The club · What it would take

Starting an aquascaping club in Armenia

The honest inventory of what it takes: the seven conditions that have to hold for this to work rather than embarrass everybody, who pays if entry is going to be open to everyone, and the research finding that the expensive version of all this turns out to be mostly unnecessary.

People planting an aquarium together
Aquascapers working on a tank together.Abhik.Mazumdar.73 · CC BY 4.0 · Resized; uncropped.

The first round

A first contest needs a Facebook group, a deadline and a way to count. All three already exist.

The club is for getting together, learning and enjoying it.4 The group is already the place where Armenian fishkeeping happens, and a photo contest run inside it needs no hall, no committee and no bank account. Reactions are the count. That is the whole machine.

Two Facebook groups already carry the whole community, and the larger has about 7,900 members.8 Everything below is something we can start with what is on the table today. The things that would make a second round better are further down, as a wishlist rather than a blocker.

Ready now

A group of 7,900 people.

The larger group has about 7,900 members, Armenian and Russian speaking.8 A post there reaches more Armenian fishkeepers in an evening than any hall in the country would hold. Announce a theme, set a closing date, and the entries arrive as comments.

Ready now

Reactions as the judging framework.

An emoji count is a real voting system, it is public, and nobody can argue about the arithmetic. It rewards reach as well as quality, which is why numbering the entries and publishing the names only after the count closes is worth the extra hour.

Ready now

Rules that are already written.

The AGA photo release keeps copyright with the entrant.5 AGA publishes a photo release that leaves copyright with the aquascaper, ADA runs IAPLC free to enter, one entry per person.6 ADA publishes entry rules that are free to enter and open to anyone, and CIPS published the fullest account of how a big contest is run.7 the CIPS record shows what a large contest looks like from the inside. Borrowing the parts that suit a first small round costs nothing.

Ready now

Free to enter, and free to run.

A photograph, a post and a deadline. No entry fee to collect, so nothing needs an account to collect it into. Certificates can be printed for the price of the paper, and a first round should be designed so that stays true.

Ready now

Categories the country can actually fill.

110 species are catalogued with what is actually stocked in Armenia.9 Our own catalog shows which fish are on sale here, so a category can be set where entries will exist rather than where they sound impressive. Tetras, corydoras, bettas and loaches are safe bets today.

Worth adding

One judge from outside, for the round after.

IAPLC has never ranked an Armenian entrant.1 The AGA archive has none either.2 No Armenian has yet been ranked at IAPLC or the AGA, so a guest judge is a chance to bring a first outside eye to Armenian tanks rather than a gap to apologise for. Written feedback to every entrant is the part that teaches, and that can start in round one without anybody famous.

Worth adding

A room, once there is something to show.

The national exhibition calendar lists nothing aquatic.3 Nothing aquatic appears on the national exhibition calendar yet, which means the first Armenian aquascaping show is still there to be made. Photographs travel, and planted tanks do not, so the pictures come first and the room comes when there is a reason to book one.

The price of entry

If entry is meant to be open to everyone, somebody has to answer the question everyone actually has. Here is the number.

First, the smaller number. Entering the photograph strand costs nothing whatever, because it asks for a photograph of a tank you already have. Everything below is about the other question: what it costs to build a tank worth photographing, starting from an empty windowsill.

Building one costs the plants. If you already own a glass jar, a windowsill and a willingness to wait three weeks, the whole cost of a competition entry is about 1,500 AMD of plants10, because the stone is free off the ground and the photograph is taken on the phone you already have. That is the floor, and it is not a rhetorical floor. It is three named plants at the only specialist shop in the country, added up.

Everything above that floor is a choice, not a requirement, and the site publishes the costed choices rather than a shrug. The five routes below are the low effort models on easy setups, each with the weekly time it takes and the way it fails. Any of them can be photographed and entered. None of them needs CO2, a chiller, a branded substrate or an imported lamp.

