What a like actually measures
Counting likes is a workable way to pick three winners. It is worth knowing what it measures while it does it.
A popularity vote measures two things at once and reports them as one number. The first is how good the photograph is. The second is how many people the entrant can reach, which is a function of how many friends they have, what time the post went up, who happened to be scrolling and how comfortable they are asking. A skilled aquascaper with forty friends can lose to a mediocre photograph posted by somebody with two thousand, and this is our own reasoning rather than a measured finding, but it follows from what a like is.
None of that makes the format wrong. It makes it a specific format with a specific meaning, and the honest thing is to name the meaning rather than call it a verdict on the tanks. What a like count genuinely does measure, and measures better than a panel does, is which images people actually stopped scrolling for. That is real information and a judge cannot produce it. It also costs nothing to run and it needs no judges, which is the reason it is the right first format for a club that has neither.
Note also that the big contests do not do this. The IAPLC publishes judging criteria and scores its top 100 entries against them12, and the AGA publishes guidelines and a scoring rubric for each of its categories34. Neither decides a result by counting likes. They also both have judges, a budget and decades of history, and a first Armenian round has none of the three, so copying them is not available this year.
Two cheap fixes, either of which can be bolted on without changing the format. They are recommendations rather than conditions, and the strand works with neither of them.
What the number contains
- Quality
- of the photograph, which is what everyone assumes is being measured
- Reach
- of the entrant, which is measured just as hard and is invisible in the result
- Timing
- of the post and of each share, which nobody controls
- Nerve
- to ask friends to go and like it, which is a personality trait rather than a skill
- 1
- number reported, containing all four of those
Recommended
Hide the names until the count closes.
Number the entries in the post rather than naming them, publish the names in the results afterwards, and the reach problem largely disappears because there is nobody to canvass for. It fixes the cause instead of adding a second prize, it costs one person an hour of preparation, and it makes the vote about the image. The cost is real and should be said: entrants lose their credit for the fortnight the post is open, which some will mind. The fix for that is to publish every name in the results, not to abandon the numbering.
Recommended
Announce a judged pick alongside the popular vote.
Two results from the same post: the three most liked, and one picked by a named person who writes a paragraph saying why. The paragraph is the point rather than the pick, because it is the only writing in the whole exercise that teaches anybody anything. It needs one willing person and one evening. It also gives a quiet entrant with no following something to aim at, which the like count on its own does not.
Works either way
And if neither happens, run it anyway.
A strand that runs is worth more than a better strand that does not. The format has been used in a hobby community of about this size for several years5, it needs no judges, no money and no venue, and it produces a published set of Armenian aquarium photographs where currently none exists. Both fixes above can be added in round two, once there has been a round one.
The categories
Three families of category. A category nobody can enter is worse than no category, so each one below is checked against what is actually in the country.
The categories are fish photography split by group, tanks split by style, and one for hardscape. Below each of them is the awkward question that decides whether it works here: is there anything in Armenia to enter it with. We can answer that for the fish, partly, because this site keeps a catalog of 110 species in which 29 are verified on sale in the country, 32 were searched for in the shop feed and the classifieds and found in neither, and 49 have not been checked at all6.
One caveat that has to come before the table, because it changes how to read every row. A shop feed says what can be bought this week. It does not say what is already swimming in Armenian living rooms, and those are different questions. A neon tetra that the one specialist shop does not list today7 may still be in two hundred tanks bought over ten years. So treat a verified row as a safe bet, and treat a not-found row as unknown rather than absent. The only row that is genuinely dangerous is the one where nothing has ever been found by anybody.
