Aquascaping

A good planted aquarium looks as if nobody made it. Stems lean towards the light, a carpet creeps across the front like a well-kept lawn, and a shrimp picks over a stone with the concentration of someone reading the small print. In fact every rock and root was chosen and placed, and this book shows you how to do it yourself.

Aquascaping is gardening inside glass, with light standing in for the weather. The book begins with looking: where the craft came from, the main styles from the Nature Aquarium and the spare stone gardens of Iwagumi to the formal Dutch tank, jungle and biotope, and the design principles that turn a box of water into a landscape. It then takes the equipment one piece at a time, introduces the plants by the job they do in a layout, and finishes with the long, satisfying business of keeping a tank growing.

Low-tech and high-tech tanks are covered side by side, and neither is presented as the correct way. Where good authorities disagree, on how long to run the lights, how often to change the water or how many fish a tank can hold, you get the range and the reasons rather than a single number.

What’s inside

• The main styles explained, with Iwagumi stone placement, wabi-kusa and paludariums
• Focal points, the golden ratio, the rule of thirds, layout forms and depth, with a worked 60cm layout
• Choosing, testing and preparing stone and driftwood, and working out how much stone to buy
• Tanks, filters, lighting, heaters, substrates and the main approaches to fertilising, in plain terms
• Injected CO2 and liquid carbon, including how to read a drop checker
• Carpets, midground and background plants, epiphytes, mosses and floating plants, from HC ’Cuba’ to Java fern and Cryptocoryne
• Planting day step by step, tissue-culture plants, melting and the dry start method
• Cycling, water chemistry, and fish, shrimp and snails that suit a planted tank
• Eight common algae identified, how to restore the balance, plus trimming, routine care and troubleshooting
• A week-by-week guide to a new tank’s first ninety days, and a glossary

Who it suits

If you have never kept an aquarium, read from the beginning: every term is explained as it appears, and the book is frank that the first weeks belong to bacteria, a little algae and a few sulking plants. If you have kept fish for years and want the plants to do better, you’ll find light and CO2 figures, fertilising methods compared fairly, and a troubleshooting chapter that checks the water first and changes one thing at a time.