Aquascaping - or the fine art of underwater gardening

Table of contents

• What is the difference between aquascaping and plant aquaristics?
• The material for aquascaping
• Stones for the aquarium
• Roots for the aquarium
• Aesthetics in aquascaping
• The Golden Section
• Different layout shapes
• Special form Iwagumi
• Creating perspective
• The choice of substrate
• Substrate layout
• Necessary tools for an aquascape
• Planting the layout
• Different ways of cultivating aquatic plants
• Preparing the plants - tips and tricks for planting an aquascape
• Filling in the water
• Connecting the technology
• Lighting and fertilising an aquascape at the beginning
• Initial stocking

Aquascaping has enjoyed unbroken popularity for many years - a fancy planted and decorated aquarium is simply a feast for the eyes, and if you take a few things into consideration, it is not overly difficult or complicated to maintain such an aquarium even over a longer period of time.

What distinguishes aquascaping from plant aquaristics?

Aquascaping is actually a sub-aspect of plant aquaristics. Unlike the Holland-style aquarium, however, it is not only the aquarium plants that play an important role here, but also the so-called hardscape made of natural materials - stones and roots are usually used to create a layout.

In contrast to the biotope aquarium, the aquascape also tries to recreate a section of nature, but not necessarily a biotope, but, for example, simply a section of a landscape, or a scene from a jungle, from a primeval forest stream ... these can also be landscapes or scenes that are above water in the original.

The material for aquascaping

Aquascaping is divided into softscape and hardscape. Softscape is quickly explained: this simply means the aquarium plants.

For hardscape, natural materials such as roots and stones are often used. Artificial decoration is frowned upon by "real" aquascapers, but can of course still look very good - for example, aquarium bonsais are quite acceptable as trees in an aquascape, even among professionals. So as long as it looks natural, a decoration that has not grown directly in this way is also possible.

A natural hardscape effect can be achieved with a few simple tricks:

• Never use only decoration materials of the same size - a large stone and several smaller ones in different sizes (the same applies to roots, of course) look much more natural than louder, identically sized chunks.
• You should stick to one type of stone or root, even in nature we don't usually have a wild mixture. The layout then looks more planned and not randomly pieced together.
• Odd numbers look much more natural and can be arranged much better than even numbers.
• It is good for the eye if structures are repeated in another place - if you have chosen a large basalt stone as the visual focal point, it is good if two smaller ones of the same material appear somewhere in the aquascape.
• Hardscape can be planted with moss or ferns, bucephalandra or anubias. A piece of wood or stone planted in this way looks primeval and mystical, as if it had been in the aquarium for a very long time, and gives the impression of great naturalness. The aquarium plants can either be tied on with nylon thread or glued to the dry roots or stones with plant glue.

Stones for the aquarium

When choosing stones for aquascaping, you should pay attention to whether the stones release lime into the water or not. If you want to keep soft water shrimps in the scape later (for example bee shrimps), they should not do so. In the Garnelio shop, we indicate for each type of stone whether it hardens the water or not. Otherwise, a simple test with vinegar essence can provide information - a few drops are dripped onto the stone. If it starts to foam, it contains lime.

Roots for the aquarium

Some roots for aquariums sprout because the wood still contains a lot of air. If you don't want to water them for weeks, simply place a stone on top to hold them down. Over time, they absorb so much water that they stay at the bottom of the aquarium by themselves.

In the beginning, the roots sometimes release a lot of brown tannins into the water. This fades over time and does not harm the ornamental fish and invertebrates in the aquarium.

Fresh roots can also develop a fluffy cotton wool-like coating. This is a layer of bacteria that feeds on sugar residues in the wood. Once these have been eaten up, the bacteria go away on their own. You don't have to clean them off, scald the wood or brush it off - this problem can simply be left alone. By the way, shrimps and snails find the coating very tasty!

Aesthetics in aquascaping

A natural look plays an extremely important role in aquascaping. We try to avoid artificial and posed layouts as much as possible. Therefore, there are some rules and ways of arranging the hardscape.

