I hadn’t slept in nineteen hours, and the only thing fueling me was a long-neglected cup of coffee and manic energy from binge-watching Japanese aquascaping videos at 3am. My then-girlfriend (now, just a friend who constantly reminds me of my worst choices) had gone away for the weekend,…
An aquascape’s background is like a painting’s canvas: it is often overlooked and underestimated, but it is absolutely pivotal to the overall effect. I learned this the hard way after spending three weeks perfecting a Dutch-style planted tank for an important client, only to step back on installation…
My first encounter with a rimless tank was at an international aquascaping competition in Singapore. After a twenty-hour flight, jet legged me, and dealing with the scrutiny of customs (bragging about a TSA’s playground plant scissors is a risky proposition), the icing on the cake was the astonishing…
The first time I encountered an underwater world was when I was seven years old. My interest was not piqued by the huge and mysterious ocean; that would happen later. Instead, my attention was captured by a perfect miniature mangrove ecosystem that was hidden in a corner of…
Only a week ago, I experienced the joy of seeing my prized Anubias bloom for the very first time in three years. The small, white blossom that was modestly jutting out from beneath the water surface felt like a win in and of itself, not because I had…
Every scar tells a story, I got one in my right palm from an incident my wife fondly calls, “The Great Dragon Stone Disaster of 2018.” Imagine a stunning rock formation I constructed sitting in my 75-gallon tank. It thrived in all its beauty for three glorious days,…
When I attempted my first “real” aquascaping project, it literally looked like a madman had taken a glass container filled with rocks and plants, then gave it a good shake. I was twenty-two, fresh out of college, and for some reason convinced that my biology degree entitled me…
I still remember the first time I saw an aquatic bonsai. Wow, it must’ve been…2016, or 2017? One of those international aquascaping competitions in Singapore. I had been wandering between displays all morning, and honestly, they were starting to blur together. “Mountainscape with carpet plants” for the fifteenth…
What do you think happens in the background while some aquascape is being set up? Well, I photographed the absolute chaos for you. An example is the work I did a month back for a doctor’s office which needed a relaxing 60-gallon aquarium tank. If captured, the photo…
Once, I devoted an entire afternoon to the seemingly mundane task of rock searching, submerging myself in a river while my friends mocked my sanity from the shore. That’s right; the rock I was searching for was not ‘any ol’ rock,’ instead the glorious centerpiece to an elaborate…
Have you ever found yourself daydreaming while watching your aquarium? This is about how my journey of constructing a water-based reef started. While doing a water change on my community tank, the 75 gallon one I own, I noticed driftwood pieces floating above the water and had an…
When I tried my hand at Dutch-style aquascaping, I ended up with an unmitigated disaster. Plant life was strewn across the aquarium with no attempt at organization, focal points did not exist, and the color combinations were not just dissimilar but almost hostile to one another. It was…