The editorial finding
Հիսուն միավոր հարյուրից
Amano's philosophy is not in a manifesto. It is in the score sheet.
The IAPLC judges cut the field to one hundred works, rank all one hundred, then take their own top ten and score those again against six named criteria, out of one hundred points1. The weights are published, and they are not even.
One criterion takes fifty. It asks whether the tank recreates a natural habitat for fish12. The other five together take the remaining fifty, ten points each1. So a layout that is more beautiful, more original, better built, better composed and more likely to survive a year than its rival can still lose to a layout that simply looks more like a real river.
Judge Shogo Yamaguchi explained his 2021 pick in exactly those terms, naming the criterion and saying it was worth 50 points out of the 100 total2. That is the contest telling you what it is for.
Nothing on the AGA sheet works this way. The AGA scores out of 200 and its heaviest line, overall impression, takes 70 of them6. Two contests, two theories of what an aquarium is.
One named part of that fifty point criterion is blending of the fish type, size, and ecology in the layout, which is why what a placing tank stocks, and when each animal goes in is a scoring question rather than a decorating one.
IAPLC secondary screening, points out of 1001
- 50
- Recreation of a natural habitat for fish
- 10
- Long term maintenance of the layout
- 10
- The creator's technical skill
- 10
- Originality and impression
- 10
- Presentation of a natural atmosphere
- 10
- Overall composition and planting balance
The field
Հինգ մրցույթ
Five contests. Most beginners think they are one contest.
They are not. One ranks every entry in the world against every other with no categories at all. One splits by tank volume so a 32 litre tank can win6. One is attached to a trade fair in China and pays the largest single prize11. One judges whether you have faithfully copied a named stretch of a real river. And one sends a trained volunteer to your house to look at the actual tank15.
| Contest | Founded | Organiser | Categories | Entries each | What it publishes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IAPLC34 | 2001 | Aqua Design Amano Co., Ltd., Japan | None. One global list. | 1 | A world rank for every entry. Titles for the Grand Prize only. |
| AGA contest68 | 2000 | Aquatic Gardeners Association, Inc., United States | Aquatic Garden by volume, Classic, Biotope, Dutch, Paludarium, Wabi-Kusa, Riparium | 3 | Three ranked places per category, plus an unranked Top Ten. Signed judge comments. |
| CIAC11 | 2017 | CFAA and CIPS, China | Changed several times. Four groups in 2025. | 1 per category | A top thirty, published as a JPEG image rather than as text. |
| BADC14 | Not verified | Around biotope-aquarium.info, with JBL as 2015 organiser or partner, Not verified | Biotope only | Not verified | Not verified. The contest publishes no primary source for it. |
| NBAT keuringen1516 | Not verified | Nederlandse Bond Aqua Terra, Netherlands | Club, district and national inspection | Not applicable | National results, on the CBKM site. A judge visits the tank in person. |
Բիոտոպ
The biotope contest
The philosophical opposite of IAPLC. It does not judge a composition, it judges a claim about the real world. Beauty is not the goal, and a beautiful foreign plant is a fault.
Հոլանդական ավանդույթ
The Dutch keuring
The oldest tradition here and not a photo contest at all. A trained volunteer judge visits your home and looks at the tank15. The word means inspection, not competition.
Հաղթող աշխատանքներ
The winning entries
All 117 verified placings, 2000 to 2025, with the aquascaper named exactly as the contest recorded the name. Six of them carry a page of their own.
Pattern found in the records
Նույն ակվարիումները
The top of the sport is a small circuit moving the same tanks between contests.
Compare the official result pages of the three photograph contests and the same layout titles keep appearing, under the same names, a few months apart. Eight cases are confirmed from the contests' own records5891213. The contests run in sequence through the year: IAPLC results in August, CIAC in October or November, the AGA in December3139. A serious competitor photographs one tank and enters it into the next contest once the previous result is public.