What it costs to get a tank worth photographing. Every total is a build costed on this site10, with the shop prices behind it from the one specialist retailer in the country11
RouteWhat it isCostWeeklyEquipment
A jar you already ownAnubias and moss tied to a basalt cobble, floaters, and whatever snails arrive. Three named beginner plants at 300, 500 and 700 AMD11about 1,500 AMD1010 to 15 minNone at all
The three liter jar, built from nothingGlass preserving jar, plants, six cherry shrimp at 800 AMD each10. Fails silently and overnight, so read the model before you build itabout 12,000 AMD1010 to 15 minNo heater, filter, pump or CO2
The balcony tub, April to OctoberA builder's mortar trough, 80 L, plants and shrimp. The cheapest large water surface available anywhereabout 40,000 AMD, or 24,000 with no shrimp105 to 20 minNo heater, filter, pump or CO2
The soil tank, from free Armenian materials52 L of plain glass at 21,000 AMD10 over free mineral soil and free gravel. Three weeks of soil testing before the tank is even builtabout 80,000 AMD1015 minGentle flow, nothing else
The unheated indoor tank84 L of plain glass at 34,000 AMD10 with about 19,400 AMD of plants10. A forgiving option for your first setupabout 101,000 AMD, or 75,000 for the 52 L build1010 minGentle flow, nothing else

Why the floor is that low

Four facts about this country that happen to be extremely good news.

The hardscape is free, and there is an absurd amount of it. The figures are in the hardscape catalog and they are not marginal: 12 of the 34 materials in our catalog are collectable in this country and 6 of those are free and inert10, against shop stone at 2,200 to 3,000 AMD per kilogram11. A cobble off the ground is the same rock at zero. Read find a hardscape and do the vinegar test12 before anything goes in the water, because two of those twelve rows are warnings rather than options and three more raise hardness hard.

The substrate can be dirt. The Walstad method is the only major planted tank philosophy whose core input cannot be import blocked, because the core input is soil. Bought aqua soil for a 60 by 35 cm footprint is about 48,000 AMD before the tank, the light or a single plant10. Soil and gravel are free. That is not a saving, it is a different price bracket. It also has three specifically Armenian traps in it, all of them on easy setups, and none of them costs money to avoid.

Shallow water needs no machinery. Water 15 cm deep reoxygenates itself overnight without an air pump10, and the reason is depth rather than volume, so the rule holds for a jar and for a meter long shallow tank alike. An air pump is the wrong first purchase. See the windowsill tank for the arithmetic.

And there is no local standard to be behind, which is the most levelling fact on the site. ADA, Tropica, Chihiros, Seachem, Twinstar, UNS, Aquario, Do!Aqua and 2Hr Aquarist are all carried in by the individual who wants them113, so nobody here is the equipped class. Everyone in Armenia is improvising, which means improvising is the local craft, and a contest here should reward it rather than apologise for it.

The floor, itemised10

0 AMD
hardscape, collected. Basalt, scoria, tuff or pumice10
0 AMD
substrate, if it is mineral soil under washed gravel
0 AMD
light, if it is a window
0 AMD
heater, filter, air pump and CO2, none of which these builds use
300 AMD
the cheapest plant line at the specialist shop11
3,000 AMD
the dearest of its 20 priced lines, out of 34 sold in total11
~1,500
AMD, three beginner plants that need no injected carbon, added up10
The 12 beginner rated plant lines at that shop which carry a published price start at 300 AMD and stop at 3,000, and not one of them requires injected carbon11. A jar needs three of them. The one thing on this list that genuinely cannot be got for nothing is time: every build here waits three to six weeks before an animal goes in, and that wait is not negotiable at any budget.