The Golden Section

The golden ratio basically means that an optical focal point in a layout should never be placed directly in the middle, but rather shifted slightly to the side so that it looks natural. The ratio is about 2/3 to 1/3. This is where you place the visual eye-catcher - this could be a specially shaped root, a great big stone, a colourfully interesting (for example red-leaved) plant, a beautiful plant bush, ... there are no limits to your imagination.

Different layouts

You can arrange the hardscape in different shapes - in a U-shape with free space in the foreground of the aquarium, as a triangle, as a gorge or canyon to the right and left of the centre, as a central island, ... there really are no limits to your imagination!

Special form Iwagumi

The Iwagumi goes back to the father of aquascaping, the Japanese Takashi Amano. Here, a grassy landscape with individually towering mountains or rocks is depicted. Aquarium roots are not used in this type of aquascape, nor are tall stem plants. Short, low-growing foreground plants are combined or a single species is chosen.

In iwagumi, one always uses an odd number of stones. One, the main stone, is the largest and most interesting. It is placed in the golden section. The smaller stones are then arranged to the right and left of the aquarium. The spaces in between are planted with foreground plants.

Create perspective

It looks beautiful if you arrange an aquascape in such a way that it gains depth in perspective towards the back. A good way to do this is to let the substrate rise sharply towards the back. This way you see more surface area and the layout looks much deeper towards the back than it actually is.

Lines of hardscape running diagonally towards a common vanishing point also create a great sense of depth in an aquascaping layout.

The choice of substrate

In an aquascape, aquarium plants play an important role along with roots and stones, which is why people like to use active soils made of soil baked at low temperatures. These soils are usually pre-fertilised and provide the aquarium plants with nutrients. Furthermore, they adjust the pH value to a slightly acidic level, which benefits most tropical aquatic plants (and also many shrimps and tropical ornamental fish).

Substrate structure

If you are playing with the height of the substrate, you may not want to design the entire substrate with expensive Soil - the lower layers do not contain plant roots anyway, which may need Soil as a nutrient supplier. Here you can use a substructure of lava rubble. If you work with active soil, you don't really need any further additives such as fertiliser substrate and the like, because the soil already provides everything the aquarium plants need for a good start in the aquarium.

In highly layered substrate constructions, larger stones should be used to prevent the soil from slipping and to stabilise the construction.

Individual areas that will not be planted later on can be designed with so-called cosmetic sand - a path or an open area in the foreground of the aquarium. To prevent sand and soil from mixing, it is best to separate the areas with pieces of cardboard or similar when filling in the substrate. Once the substrate has been filled in, carefully pull out the pieces of cardboard. To prevent the substrates from mixing at the transition, you can cover the border lines with small stones, for example, with some moss tied on top.

Necessary tools for an aquascape

An aquascaper definitely needs a pair of long tweezers and a pair of long plant scissors with sharp blades that do not crush the delicate stems when cutting them back, but separate them cleanly. A spatula is also helpful for smoothing the substrate.

There are curved and straight scissors and tweezers of different lengths and different shapes of scissors, each of which is used differently. Curved tools are better for getting into angles, and wavy scissors are particularly good for cutting lawns of aquatic plants in the foreground. Long tools are better suited for large, high tanks, short ones for nano aquariums. With them you can manoeuvre better in the small space.

Long tweezers are not only great for pulling things out of the aquarium, they are mainly designed to make planting easier. With tweezers you can grab individual stems or portions of plants and push them deep into the substrate - exactly where you want them. With tweezers, setting up and planting an aquascape is much easier and quicker than with your rather coarse fingers. The aquarium plants also hold better if you place them with tweezers.

Planting the layout

For planting the layout, the aquarium is not yet filled with water - rowing with your arms in the cold water to insert the aquarium plants is tedious and not really fun. Also, the aquarium plants often do not hold well and float up. You should therefore only add enough water to the tank to just cover the soil. Now you can plant in peace.

Different ways of cultivating aquatic plants

Basically, there are three different ways of cultivating aquarium plants: In-vitro plants, pot plants and bunch plants. Apart from these, mosses and other rootless aquarium plants are also available as portion packs.

Invitro plants are grown sterile in a beaker in the laboratory. Although they are quite small, they catch up quickly in the aquarium once they have been converted to their underwater form and grow just as well as conventionally grown aquarium plants. The big advantage of in vitro grown plants is that they cannot bring algae, snails, worms and parasites. They are not fertilised and are not sprayed. These cup plants can therefore be safely used directly in a shrimp tank without pre-watering and without quarantine. All you have to do is remove the nutrient medium - simply rinse them off.