This is a description, not an accusation. Every case below appears legal under the rules as published, because the second entry followed the first result. It matters for a different reason: it explains why a duplicate entry rule is so hard to police, and it is the clearest evidence that the top of this hobby is a few dozen people rather than a broad field.
| Layout | Aquascaper, as recorded | First result | Second result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashy Range | Chow Wai Sun | IAPLC 2007, Grand Prize | AGA 2007, Best of Show and 1st |
| Congo | Josh Sim | IAPLC 2017, Grand Prize | CIAC 2017, Grand Champion |
| Ascend | Matthew Israel Manes | IAPLC 2022, Grand Prize | AGA 2022, Best of Show |
| Great Wave | Luis Carlos Galarraga | IAPLC 2024, Grand Prize | AGA 2024, Best of Show and 1st |
| Meteor | Dong Jin Shin | CIAC 2024, 2nd | AGA 2024, 3rd |
| Veins of Nature 2 | Muhammad Yusuf | CIAC 2025, 1st | AGA 2025, Best of Show |
| Borneo | Darushmarchiano | CIAC 2025, 4th | AGA 2025, 2nd |
| Spring | Mawan Huda | CIAC 2025, 5th | AGA 2025, 4th |
Read the names carefully
Two rows above name people our records hold separately. The record for "Josh Sim" and the record for "Sim Kian Hong" are two records, not one person, because no contest has published the equivalence. The same applies to "Chow Wai Sun" and "Dave Chow". Where a contest itself says two names are one person, we will merge them and say so.
Read this before quoting any result
Երկու ծուղակ տվյալների մեջ
Two things in this data will mislead you, and one of them will make you invent a fourth place.
Entries placed 4 to 10 are shown as a Top Ten group and they are displayed in tank volume order, not placing order7. So the fourth photograph on an AGA category page is not the fourth placed layout. The AGA states this plainly and explains why: its judges rarely rank far past their own top ten, so beyond that the rankings are, in its words, essentially meaningless7. Every such record on this site carries no rank at all. The single exception is 2025, where the AGA published a full numbered Aquatic Garden ranking, so 2025 has a genuine fourth place9.
ADA publishes the layout title only for the Grand Prize winner5. Titles for second, third and fourth are printed in the IAPLC result book, which we do not hold. The one exception is 2021, where the official Best Aquarium column gave titles and tank sizes for several top places2. Buying two or three recent result books would close the largest single gap in this section.
The dataset
One hundred and seventeen placings, and a rule about who gets written about.
Every page in this section is generated from one verified dataset rather than typed by hand. It covers four contests and twenty six years. It is not complete and does not claim to be: IAPLC before 2018 is Grand Prize only, and the AGA years captured are fourteen of twenty six.
A person's name, nationality and every biographical fact on this site comes from the official competition record and from nowhere else. Not from an interview, not from a forum, not from social media, and never inferred by us. Ninety four aquascapers are named across the records. Forty nine of them have a record carrying real detail, at least four substantive fields beyond a name and a placing. Forty five have a name and a placing and nothing more, so they are listed and left alone.
Verified records held, 2000 to 2025
- 55
- AGA, 14 years, the richest records
- 49
- IAPLC, Grand Prize 2001 to 2025 plus top places 2018 to 2025
- 8
- CIAC, 2024 and 2025
- 5
- BADC, the 2015 top five
- 36
- countries and areas, as each contest spells them
- 12
- records with no real placing, and we print none
- 117
- placings in total
Contest three
CIAC. The largest prize, the smallest paper trail.
The CIPS International Aquascaping Contest was agreed in 2016 and first run in 2017, organised together by the Aquascaping Branch of the China Fisheries Association and the China International Pet Show11. It is attached to a very large autumn trade fair. In its first year it drew close to 1,000 works from 24 countries, paid RMB 100,000 to the winner and put more than RMB 250,000 into the prize pot, which CIPS called a world record at the time11. In 2024 it received 802 entries from 25 countries12.
So it is large in money and narrow in country spread. Twenty five countries12 against the 77 that entered IAPLC in 20253. Judging runs in two stages, a pre-selection to a top 100 and then an international panel scoring against published guidelines11, and since at least 2025 the scoring runs through the organisers' own software13. One genuine advantage over IAPLC: an entrant can log in and see their own detailed score13, where an ordinary IAPLC entrant sees a rank number and nothing else.
