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What’s your flavour?

What’s your flavour?

  • Total voters
    23
seedoubleyou

seedoubleyou

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Joined
29 Mar 2022
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Location
Windsor
I’m banging my head against the wall on deciding what way I want to take my tank now, with endless possibility.

I know there’s so many more choices, but if you could only have one tank and it was a long term project, what style of aquascape would you choose?
 
Diorama is missing from the list, this is what most competition tanks are.

I’m a Nature Aquarium guy myself but I aren’t adverse to an iwagumi or a diorama if it doesn’t look like a model railway.

I think iwagumi are good for a flash in the pan scape, about a month is usually what they take to look mature.

I’d probably go for a nature aquarium with a good wood tangle and as many slow growers as I could get my hands on for long term enjoyment, that’s what my 60pxd is intended to be in the long term.
 
alnitak said:
Endless possibility, that's the point !
Imagine you create your own style ? natugumi, dutchtope or iwascape ? Or a mix of all ?
Relax and stop banging your head, your tank will be your style :)
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I’m just naturally a very indecisive person, but there’s definitely something true in what you’re saying.
And I have contemplated worrying less about making a work of art, and more about making some that looks nice but doesn’t follow any rules and just ultimately works for the fish.
 
seedoubleyou said:
I’m just naturally a very indecisive person, but there’s definitely something true in what you’re saying.
And I have contemplated worrying less about making a work of art, and more about making some that looks nice but doesn’t follow any rules and just ultimately works for the fish.
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I think this is the way a lot of us end up going longer term.

I can't pick an option from your list either. I love Biotope tanks - but I'm not strict enough with myself to meet the criteria of a specific biotope, and I love plants too which many biotope tanks lack out of necessity of replicating the natural environment.

That said I still lean towards the 'Habitat' look, drifting away from the typical 'Nature aquarium' as associated with Takishi Amano. So my option would be the 'Habitat tank' - not a strict biotope, and not a nature aquarium, but a blend of the two!
 
If you're talking about the tank of my dreams, to set up for years, then I would go South American jungle vibes. 100% rainwater, low tech, high light, really dramatic piece of wood which emerges out of the tank covered in plants, loads of really nice unusual epiphytes, rocks under wood with posh mosses on them, emergent plants on the wood coming out the top. Loads of roots, loads of botanicals/leaves in it, so a little bit blackwater/biotope vibes. Would it have any soil? Probably not. Shedloads of tiny fish in big schools, plus apistogrammas and maybe other cichlids. This is my plan for a 150cm+ tank that I'd keep in the future though that I wouldn't want to rescape often because it would be such a pain.

Personally I'm not into Dutch cos I'm not into following rules, same as competition scapes. The great thing about it being your tank though, is that you can pilfer the bits you like and ignore the bit you don't and create a fabulous hybrid. I think instead of thinking of the style, you need to get yourself to some shops and just start to pick out things you like and want to work with, whether that's hardscape or plants or fish - what's your star?

Maybe write down waht it is you like best about all the styles you're interested in and see if they could fit together somehow? For example I like Iwagumis, but if I did one it would be a "wildflower meadow" iwagumi with grasses of different heights, stem plants mixed in very naturally and maybe a bank of tiger lotus in there too if the tank was big enough. Mix and match and have fun creating your own thing. Whatever you plan it will evolve as you make it. And then get a second tank so you can try something else 😂
 
I mean, (make space, hot takes and big swings coming through) in my experience when we talk about biotopes they’re either not a biotope. “here’s my Amazonia biotope with anubias and bolbitis and ignore the hara cats”.
Well. I mean buddy, the Amazon is pretty big and varied and last I checked Africa and asain plants aren’t from the americas. Or they’re just an excuse to do intellectual noodling about how this ugly assed tank is identical to this one square metre of river bed in a place you’ve never heard of and accuracy to a fault is used as a sledgehammer with which to beat back producing something that actually, you know, looks like something you’d want to have in your domicile and to ignore that you can’t create an entire ecosystems processes and deep time history in a glass box no matter the level of superiority you think biotopes have. They can only ever be a representation. Not many accept that.

Wooki’s approach is more to the spirit of nature scapes if you go back to it because they’re/we’re/Amano was trying to create the appearance of something natural through an idealised picture of what nature is.
All the diorama stuff and the use of “nature” with a capital N in right in there just muddies the water ‘cause it just ain’t nature or natural even if there’s something alive in there or if we’re using natural processes.

It’s easy to play the intellectual game with these topics because what you yourself create is an extension of yourself and your ideals, notions, beliefs etc.

Often it can be boiled down to “I did it ‘coz I think it looks nice like that”.

So I suppose what I’m trying to say is there’s only one you and only you know what you find beautiful and want to live with as a feature of your quarters for potentially many years. Don’t over intellecultualise it, it’s a recipe for dissatisfaction if you do.
 