Potted plants are grown in small pots, often filled with rock wool, in aquatic plant nurseries. They usually grow above water because this is more effective and easier, and in the aquarium they also first have to adapt to their underwater form. This can mean that the leaves or stems die off - but don't worry, if the rootstock is healthy (recognisable by light to white, quite firm roots that must not be muddy under any circumstances), new leaves will sprout and the plant will quickly look beautiful again.

It is important to remove the rockwool from the roots and rinse off any small remnants before putting the plant into the aquarium, so that no rockwool fibres can get stuck in the gills of the fish, crabs or shrimps. Fertiliser and sprays that you do not want in the aquarium also collect in the rockwool.

For shrimp tanks, conventionally grown potted plants that have not been pre-watered in the shop should always be pre-watered in water for a fortnight in a bright place to flush out toxins that could otherwise kill the shrimp.

For bunch plants, remove the lead tape that holds them together. Lead is a heavy metal and has no place in the aquarium. You should also pre-soak bunch plants for a fortnight before placing them in a shrimp aquarium. As a rule, fretted plants are not rooted - but this does not matter because they will sprout roots at the latest after planting.

Preparing the plants - tips and tricks for planting an aquascape

Before planting, divide theforeground plants into small portions of approx. 1x1 to 2x2 cm. Individual plants would be too flaky to put into the aquarium, small portions can be easily grabbed with tweezers. Foreground plants grown in rock wool with their fine roots often cannot be completely freed from the substrate without destroying the aquarium plants. In this exceptional case, rockwool residues may be used - there is simply no other way.

Potted plants are freed from their rockwool substrate and divided into individual plants. Stem plants sprout new roots very willingly if you cut them off and put them into the aquarium substrate. Here you can save yourself the trouble of scraping off the rock wool and simply cut the stems directly above the pot. Caution: Of course, this does not work with rosette plants such as Anubias or Echinodorus and with rhizome plants such as Bucephalandra, ferns and Anubias!

Bundle plants are detached from each other and placed individually.

Stem plants are placed one stem at a time, leaving about 2 cm distance to the next stem on all sides so that the aquarium plants do not have to compete for light later on. You often hear the advice to remove leaves from the lower part of the stem before inserting the plant - but if you leave a piece of the leaf stalk and possibly even a small piece of the leaf, you have a natural anchor that holds the plant securely in the substrate and protects it from floating up.

Rosette plants are also separated and then inserted individually.

Filling in the water

In order not to destroy the painstakingly set up and lovingly planted aquascape again directly with a sharp jet of water, the layout is laid out and completely covered with newspaper, Zewa or plastic foil. Then let the water run in very slowly and carefully remove the covering material when the aquarium is full.

You can also place a large plate in the tank and direct the water jet onto it, or use a watering can with a rosette spout - but the safest way is to simply cover the layout completely before filling with water, as described above.

Connecting the technique

Now load the filter with filter material, mount it and connect it. It should run for 24 hours because this is the only way the bacteria in it can biologically break down pollutants. The light is also mounted above the aquascape and plugged in, as is the optional heating rod - if necessary and available.

Lighting and fertilising an aquascape at the beginning

It is almost normal for water turbidity and algae to appear at first during the start-up phase of the aquascape. The aquarium plants are in the transition phase and are not yet competing with each other, and the algae take advantage of the niche. The algae plague won't be so bad if you don't light for a full 10-12 hours at the beginning, but start with 6 hours and slowly work your way up.

Fertilise only when the aquarium plants start to grow, otherwise you will only feed the algae again.

It is helpful to have a few fast-growing stalks of waterweed or nixwort during the start-up phase, as they take nutrients away from the algae and take over until the actual aquarium plants can take over.

Initial stocking

It is best to introducefish and shrimps into an aquascape after a waiting period of two to four weeks. By then the still fresh biological system is a little more stable and can better cope with the water load introduced by the aquarium animals. The nitrite value (NO2) in the aquarium should drop to 0 mg/l before the first stocking.