| Proposed category | Verified on sale here | In the catalog | Our reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best corydoras | Panda, Sterba's, pygmy and julii cory6 | 4 of 7 verified | Safe bet. The highest verified share of any group in the catalog |
| Best betta | Betta splendens6 | 1 of 7 anabantoids | Safe bet. One fish, no shoal to photograph, and the easiest single subject in the hobby |
| Best loach | Clown loach, kuhli loach, Borneo sucker loach6 | 3 of 6 verified | Safe bet, and hard to photograph, which makes it a good category |
| Best barb or other cyprinid | Cherry barb, Denison barb, panda garra, and goldfish in the classifieds6 | 4 of 11 verified | Safe bet |
| Best catfish or pleco | Common pleco, two species, and glass catfish6 | 3 verified, of which 2 of the 6 loricariids | Safe bet, and the fish most often bought without being looked up |
| Best tetra | Ember tetra and emperor tetra6 | 2 of 22 verified, 17 unchecked | Probably safe, but not for the reason people expect. Neon and cardinal, the two everybody assumes, were searched for and found in neither the feed nor the classifieds6 |
| Best rasbora or danio | Emerald dwarf rasbora, green neon rasbora6 | 2 of 12 verified | Workable but thin. Harlequin, chili and celestial pearl danio were all searched for and not found6 |
| Best rainbowfish | Boeseman rainbowfish, forktail blue eye6 | 2 of 4 verified | Workable. Small pool, but the two verified species are both photogenic |
| Best cichlid | Angelfish6 | 1 of 8 verified | Workable only if the category is cichlids in general rather than one genus |
| Best livebearer | None verified, and none searched6 | 0 of 5 checked | The gap in our own data. Guppy, platy, molly, swordtail and Endler are almost certainly the most numerous aquarium fish in the country and our catalog says plainly that it could not confirm them, because the classifieds returned an error to our fetch6. Check before announcing, then expect the largest entry of any category |
| Best apistogramma | None6 | 0 of 2 verified | Aspirational. Cockatoo dwarf cichlid was searched for and not found, the other is unchecked6. Run it and expect nought to two entries from people who imported their own |
The recommendation that follows from that table. Announce the five rows marked safe and the tetra row as named categories, keep apistogramma as a named category anyway because a category is also an invitation and somebody in Yerevan does own one, and add a single open row, best fish photograph, any species, which catches every fish the catalog has not checked. That open row is the honest response to 49 unchecked species6. The livebearer row should be verified in a shop by a person before it is printed, and that is one of the ambassador tasks.
The tank categories
Nature and Dutch. Two styles, and only one of them has a rule list that can be printed without a warning attached.
Nature aquarium is the category most entries will land in, and it is the one with a published process behind it rather than a folk rule set. ADA publishes it as a numbered schedule: daily water changes for the first fortnight, first trim at one to two weeks, fish at week seven after a clean nitrite test, layout complete at about week eight9. The IAPLC criteria that judge it are published, and one 2021 judge put the habitat criterion at 50 of the 100 points1. A club category can borrow that weighting openly and say where it came from.
Dutch is the interesting one, and two to three entries is a realistic expectation5. It is worth running for a reason beyond the entry count: it is a plants-only style with no hardscape at all, which makes it the exact complement of the hardscape category, and it rewards horticulture rather than shopping. Anyone who can grow twelve species well can enter it with free stone left on the ground.
But whoever writes the Dutch criteria has to pick a rule list and name it, because there are two and they disagree. The Dutch federation's own system scores fifteen criteria of which eight are biological, weighted at 50 percent biological against 30 for aesthetics and 20 for general, and it now has judging categories for Iwagumi and Nature Scaping and none called Dutch style at all10. Meanwhile every metric Dutch rule circulating in English, one species per ten centimeters of width, a finger's gap between groups, no two neighbouring groups at the same height, traces to Marco Aukes writing on a British forum in November 2009, who opened by saying it was his own view and not necessarily the correct story11. The American contest then turned that post into a scored rubric labeled as traditional federation rules4, and the disclaimer did not travel with it.
So the workable local rule is: publish the criteria you are judging against, cite where each one came from, and do not print the words traditional Dutch rules over a 2009 forum post. Our own reading of the styles record is on styles and history, and it is the reason this category can be run properly here by people who have never seen a Dutch tank.
Dutch, what is actually documented
- 15
- scored criteria in the federation's own system, of which 8 are biological10
- 50/30/20
- the weighting: biological, aesthetic, general10
- 0
- federation judging categories currently called Dutch style10
- 2009
- the date of the forum post every English metric rule comes from11
- 2 to 3
- entries expected in this category in a first Armenian round5
Best hardscape
Open to professional services as well as hobbyists, and this should be printed rather than quietly allowed.
Aquarium installation and maintenance businesses build hardscape here and some of them build it well. In a country with one specialist shop7 and no scene, excluding them removes a real share of the best work in the country for the sake of a purity that nobody asked for. So the category is open to them on the same four photograph rules as everybody else, with one addition: an entry from a business says so in the entry, and the business is named in the post. You can see who made the layout and explore their work.
This is also the category Armenia is best equipped for, by a distance. Of the 34 materials in our hardscape catalog, 12 are collectable in this country rather than imported, and 6 of those are both free and chemically inert in a tank12: basalt, volcanic scoria, volcanic tuff, obsidian, pumice and lava rock. Armenian basalt reserves alone are put at about 125 billion cubic meters13 and the country has roughly 500 scoria cones14, while shop stone runs 2,200 to 3,000 AMD per kilogram and the single driftwood listing in the entire country is 29,000 AMD7. A cobble off the ground is the same rock at zero. Do the vinegar test15 before it goes in the water, and read find a hardscape first, because two of those twelve rows are in the catalog as warnings.
