# Aquascaping.am

> Styles and their history, the competitions and who won them, stone and water chemistry, livestock and where in the world it comes from, the Armenian scene, reading lists and material for children. Every claim carries its source.

## Pages

- [About this guide to aquascaping in Armenia](https://aquascaping.am/about/): The planted aquarium, written down in Armenian for the first time. Tap water by district, plants that live here, and a club being built out loud.
- [Armenian aquascaping glossary: aquarium words explained](https://aquascaping.am/armenia/glossary/): Ninety aquascaping terms in Armenian script with a romanisation and a plain definition. Each one marked as established Armenian, ordinary Armenian combined in the ordinary way, a loan already in trade use, or newly proposed here. Twenty were invented and every one says so.
- [Aquariums in Armenia: water, materials, shops and local rules](https://aquascaping.am/armenia/): Yerevan tap water runs 2.9 to 10.9 dGH by district, so it keeps almost everything without RO. One specialist shop, 692 products, no ADA or Tropica anywhere in the country. Armenian tuff, the naming trap that goes with it, and the rivers to stay out of. Every claim sourced.
- [Armenian stone and wood for your aquarium](https://aquascaping.am/armenia/materials/): Basalt, scoria, obsidian, pumice and tuff are the national building materials of a volcanic country, and all five are aquascaping stone. Armenia supplies its own hardscape at construction prices. Here is how to read it, how to test it in two minutes, and which valley gives you which rock.
- [Aquariums and children: learning, care and time outdoors](https://aquascaping.am/children/evidence/): A pet teaches responsibility is the sentence every shop uses. We went and checked it, and the honest version is smaller than the claim. And what actually predicts an adult who cares about living things turns out to be free time outdoors and one adult who visibly cared in front of them, which is a different intervention from buying a tank.
- [Aquariums for children: help your child build their own tank](https://aquascaping.am/children/): You spent four months on a scape and came home to a plastic castle in it. Here is why a child wants high colour and a story, why the tank has to be genuinely hers if she is still going to care about it at twenty five, what a pet really teaches and what it does not, and safe ways to let her fish, feed and handle without hurting anything. Plus passages written for her to read, at two ages, with the score printed under each one.
- [Aquarium safety for children: what they can do](https://aquascaping.am/children/safety/): Adults say no to unsafe things and to ugly things and then call both of it fishkeeping. This page separates them: what is genuinely a safety question, and what is a taste question wearing a safety argument. Then the thing children most want to do, which is fish in the tank, and how to let them do it without a dead guppy.
- [Aquarium biology for children: living things and activities](https://aquascaping.am/children/science/biology/): The living half of an aquarium, written for a child who can already read alone: the bacteria that run the filter, how a leaf pays for itself in light, why algae want ammonium, what warm water costs a fish, how much life a tank can carry, what hatches out of pond mud, and what a shoal is for. Then thirteen school-style exercises, each one solvable only by going and reading the page it points at.
- [Aquarium chemistry for children: water and activities](https://aquascaping.am/children/science/chemistry/): Where every piece of aquarium chemistry lives on this hub, written for a child who already does algebra, and then fourteen school exercises in the standard form: a situation, the numbers you are given, and the question. The relation you need is never printed here. It is on the page the exercise links to, which is the point.
- [Aquarium science activities for children](https://aquascaping.am/children/science/): Chemistry, physics, biology and maths as they actually happen in a planted aquarium. Each subject points at the pages that teach it, then sets exercises that cannot be solved without going and reading them. Answers are not published.
- [Aquarium math for children: measurements and problems](https://aquascaping.am/children/science/mathematics/): Explore aquarium math: volume and unit conversion, ratio and percentage, dilution, rates and time constants, growth and decay, logarithms in pH, and the geometry of a tank. Then fourteen exercises in school form, set in real Yerevan tanks, each one solvable from a page on this site.
- [Aquarium physics for children: water, light and activities](https://aquascaping.am/children/science/physics/): A tank is a slab of water with one open face, and almost every physics lesson a school gives can be asked about it. First, in a sentence each, where the physics lives on this site: depth against volume, diffusion, light down through water, the mirror under the surface, heat, flow and the load on the floor. Then twelve exercises in ordinary school form, context, given, find, with the numbers deliberately left off the page so the child has to go and read.
