Aquascape Styles 2

Now I want to share another styles thats yet distinguish styles form from my last post.

Zen Garden Styles

If you have ever looked or been to a Old Chinese Garden, you'll feel a sense of tranquility and balance in the whole scene or environment. A Zen aquascape is often overshadowed by the Nature Aquarium Style which took the Zen Style and developed it further. The Zen style focuses creating sophisticated and graceful layouts with aquatic plants and hardscapes. Bonsai Gardens are fantastic examples of this principle.

The Zen emphasizes the relation of objects (domination and subordination) whereas a Nature Aquarium Layout adheres to creating natural nature. There are old Japanese Aesthetical rules that dictate a Zen Garden (whether it's in an aquarium or a landscape). For example, the position of rocks must be in a specific arrangement and order to qualify it as a Zen Garden. 3-stone Iwagumi based aquascapes are examples uses of this technique.

Here's an example of a Zen inspired Aquascape.

Taiwanese Style

This style is another style that has been overshadowed and lost over the years. The Taiwanese style draws from Dutch Gardens, Zen Gardens and Amano's Nature Style to create aquascapes with high terraces and depth. Besides the terracing, small figurines, structures or other objects placed in the aquascape are also telling of when this style is employed. The overall goal is to create a living landscape.

Here's an example from the ADA competition

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.

 

Beginning Aquascape

Aquascaping is the craft of arranging aquatic plants as well as rocks, stones, cavework, or driftwood in an aesthetically pleasing manner within an aquarium—in effect, gardening under water. Aquascape designs include a number of distinct styles, including the garden-like Dutch style and the Japanese-inspired nature style. Typically, an aquascape houses fish as well as plants, although it is possible to create an aquascape with plants only, or with rockwork or other hardscape and no plants.

here are the example of panoramic beautiful scape of the aquarium :

the living ecosystem beneath closed glass. isn't it beauty?
there are many factor considering to build all of those balanced nature on the aquarium includes water parameters, temperature, plants, lights, and so on.