readily available to plants, either via the water column or in the substrate, but if it is not, plants can access a stored protein form called ferritin. Unfortunately, while this protein will work, new growth is slow, and yellowing of the leaves often occurs. Therefore, it is much better to make it readily available.

Greg detailed a series of laboratory studies that Seachem is conducting to determine the best way to feed iron to a plant. Essentially, there are two ways: via the leaves or via the roots. In addition, there are many compounds that contain iron, so they are comparing a chelated supplement (EDTA) verses iron gluconate (Flourish Iron). They’re using three types of plants, Crypt wendtii, Anacharis, and Echinodorus bleheri, to compare how different types of plants might react to the various iron forms. Preliminarily, they have found that roots are far more efficient (40:1) than the leaves at absorbing iron. In addition, compared to EDTA, their findings seem to indicate that iron gluconate is more easily absorbed by both foliar and root regions. They, of course, recognise that no plant can grow with just iron, so there are limiting factors when other nutrients are in short supply. Therefore, they are continuing their research to take some of these things into account.

Overall, what I heard from this talk is that the Flourish Iron I’m using in my tank is doing what it’s supposed to do, so I’m going to continue using it.

Due to his criticisms of the Best in Show tank, Amano offered his top two picks for best of show, even though he was ultimately overruled by the scoring of other judges. Amano really liked how this next aquarium has the bare-bottom of the aquarium exposed to create the look of a lake. He also liked how the lake reflected the color of the sky and clouds in the background. Basically, he valued the originality of this idea.

Amano was also very impressed with the rock-work in this next aquarium. He found the attention to detail, and the creation of depth very good. He also noted how it was a big risk to use rocks in the foreground, but that ultimately the aquascaper pulled it off.

For me, of all of the tanks that I saw this evening, my pick would be the following tank. I really like the sense of depth created in this tank, plus the whole glacier theme, and incorporation of a snow-covered mountain in the background. That’s a little bit unconventional, and overall, a very cool scape.

My runner up would this this scape. The depth is incredible. The background is a little overdone, but the close density of the plants on either bank is really impressive .

Please leave your thoughts for the best tanks in this contest.