Folded in, not dropped
Nano is a note on the entry form now, not its own class.
An earlier version of this page proposed a separate class capped at 30 liters. At ten entries that splits a small field into two smaller ones and produces a class won by the only person who entered it, so volume becomes a stated field on the entry instead. The evidence behind it stands and is worth reading anyway: in the AGA's own showcase index, Best of Show went to a 32 L tank in 2005 and again in 2006 and to a 54 L tank in 2012, and in 2011 third place in the Aquatic Garden class went to a five liter tank16, in a contest where winning layouts are usually 300 to 500 L. Small tanks win where small tanks are given a class. If the field grows past forty entries, split it.
Folded in, not dropped
Found materials is now a required field inside best hardscape.
The proposed class admitted only material collected in Armenia. As a category in a ten entry round it risks two entries; as a required line on the hardscape entry, name the district your stone came from, it does the more valuable half of its job anyway. Thirty entries is thirty datapoints on what Armenian aquascapers are finding and where, which is a map nobody has. The contest pays for itself in information before anybody is judged.
Judged elsewhere, on purpose
No category is scored on livestock inside a tank entry.
Fish get their own strand at the top of this section, where they are photographed as fish. Inside the tank categories they are not scored, and the reason is supply rather than taste: 32 of the 110 species in our catalog were searched for in this country and found in neither the shop feed nor the classifieds6, and 17 of the 34 hardscape materials are import only12. A tank class that rewards stocking rewards import luck. Plants, composition and the health of the system are things a person in Armenia can control.
The calendar
Twelve photographs on a wall is the first thing this club could make that a person can hold.
A Facebook post scrolls away in a day. A calendar sits on a kitchen wall for a year, in front of people who do not keep fish, and it is the cheapest object a group like this can produce. The site owner reports having made one before on exactly this model, Armenian aquariums together with motivational shots from competition winners5, which means the idea is not being invented here and the practical problems in it are already known to somebody.
It also solves the one weakness of the photograph strand. A like count gives three people a result and everybody else nothing. Twelve months gives twelve entrants a printed page with their name on it, and it does not have to be the same twelve as the top three.
The first rule of the photograph strand grants publication in the contest post, the results, the archive and the calendar, by name and with credit. That is why the licence names the calendar explicitly rather than leaving it to be argued about after somebody has already been printed.
Nothing extra to ask for, if the rule is written firstOur own research records that we hold permission to publish no contest photograph from anybody2, which is why there is not one competition image anywhere on this site. A winning IAPLC layout is not ours to print because it is beautiful. It belongs to the person who built it and, for a period, to the organizer17.
Do not print what you have not been givenThe AGA is the single contest where the organizer holds sub-licence rights and can therefore grant permission itself2, because its photo release takes an irrevocable, perpetual, royalty free and sub-licensable licence from every entrant18. That makes one written request to one organization the whole of the work. Everywhere else it is one request per photographer.
One letter, in writing, kept on fileTwelve months. Armenian aquariums from the entries, in the majority, and outside work only where written permission exists and is credited on the page it appears on. If no permission comes back, it is twelve Armenian tanks, which was always the better half of the idea anyway.
Credit on the page, not in a footnoteThe calendar is an intention with a price tag still to be found. Printing is the one part of this whole page that genuinely costs money, and the next move on it is concrete: one quote from one Yerevan printer for a hundred copies. Whoever gets that number first turns this from a plan into a budget.
Deliberately not copied
Five things the big contests do that a first Armenian round should not do, and one it cannot do yet.
Copying a format you admire is how small groups acquire problems they have not earned. These are the parts we read carefully and then left on the table, with what is being done instead.
Not copying
The prize ladder.
The IAPLC Grand Prize is JPY 1,000,000, with a published ladder of gold, silver, bronze and honour prizes below it2. Nobody here is going to match that and nobody should try. What is being done instead is smaller and more certain: gifts from local sponsors, named in full before entries open so that an entrant knows exactly what is on offer before spending an evening on a photograph. Sponsors are being approached. Until one says yes there is nothing to announce, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
Not copying
The invisible tail.
At the IAPLC only the top 100 entries are scored by the judges; everything below that is ordered by the steering committee and the entrant sees a rank number and nothing else2. That is understandable at 2,617 entries19. At ten or thirty it would be inexcusable. Everything accepted goes in the post, all of it, in one place, and nothing is filtered down to a shortlist first.
Not copying
Taking the copyright.
