# Hardscape Cichlid Tank and Building Caves Without Wrecking the Layout Building a proper cichlid hardscape feels like architectural engineering with the added pressure that your livestock’s lives depend on…
# Seiryu Stone Hardscape and Building an Iwagumi Layout Step by Step Building your first Iwagumi layout feels like trying to paint with three brushstrokes and making it look effortless.…
# How to Hardscape a Tank and the Basic Principles That Make or Break Your Layout You can mess up the hardscaping stage and spend months trying to fix it…
# How to Trim Aquarium Plants Without Ruining Your Layout Trimming aquarium plants is one of those things that sounds straightforward until you’re standing there with scissors, staring at a…
# Hardscape Only Tank and the Fishkeeping Trend That Skips Plants Entirely There’s a quiet revolution happening in aquascaping, and it involves removing what many consider the heart of a…
# 20 Gallon Long Planted Aquarium and the Aquascaping Shape Everybody Wants I’ve built planted tanks in everything from two-litre sweet jars to a neighbour’s 200-gallon monster. But if I…
I stumbled into Japanese aquascaping styles because I was broke and bored. I’d been running a basic planted tank for months, mostly java fern and whatever else wouldn’t die under…
# Hygrophila Pinnatifida: The Brownish Red Plant That Grows on Hardscape I’ll admit, the first time someone told me about a plant that could grow both in substrate and attached…
# Chihiros WRGB II and the Light That Serious Aquascapers Actually Use I wasn’t looking to spend three hundred quid on a light. I was perfectly happy with my clip-on…
# Riccia and the Floating Plant That Aquascapers Decided Should Live Underwater I discovered Riccia fluitans the way most people do: I was looking for something completely different and ended…
So I thought I was super cool and clever with my first real shot at aquascaping. I’d seen (probably) 50 YouTube videos; I’d spent a fortune at the pet store;…
You know what’s funny? After setting up tanks from 5-gallon cubes for desktops, to 75 gallons that nearly cracked my floor, I always find myself coming back to a 20…
Few things make or break a planted aquarium like your hardscape design. Nothing screams “this isn’t a natural habitat” quite like poor planning and haphazard placement of rocks and driftwood.…
There’s a certain pride that comes with watching your Anubias attach itself to your chosen driftwood after patiently waiting weeks for it to start doing so. Watching moss slowly soften…
I spent weeks lurking on aquascaping forums trying to figure out what made some hardscapes appear natural and seamless while others looked like rocks dumped in a corner. It wasn’t…
If you walk into your typical fish shop you’re likely to find two completely different types of fish keeping happening. Rows of pragmatic tanks full of fish that are healthy…
When searching for aquarium inspiration online, it doesn’t take long to come across photos of aquariums that look effortlessly beautiful. Perfect even spreads of mosses extending into the distance, stones…
I’ve always got excited about teaching projects and then realised I had committed too much of myself. That’s basically been my relationship with classroom aquascaping. I began with one simple…
If you’ve never seen a good Iwagumi aquascape up close, they can seem deceivingly simple. Some strategically placed rocks, a perfect green carpet, maybe a pair of tiny fish darting…
What’s funny is I used to think of Aquascaping like underwater gardening with super specific pH needs. I had this little book full of all the plant species I was…
Go into any aquatics store today and you’ll find aquariums arranged as Japanese rock gardens or stacked mountain cliffs of stone. What you won’t find is tanks planted in the…
Walk into any halfway decent aquatics shop and you’ll find tanks labelled as “Nature Style” or “Amano Style” that have no business wearing that name. To complete ignoramuses, they will…
Simple Planted Aquarium Ideas for Those That Don’t Want a Full Aquascape I know what you’re thinking. “aquascaping” dominated by impossibly balanced stacks of driftwood, carpet plants trimmed to perfection…
Aquarium Planting Ideas and Layouts That Use Rule Of Thirds Properly It took me ages to build the same tank over and over again trying dozens of plant placements, hardscape…
Planning Your Layout Before Spending Any Money If you ask me what makes the difference between an aquascape making somebody thousands of pounds happy and thousands of pounds poorer, the…
I approach most hobbies through the back door. Spend significant time learning everything I can about it from people who are already passionate, dive head first, fail miserably, and start…