One caution, because this page is trying to be useful rather than encouraging. Free is not the same as safe. Never collect river stone below Alaverdi, where measured copper in the Akhtala river runs far above catchment background, and do not dig soil in urban Yerevan. Marble and travertine will harden soft water permanently, obsidian breaks to an edge sharper than a scalpel, and the word tuf is used locally for two different rocks, one inert and one carbonate. All of that is on find a hardscape with the measurements behind it. Collecting is free. Collecting without checking is expensive later.

Ambassadors, and what one actually does

An ambassador is not a badge. It is a person who did one specific thing that made the next person's start easier.

Every one of the eight below is a real job with a real first task, and every one of them is a hole in this site that a person could close this month. None requires a good tank, expensive equipment, or permission from anybody. The first task is deliberately small enough to do in an afternoon, because the way people become experts is by finishing something.

Test your tap water.

This is the single most useful thing anyone reading this could do. The only published hardness figures for Yerevan drinking water come from a 2002 to 2004 sampling of four districts and the source springs, which found 2.9 to 10.9 dGH and pH 6.01 to 7.3013. Four districts, twenty years ago, in one city. Outside Yerevan the first reading anybody posts is the first anybody has. Every plant and stone recommendation on this site is standing on that. Your kitchen tap is a datapoint nobody has.

First task: one GH and KH reading, your district, the date
Photograph a local stone, and test it.

Our hardscape catalog has 12 materials collectable in Armenia10 and photographs of almost none of them in the hand. It also carries a live naming trap: the word tuf is used locally for volcanic tuff, which is inert, and for calcareous travertine, which will harden your water permanently. A photograph plus a vinegar test12 settles it in ninety seconds.

First task: one rock, one photo with a coin for scale, fizz or no fizz
Answer one beginner a week.

About 7,900 people are in the one large Facebook group8, and it is a general fishkeeping group where people post sick guppies. One patient, kind, sourced answer a week, from somebody who has read a little more than the asker, is worth more to that community than any page on this site. Link the reasoning, not just the verdict.

First task: find one unanswered question and answer it properly
Run one session for children.

A jar, a window, some pond water and an hour. For children has the material and the pond jar is the whole experiment; between them they cost the price of a jar. A school, a library, a summer club or four cousins around a kitchen table all count. Nothing on that page needs a teacher's qualification to run.

First task: one jar, one room of children, one hour
Host one meet.

A club in this country starts the way every club anywhere started: four people, a table and some plant trimmings changing hands3. Registering something does not make one. Picking a date does.

First task: pick a date, invite three people, bring cuttings
Translate one page.

The hobby here reads Armenian and Russian mixed8, and both editions of this site are waiting on a first translator. One carefully translated page is a larger contribution than it sounds, and the terminology arguments it starts are worth having in public.

First task: pick the page you found most useful and translate it
Walk into a shop and write down what is on the shelf.

One registered aquarium shop in Yerevan has no website, no social account and no page ever captured by the Internet Archive, and nobody on this team has been inside it3. Outside Yerevan the survey found essentially nothing, which is more likely a search failure than a fact. What is on a shelf in Gyumri or Vanadzor is currently unknown to everybody.

First task: one shop, what it stocks, what it charges, the date. Look for guppies, platies and mollies specifically, because condition 07 is waiting on it
Fail in public, in writing.

The rarest and most valuable contribution on this list. A photograph of an algae farm with an honest account of what was done to cause it teaches more than a hundred finished layouts, and there is currently no Armenian record of anybody failing at this in a way a beginner could learn from. The optional build note on the photograph strand asks for exactly this, which is not an accident.

First task: write up the tank that did not work

And an honest gap in this very section. This site still publishes no contact address, so there is nowhere on it to send a water reading or a photograph of a stone. That is a real hole and getting on the list is about it rather than around it. Until it is closed, the large Facebook group is where Armenian aquarists already are8, and posting a district hardness reading there does the community good whether or not anything ever reaches us. See community and shops for every address we verified.

The part that is meant to be encouraging

The expensive path turned out to be mostly unnecessary. That is a research finding, not a consolation prize.

