Aquascaping Styles

From what I gather, if you look through the Aquascaping Showcase each of the tanks are more or less based on the Nature Style or Dutch Aquascaping Style. True. These scapes are beautiful aquascapes and inspirational, but something is very wrong here. There are more than two aquascaping styles in our Aquascaping World people! Let see, what aquascaping styles are out there...


Nature Aquarium Styles

Takashi Amano has made this style very popular with his books, and his aquascaping competition. Most aquascapers look towards this style as the one to master and achieve. It is based on mimicing and capturing nature in one's aquarium, hence the "nature" terminology. The Nature Aquarium Style is designed to keep aquascapes simplistic and natural looking. However, despite the simplistic approach, aquascapes following this style are far from simplistic look

Here are some examples designed by Takashi Amano from AFA.

Dutch Styles

One of the oldest aquascaping styles. It is based on taking vibrant aquatic plants and planting them in tight uniform groups. The aquascaper achieves depth and height in the layout by following a the "Golden Rule" aka "The Rule of Thirds". In brief, this visual rule is based on dividing an aquascape or picture into thirds, and placing focal points in each section. Dutch layouts illustrate a mastery of trimming techniques, plant placement, and plant selections. And the thing that distinguish Dutch Styles is full "color composition" and lush of stem plant in it.

Here's a few example of Dutch inspired Aquascapes from the Netherland VVVivarium Aquascaping Competition.