- [Decorating a child’s aquarium: let them choose](https://aquascaping.am/children/taste/): The style you prefer is a school with a founder, a date and a rulebook, not the finish line of good taste. This page is the argument about the castle: why an eight year old choosing a pink castle is behaving exactly like an eight year old, where your own preference actually came from, and why whoever decides what goes in the tank is the person who owns it.
- [Aquarium stories for children](https://aquascaping.am/children/writing/): Listening runs ahead of reading, so the two reading bands on this hub carry different loads. This page prints the rules so that a person or a script can mark each one pass or fail, then the finished text with its measurement underneath, the nitrogen cycle written three times without ever naming an organism, matsun as a worked example, and the honest note that no study of glass tapping exists.
- [Planning Armenia’s first aquascaping contest](https://aquascaping.am/club/contest/): Counting likes is a workable way to pick three winners and it is worth knowing what it measures when you do. Three families of category, because a category nobody can enter is worse than no category. Twelve photographs on a wall as the first thing a club could make that a person can hold. And five things the big contests do that a first Armenian round should not, plus one it cannot.
- [An aquascaping club for Armenia](https://aquascaping.am/club/): Armenia has no aquarium forum, no club in any legal sense and no record of a contest ever held. The proposal starts with people meeting, arguing and learning, adds a tank built together and entered into a world contest, and ends with a photograph strand that has rules, categories and a calendar at the end of it.
- [Starting an aquascaping club in Armenia](https://aquascaping.am/club/starting/): A club in this country starts at four people, a table and some cuttings. This page prints the seven conditions under which that works, the money question that has to be answered if entry is meant to be open to everyone, four facts about Armenia that are very good news for the cost, and the finding that the expensive path turned out to be mostly unnecessary.
- [Armenia’s aquarium community: groups and local shops](https://aquascaping.am/community/): No forum, no club, no society, no competition. Two Facebook groups, one specialist shop, a handful of makers and two Instagram micro shops. Every address verified, every member count taken from public metadata, and an honest account of what we did not read.
- [AGA aquascaping contest: categories and judging](https://aquascaping.am/competitions/aga/): Older than IAPLC by one year and a fifth the size, the AGA contest publishes tank dimensions, plant and animal lists, hardscape and signed judge comments. It also displays entries ranked 4 to 10 in tank volume order, not placing order, and that trap is handled in code here.
- [IAPLC aquascaping contest: how the judging works](https://aquascaping.am/competitions/iaplc/): One global list, no categories, no entry fee. Fifty of one hundred secondary screening points go to recreation of a natural habitat for fish. Twenty five Grand Prize winners 2001 to 2025, the judging pipeline, the disqualifications, and the image rights position.
- [Aquascaping competitions: contests and judging](https://aquascaping.am/competitions/): Fifty of one hundred secondary screening points at the world’s largest aquascaping contest go to one criterion: recreation of a natural habitat for fish. The five contests compared, the eight confirmed cases of one tank entered in two contests, and the image rights position on every one.
- [Aquarium photo credits and licenses](https://aquascaping.am/credits/): Meet the photographers behind our aquarium and landscape image library, with links to their work and image licenses.
- [Beginner aquarium fish, plants and stones: what to choose](https://aquascaping.am/difficulty/): The hobby's beginner and advanced labels are convention, not measurement. So we built a difficulty score from the published tolerance windows, the equipment, the room and the water that actually comes out of the tap here, published the formula, and ranked every species we could. The forgiving end is large, cheap and genuinely rewarding.
- [Easy aquarium care: 5 simple setups](https://aquascaping.am/easy/): Six ways to start, four of which need no heater, no filter, no pump and no carbon dioxide. Each one comes with dimensions, stocking, equipment, weekly minutes and the way it fails, worked for the Armenian climate. Shallow water gets its oxygen back faster than deep water, which is why a wide tub needs no air pump and a barrel does.
- [Seasonal care for an aquarium or patio pond](https://aquascaping.am/easy/seasonal-care/): A simple routine for plants, fish, mosquitoes, accumulated minerals, and the one useful fall cleanout.
- [Choose an easy aquarium setup](https://aquascaping.am/easy/setup-guide/): Compare six complete aquarium and patio-tub setups by space, season, equipment, weekly care, and price.
- [Why a shallow aquarium is easier to keep](https://aquascaping.am/easy/why-shallow/): How water depth, Yerevan altitude, summer heat, winter ice, and adult fish size shape a low-maintenance aquarium.