Encouragement that is true is worth more than encouragement that is loud, so none of the six below is a slogan. Each one is a thing this site went and checked, and each one is the reason somebody with a jar and no money should enter.

There is no local standard to be behind. ADA, Tropica, Chihiros, Seachem, Twinstar, UNS, Aquario, Do!Aqua and 2Hr Aquarist all arrive in somebody's suitcase or not at all113, so there is no equipped class for you to be behind. Everyone here is improvising, including the good ones.

Small tanks win where small tanks have a class. In the AGA archive, Best of Show went to a 32 L tank in 2005 and again in 2006, and a 54 L tank in 201214. That is the whole argument for not being put off by a small tank, and it was made by other people's results rather than by us.

The physics is on the side of the cheap build. Water 15 cm deep refills its own oxygen overnight and needs no air pump10. That is not a compromise or a beginner's version. It is what the reaeration arithmetic says, and it is why the smallest builds on this site have the fewest machines in them.

The country is made of usable rock. About 125 billion cubic meters of basalt15, roughly 500 scoria cones16, tuff, pumice and obsidian, most of it inert and all of it free where collecting is allowed10. Aquascapers elsewhere pay by the kilogram for worse stone than the kind lying beside an Armenian road.

You are not late. You are early. The record shows the first Armenian entry is still unclaimed12, which means there is no hierarchy to climb and no history to catch up on. Whoever enters a first Armenian contest is, by definition, in at the start of it.

The wait is the only thing you cannot buy. Every build on this site waits three to six weeks before an animal goes in, and a 100,000 AMD tank waits exactly as long as a 12,000 AMD jar10. Patience is the one input that is distributed evenly, and it happens to be the input that matters most.

What is genuinely on offer, and it can actually be delivered. Every gift will be named before entries open, or it will not be mentioned at all. Here is the part that stands up today: a photograph of your tank published alongside everybody else's, your name on it, a real chance at a printed page in the calendar, and the first Armenian entry into a world contest sitting there unclaimed by anybody 12. That is worth doing at eight entries and it is worth doing whether or not you place.

Start with a costed build Start with a jar The four photograph rules Read how the big contests work
  1. 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
  2. AGA International Aquascaping Contest results and showcase archive. Aquatic Gardeners Association. Searched for Armenia across the archive and the 2025 results; zero hits. agaiac.org/2025/results, showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org
  3. Armenian aquarium shops and community listings. The local groups, retailers, events, and fish availability used to shape a practical first club season.
  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. Ակվարիումիստների Ակումբ Հայաստանում / Клуб Аквариумистов Армении. About 7,900 members, Armenian and Russian mixed, active through 2026. Public group metadata only; the contents of the group were not read. facebook.com/groups/AquariumistClubArmenia
  9. Armenian fish availability, 110 species. Shop and classified listings behind the local species counts. See find a fish for the current records.
  10. Local setup prices and material counts. Costed tank examples, beginner plant prices, Armenian hardscape options, and shallow-water gas exchange. See easy setups for the itemized builds.
  11. 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
  12. 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
  13. Shahinyan, H.V. (2005). On the hydrogeochemical characteristics of some drinking waters supplying the city of Yerevan. Proceedings of NAS RA, Earth Sciences LVIII(1): 41 to 45. Sampling 2002 to 2004, four Yerevan districts and the source springs. GH 2.9 to 10.9 and pH 6.01 to 7.30. This is the only published district level hardness data this site has found for the country, and it is the reason the first ambassador task is a water test. arar.sci.am PDF
  14. 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
  15. 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
  16. 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

Continue

Where to go next.

Designing the contest

The contest the starting conditions are for: voting, categories, the calendar and the five things not to copy.

Community and shops

The six thousand people a club would have to reach, and the single channel they are all on.

Trade and geography

Why the money question is small: the entire national fish import is sixteen thousand dollars a year.

The shops directory

Who could sponsor, stock or host, listed with what each one actually claims to sell.