The 2018 CIPS rules state that the copyright of the top 100 entries belongs to the organizers20. Even the far gentler AGA release is irrevocable, perpetual and sub-licensable18. Your photograph stays yours and the licence in rule 01 names exactly where it may appear.
Not copying, yet
The live on-stage build.
CIPS runs a live contest where, in 2017, 35 aquascapers from 11 countries built layouts on stage in national teams21. It is the most exciting format in the hobby and it needs a hall, a sponsor, freight and an audience. It is also the one thing on this list that a club could plausibly grow into, at a much smaller scale, once it has members and one successful round behind it.
Not copying
One entry per person per year.
That is the IAPLC rule17. The AGA allows up to three, and since 2023 only one aquascape per physical tank3. Here a person may enter each category once, because the categories are different subjects rather than the same tank photographed twice. A first attempt should not be somebody's only attempt.
Cannot do yet, and should say so
A judged physical visit.
The Dutch federation does not run a photo contest at all. A trained volunteer judge visits your home and appraises the actual tank, and the federation describes taking part as enjoyable and instructive, with a written national guideline whose stated aim is the best possible living conditions for the animals and plants22. It is the oldest tradition in the hobby and unarguably a better way to judge an aquarium than a photograph. It needs a body of certified judges and a country you can drive across in an afternoon. Armenia has the second and not the first, and the first takes years. It is, however, the right long term ambition for a club, and it starts with members visiting each other informally and saying what they see.
- Judges criteria, and the 2021 Best Aquarium selection column. IAPLC, Aqua Design Amano. The published criteria, and the column in which judge Shogo Yamaguchi describes the habitat criterion as worth 50 points out of the 100 total. iaplc.com/e/judging_criteria, the 2021 column. Accessed 8 September 2026
- IAPLC, AGA, CIAC, Biotope Aquarium Design Contest, and Dutch national competition rules. Prize levels, judging formats, entry requirements, and image-rights terms from each organizer.
- Rules and guidelines. AGA Aquascaping Contest, no date. Free entry, up to three aquascapes per person, one aquascape per physical tank per year since 2023, the camera original upload, and the lists of allowed and banned photographic edits. showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/guidelines.html. Accessed 8 September 2026
- AGAIAC guidelines and scoring rubrics. Aquatic Gardeners Association. The published category guidelines and every scoring rubric, including the Dutch category rubric that turned the 2009 forum post above into scored criteria labelled as traditional federation rules. agaiac.org/guidelines. Accessed 10 September 2026
- The site owner, first-hand account, 10 September 2026. Not a published source. The purpose of the club as getting together, discussing, learning and enjoying it; the joint entry into a world contest as the club project; the photograph strand and every part of its shape, meaning rights to use, nothing else in frame, clean, sharp, one Facebook post after the deadline carrying all accepted entries, the top three by likes and engagement, and gifts named before entries open; the report that a Facebook group for growers of the orchid Neofinetia falcata ran that format for several years; the report that a calendar has been made this way before, Armenian aquariums together with motivational shots from competition winners; the expectation of two to three Dutch entries; the categories as a list; and the intention to seek sponsors and gifts before publication. We tried to verify the Neofinetia precedent and could not. No published listing of such a club was found. Facebook group content and group history are not readable without an account, so the group could not be identified by name, its posts could not be read, and no year, membership figure or number of rounds is claimed anywhere on this page. This is recorded as testimony from one person, in the same way the Chekhov Street market is recorded on community and shops, and it is not dressed up as research. Anyone who can name the group is welcome to correct it. first-hand account, one person, unverified
- Armenian fish availability, 110 species. Shop and classified listings used to keep the proposed contest categories realistic for local entrants. See find a fish.
- Gazanik category feeds and product pages. The shop's own published catalogue and its live category pages, 8 and 9 September 2026. Source of the plant prices from 300 to 3,000 AMD, the 34 plant lines of which 20 carry a published price, the 16 stones at 2,200 to 3,000 AMD per kilogram, the single driftwood listing in the country at 29,000 AMD, and the brand filter that shows which international brands are stocked and which are not. Individual prices are indicative and move. gazanik.am
- Armenian aquarium shops and community listings. Local groups, retailers, events, and fish availability used to plan a first national contest.