I don't have a particular style, just a conglomeration of assorted plants & wood so I suppose 'other' would have to be my vote!
Much of my planting is simply down to what is available at my LFS & I just can't resist a plant with a different leaf shape/colour to what I've got already!
Any tank I set up is expected to be long term though the plants can change over time & I swapped the substrate in one tank as I didn't like the look of it.
I'm not strict enough to stick to a particular style anyway, there's bound to be a fish or plant that I'd want which wasn't allowed so I'd end up vending the rules to suit me!
 
It’s great to hear everyone’s thoughts and opinions and I’m gathering that the general consensus is to just go with what makes you happy.
Which to be fair, we’re the ones living with the tank at the end of the day.
I know in my mind that I’m more interested in the fish than plants and want to keep celestial Pearl danios and Angelfish, I’ll likely go with the CPD’s as it will be nice to see a large group of them back and forth sparring in the open space of a 90cm tank.

I think I’ll base my build around this, I imagine tall grass with some wood stretching out from a rock pile that creates refuge when the fish aren’t out socialising in the open space.
I’ll build something that looks pleasing to me but may not necessarily meet any hard and fast rules of aquascaping.
 
I think I’ll base my build around this, I imagine tall grass with some wood stretching out from a rock pile that creates refuge when the fish aren’t out socialising in the open space.
I’ll build something that looks pleasing to me but may not necessarily meet any hard and fast rules of aquascaping.
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yesss, you've got it ! :)
 
As a long term scape holder, I must say low maintenance is the way to go. You don't always have all the time to trim loads of stems, unless you are really devoted. Sometimes I think epiphites grows to fast
Nature style is easier to maintain then a contest tank or a Dutch style. Black Water is also low maintenance an option imo.
 
DeepMetropolis said:
As a long term scape holder, I must say low maintenance is the way to go. You don't always have all the time to trim loads of stems, unless you are really devoted. Sometimes I think epiphites grows to fast
Nature style is easier to maintain then a contest tank or a Dutch style. Black Water is also low maintenance an option imo.
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I tend to work a lot too, I’m a bit if a workaholic. My 90cm will likely be easy to keep and I’ll possibly run a smaller 30cm cube that I change scapes whenever I get bored.
 
Definitely nature style for me. I like tanks that on the surface might appear quite 'tidy' but on closer inspection are fairly wild and mixed up. However, I definitely have an appreciation for all of the styles and have been slowly trying them all one by one.

Interestingly, when you flick through the Nature Aquarium World books, I think it's quite obvious that Amano's approach to nature style is quite different to what people remember it to be (especially on social media). A lot of his tanks were quite wild in appearance, lots of species including pond plants, not such a big emphasis on the beloved red plants, mixed fish species as opposed to a single school - he pretty much had full on community tanks in some scapes, and visible algae too! I actually think he would not resonate with a lot of the sterile nature aquariums that often pop up. Not that he is the be all and end all, but it's interesting how his style has been interpreted.

In particular I'm now leaning more heavily towards pond tanks, biotope-esque and the tidy jungles, and I think flouting the 'rules' is my vibe.
 
Courtneybst said:
Definitely nature style for me. I like tanks that on the surface might appear quite 'tidy' but on closer inspection are fairly wild and mixed up. However, I definitely have an appreciation for all of the styles and have been slowly trying them all one by one.

Interestingly, when you flick through the Nature Aquarium World books, I think it's quite obvious that Amano's approach to nature style is quite different to what people remember it to be (especially on social media). A lot of his tanks were quite wild in appearance, lots of species including pond plants, not such a big emphasis on the beloved red plants, mixed fish species as opposed to a single school - he pretty much had full on community tanks in some scapes, and visible algae too! I actually think he would not resonate with a lot of the sterile nature aquariums that often pop up. Not that he is the be all and end all, but it's interesting how his style has been interpreted.

In particular I'm now leaning more heavily towards pond tanks, biotope-esque and the tidy jungles, and I think flouting the 'rules' is my vibe.
Click to expand...
That was something I noticed only very recently when a big name was spouting some tosh or another about only one type of fish and this and that and I’d just that day had NAW2&3 in my hands and did a “nah mate”, that was rare in fact upon counting.

But it was also era dependent when we talk about chaotic, as everything refined and in his later years things did tidy up.

Never really the blood reds though, I suspect that they’re thought of as gaudy.

But again we’d be guilty of intellectual noodling do some degree because we’re doing post rational analysis of art work.
It wouldn’t take much for it to be pulled apart by “nah pal, I did it coz it’s how I like it”.

It’s also why when I finish stocking my big tank I want more than one sp. Of fish. More homma/amano like. But I don’t have their ability to pear things back to the essence.

What I think “most” are remembering is the advice that has often been given when it comes to scaping <60cm tanks and turned that into all scapes. It’s sort of become the done thing when dealing with 54-70l that you take one schooler because you don’t have the space for 2 to be kept in sufficient numbers so it’s easy to think this must be what has gone on.
 
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