CIPS also runs a live on-stage contest at the show, called CLIAC or the Champion of Champions11. In 2017 it put 35 aquascapers from 11 countries into national teams and had them build layouts in front of an audience11.
Not verified
We could not find the detailed CIAC grading guidelines in English, and we could not find the current year's entry rules, deadline or fee. Only the 2018 rules were located in full11. Whether the 2018 copyright transfer clause is still in force is also unconfirmed. Confirm the current entry route with the organizers before preparing your submission.
Contest four
A biotope contest judges a claim about the real world.
This is the most interesting idea in the whole subject and it is worth being precise about. IAPLC and the AGA Aquatic Garden class judge a composition16. The judges ask whether the layout moves the viewer, whether the perspective works, whether the colours sing. The winning layouts are inventions. Plants from Brazil and Southeast Asia share a tank with Japanese stone and African ferns, and no judge minds.
A biotope contest asks a factual question instead. The entrant names a specific place: a stony tributary of the Tariku river in New Guinea, a backwater of a Rio Guapore tributary in Bolivia, the former habitat of the axolotl in Lake Xochimilco. Then the judges ask whether that is what the place actually looks like, and whether those are the species that actually live there.
The consequences run all the way down. Beauty is not the goal, because many real habitats are muddy and sparse. A beautiful foreign plant is a fault, not a feature. Placement must copy nature rather than an abstracted picture of it, so the golden ratio and the vanishing point are no help and may hurt. The entrant has to supply references, books and field photographs, proving the species really do occur together in the named place. An empty tank is legal. A rocky Lake Malawi floor with no plants at all is a valid biotope. And collecting from a protected habitat is a disqualification.
One is closer to landscape painting. The other is closer to a museum diorama.
BADC 2015 final, ZooSphere, Saint Petersburg14
- 1
- Svetlana Kirillova, Russia
- 2
- Alexey Shabalin, Russia
- 3
- Víctor Manuel Ortiz Cruz, Mexico
- 4
- Timur Tekbaş, Turkey
- 5
- David Milosevic, Serbia
Serious gap
No primary source for the BADC is published anywhere we could reach17. So the contest's own rules, score sheet, prize structure and results archive are unread here, and we do not know whether the contest is still running. The 200 point sheet quoted on the AGA page is the AGA's biotope sheet and is not BADC's6. Before this site publishes a BADC page of its own, somebody must reach the organisers.
Contest five
The Dutch send a judge to your house.
The Nederlandse Bond Aqua Terra runs the oldest tradition in this hobby and it is not a photograph contest at all15. The Dutch word is keuring, which means inspection or appraisal rather than competition. A trained volunteer judge, certified by the College Bondskeurmeesters, visits your home and looks at the actual tank against a written national guideline1516. One stated aim of that guideline is the best possible living conditions for the animals and the plants15. There are three levels, club, district and national, and the national one produces a Dutch champion15.
This is also where the Dutch style itself comes from, and it is why the AGA's Dutch category rules read like a rulebook: no more than one plant species per 10 cm of tank length, at least twelve fish in a schooling group, the back and side panes planted, small gaps between plant groups, and a plant street for depth6. Those are NBAT numbers15.
To enter from Armenia, consider the AGA's Dutch category, which is open to anyone by photograph and uses the same rules6.
Named here, not published
Four other contests came up in research and none of them could be verified from a primary source. Aquascaping World and Aquatic Experience publish nothing current and may no longer exist, and AquaFlora carries nothing on it17. No Green Aqua branded contest appears anywhere on Green Aqua's own website, so treat that one as unconfirmed rather than real. We also found no national aquascaping contest in Vietnam or Indonesia, the two countries that currently dominate the results, which is a genuine gap needing Vietnamese and Indonesian language research. We will not invent a name for any of them, and this site publishes nothing about them beyond this paragraph.
Image rights
Պատկերների իրավունքները
Explore the official contest galleries.