- Start Nature Aquarium. Aqua Design Amano. ADA's own numbered setup process, including the daily water changes for the first fortnight, the first trim at one to two weeks, fish at week seven after a clean nitrite test and layout completion at about week eight. adana.co.jp/en/contents/process/. Accessed 10 September 2026
- College Bondskeurmeesters, NBAT, verenigingskeuring. The Dutch federation's own judging scheme: the categories, the fifteen scored criteria of which eight are biological, the weighting of 50 percent biological against 30 aesthetic and 20 general, and the fact that its current judging categories include Iwagumi and Nature Scaping and none called Dutch style. cbkm.nl/keuringen/verenigingskeuring. Accessed 10 September 2026
- Aukes, Marco. "Crash course Dutch style Aquascaping." UK Aquatic Plant Society forum, 15 to 18 November 2009. The origin of every metric Dutch rule circulating in English, including one species per ten centimetres of tank width, the finger's gap between groups and the rule against neighbouring groups at the same height, carrying the author's own opening disclaimer that it was his view and not necessarily the correct story. Archived copy
- Local setup prices and material counts. Costed tank examples, beginner plant prices, Armenian hardscape options, and shallow-water gas exchange. See easy setups.
- Բազալտ. Armenian Wikipedia, accessed 8 September 2026. Basalt mineralogy, its stability against acids and alkalis, the Armenian distribution across Shirak, Aragatsotn, Syunik and Gegharkunik, and the reserve figure of about 125 billion cubic metres. hy.wikipedia.org
- Հրաբխային խարամ and Խարամ. Armenian Wikipedia, accessed 8 September 2026. About 500 scoria cones and roughly 300 million tonnes of explored reserves, the named localities, and separately the fact that the bare word means metallurgical slag, which matters when asking for it. hy.wikipedia.org
- The Acid Test for Carbonate Minerals and Carbonate Rocks. Geology.com. The dilute hydrochloric acid protocol at 5 to 10 percent, the 5 percent acetic acid comparison that makes household vinegar usable, and the limitation that cold dolomite may not react. geology.com/minerals/acid-test.shtml
- AGA showcase search index,
aquascapes.json, covering every entry from 2000 to 2023. The machine-readable index behind the AGA search page, and the file the tank volumes on this page were read from: Best of Show at 32 L in 2005 and 2006 and 54 L in 2012, and the third place in the 2011 Aquatic Garden class taken with a five litre tank. Two cautions the archive itself raises: 2006 carries two Best of Show entries, which may be a data error or a shared award and is unresolved; and the AGA publishes ranks 1, 2 and 3 in order but lists the entries after them by tank volume rather than by placing. showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/aquascapes.json. Accessed 8 September 2026 - Guidelines and rules, 2026 edition. Aqua Design Amano, 2026. Free entry, one entry per person per year, no limit on tank size, the whole tank shown from the front with no cropping, mirroring or retouching, and the clause under which ADA retains the right to use entries for one year after the world ranking is determined. iaplc.com/e/application. Accessed 8 September 2026
- Photo release agreement. AGAIAC, Inc., no date. Copyright stays with the aquascaper; the AGA receives an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive and royalty free licence to publish, reproduce, edit, crop and sub-license. Read in full rather than summarised, because it is the clearest published statement of what a contest asks of an entrant. agaiac.org/photo-release-agreement. Accessed 8 September 2026
- IAPLC world ranking announcements and results tables, 2021 and 2025. Aqua Design Amano. The all-time record of 2,617 ranked entries from 84 countries and areas in 2021, the 1,533 entries from 77 in 2025, and the country column in which the string Armenia does not appear. iaplc.com 2021 announcement, 2025 announcement, iaplc.com/e/result
- 2018 CIPS International Aquascaping Contest (CIAC). China International Pet Show, 2 March 2018. The fullest published statement of CIAC rules in English, including the categories and the clause that the copyright of the top 100 entries belongs to CIPS and CFAA. The detailed grading guidelines referred to in that announcement could not be found in English, and the entrant score visibility described on this page comes from the later CIPS results notices. en.cipscom.com. Accessed 8 September 2026
- Review of CIPS International Aquascaping Contest (CIAC). CIPS, 12 December 2025. Source of the CLIAC live on-stage format, in which 35 aquascapers from 11 countries built layouts in national teams in 2017. en.cipscom.com. Accessed 8 September 2026
- Keuringen, Nederlandse Bond Aqua Terra, and the College Bondskeurmeesters The Dutch federation's home inspection system: trained volunteer judges, a written national guideline whose stated aim is the best possible living conditions for the animals and plants, three levels from club to national, and the federation's own description of taking part as enjoyable and instructive. nbat.nl/keuringen, cbkm.nl. Accessed 8 September 2026
Continue
Where to go next.
IAPLC
The contest the categories are being measured against. One list, no categories, and fifty points for habitat plausibility.
The AGA contest
The other model: printed judge comments, and a refusal to publish one specific thing.
What it would take to start
What it would take to run any of this, including the money question.
The winners
One hundred and seventeen placings and forty five people, which is what a scored contest leaves behind.