Explore the complete entries through the official contest links. The photographs shown here have reuse licenses linked beside their credits.
| Contest | What the published terms say | What that means for us |
|---|---|---|
| IAPLC4 | The entrant keeps copyright. ADA retains a right to use entries for one year after the world ranking is determined. Every image carries the ADA copyright line. | Two parties hold rights. We would need ADA and, in all likelihood, the aquascaper. |
| AGA contest10 | Copyright stays with the aquascaper. The AGA holds an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty free licence that includes the right to sub-license. | One party can grant it. Because the AGA may sub-license, the AGA alone can give us permission. This is the only obtainable route we found. |
| CIAC11 | The 2018 rules state that the copyright of the top 100 entries belongs to CIPS and CFAA. | The aquascaper cannot grant it. Ask CIPS and CFAA, not the entrant. |
| BADC17 | Not established. No published statement of the terms was found. | Unknown. Assume nothing is free to reuse. |
IAPLC images need two parties to agree. The entrant keeps copyright and ADA holds a use right, and both appear in the copyright line4.
CIPS claims the copyright of its top hundred outright11, so the aquascaper cannot give it to us even if they want to.
The AGA licence is irrevocable, perpetual and sub-licensable10, which means the AGA alone can grant permission. It is the one obtainable route and it is worth an email.
Each photograph carries its photographer and reuse license.
- Judges criteria. IAPLC, Aqua Design Amano, no date. https://iaplc.com/e/judging_criteria/. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- IAPLC 2021 Best Aquarium selection by each judge. IAPLC column, 29 December 2021. https://iaplc.com/e/2021/12/29/best-aquarium/. Accessed 8 September 2026. Judge Shogo Yamaguchi describes the habitat criterion as worth 50 points out of the 100 total.
- About IAPLC. The International Aquatic Plants Layout Contest, Aqua Design Amano, no date. https://iaplc.com/e/about/. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- Guidelines and rules, 2026 edition. Aqua Design Amano, 2026. https://iaplc.com/e/application/. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- Grand Prize works, 2001 to 2025. IAPLC, Aqua Design Amano. https://iaplc.com/e/grand_prize_works/. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- Rules and guidelines. AGA Aquascaping Contest, no date. https://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/guidelines.html. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- Frequently asked questions. AGA Aquascaping Contest, no date. https://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/faq.html. Accessed 8 September 2026. This is where the AGA states that entries 4 to 10 are shown in tank volume order.
- AGA Aquascaping Contest showcase archive, 2000 to 2023. Aquatic Gardeners Association. https://showcase.aquatic-gardeners.org/. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- 2025 results. AGA International Aquascaping Contest, 2025. https://agaiac.org/2025/results. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- Photo release agreement. AGAIAC, Inc., no date. https://agaiac.org/photo-release-agreement. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- 2018 CIPS International Aquascaping Contest (CIAC). China International Pet Show, 2 March 2018. https://en.cipscom.com/ShowNews/11335.htm. Accessed 8 September 2026. The fullest published statement of CIAC rules in English, and the source of the copyright clause.
- The final scores and ranking of CIAC 2024. CIPS, 28 August 2024. https://en.cipscom.com/ShowNews/25073.htm. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- 2025 CIPS International Aquascaping Contest top 30 results announced. CIPS, 22 October 2025. https://en.cipscom.com/ShowNews/25258.htm. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- Biotope Aquarium Design Contest 2015, the final. JBL blog, JBL GmbH and Co. KG, 2015. https://www.jbl.de/en/blog/detail/57/biotope-aquarium-design-contest-2015-the-final. Accessed 8 September 2026. A partner source, not the contest itself. The contest publishes no account of its own.
- Keuringen. Nederlandse Bond Aqua Terra, no date. https://nbat.nl/keuringen/. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- College Bondskeurmeesters. CBKM, no date. https://www.cbkm.nl/. Accessed 8 September 2026.
- No usable primary source, checked 8 September 2026. biotope-aquarium.info, aquascapingworld.com, aquaticexperience.org and aquaflora.nl. Nothing on this page rests on any of them.
Continue
Where to go next.
IAPLC
One list, no categories, and fifty of the hundred points for whether a fish could really live there.
The AGA contest
Printed judge comments, scored categories, and the one thing the AGA refuses to publish.
The winners
One hundred and seventeen placings and forty five people, built only from the official contest record.
Styles and history
The schools the judges are scoring against, with founders and dates.
The club
What a first Armenian round could look like, and the five habits of these contests it should not copy.