- [Find aquarium fish that fit your tank](https://aquascaping.am/fish/): Set the tank you actually have, the water you actually have, and the equipment you actually own. The tool returns the species that fit, and it names every species it removed and the constraint that removed it. Yerevan tap water is a one-click preset.
- [Aquarium fish species: compare size and care needs](https://aquascaping.am/fish/species/): The full record set behind the find-a-fish tool. Adult size, minimum volume and base, temperature, heater, pH, hardness, aeration, flow, driftwood, substrate, zone, nocturnal, hiding, group behaviour, minimum group, IUCN status and Armenian availability, for every species, sortable on any column.
- [Bringing aquarium fish home: transport and acclimation](https://aquascaping.am/fish/transport/): Prepare for new aquarium fish, understand shipping-bag water, and plan acclimation around the species and journey instead of a fixed drip timer.
- [Choose aquarium rocks and wood](https://aquascaping.am/hardscape/): Whether a rock dissolves into your water is the only property that can end a tank, and no shop states it. Filter stone and wood by effect on water chemistry, with the carbonate ceiling calculated for an uninjected tank and for an injected one, against Yerevan tap water, and with the Armenian stone you can collect for nothing.
- [Aquarium rocks and wood: compare materials](https://aquascaping.am/hardscape/materials/): The whole hardscape record set, sortable on any column: what the rock actually is, what it does to GH and KH, how confident anyone can be about that, whether the carbonate ceiling applies, and whether you can pick it up in Armenia.
- [Հայաստանում ակվասքեյփինգի այս ուղեցույցի մասին](https://aquascaping.am/hy/about/): Բույսերով ակվարիումի մասին՝ առաջին անգամ հայերեն։ Ծորակի ջուրը՝ ըստ թաղամասերի, այստեղ աճող բույսերը և միասին ստեղծվող ակումբը։
- [Գիտական առաջադրանքներ երեխաների համար՝ ակվարիումի օրինակով](https://aquascaping.am/hy/children/science/): Քիմիան, ֆիզիկան, կենսաբանությունն ու մաթեմատիկան՝ բուսական ակվարիումի օրինակով։ Յուրաքանչյուր առարկա ունի ուսումնական էջերի հղումներ և դրանց նյութով լուծվող առաջադրանքներ։ Պատասխանները չեն հրապարակվում։
- [Ակվարիումի հեշտ խնամք․ 5 պարզ տարբերակներ](https://aquascaping.am/hy/easy/): Սկսելու վեց եղանակ, որոնցից չորսին պետք չեն ջեռուցիչ, ֆիլտր, պոմպ և ածխաթթու գազի ավելացում։ Յուրաքանչյուրի համար նշված են չափերը, կենդանիների քանակը, սարքավորումները, շաբաթական խնամքի ժամանակը և հնարավոր խնդիրները՝ Հայաստանի կլիմայի հաշվառմամբ։ Ծանծաղ ջուրն ավելի արագ է վերականգնում թթվածինը․ այդ պատճառով լայն տաշտին օդային պոմպ պետք չէ, իսկ տակառին՝ պետք է։
- [Ընտրեք պարզ ակվարիում](https://aquascaping.am/hy/easy/setup-guide/): Համեմատեք ակվարիումի և բացօթյա տարայի վեց տարբերակ՝ ըստ տարածքի, սեզոնի, սարքավորումների, շաբաթական խնամքի և գնի։
- [Ակվասքեյփինգ Հայաստանում․ բուսական ակվարիումի ուղեցույցներ](https://aquascaping.am/hy/): Ոճերն ու դրանց պատմությունը, մրցույթներն ու հաղթողները, քարերն ու ջրի քիմիան, ակվարիումի կենդանիներն ու դրանց ծագումը, Հայաստանի համայնքը, գրքեր և նյութեր երեխաների համար։ Պնդումներին կից տրված են աղբյուրները։
- [Սևանա լճի գամարուսների կենսաբանությունը](https://aquascaping.am/hy/science/archive/arar-135013/): A. K. Markosyan-ի 1948 թ. հոդվածի կարճ ամփոփումը՝ հիմնական արդյունքներով և բնօրինակ PDF-ով։
- [Ակվարիումի գիտությունը․ կենսաբանություն, քիմիա և ֆիզիկա](https://aquascaping.am/hy/science/): Ակվարիումի հիմքում մանրէների համակարգն է, որի հետ ապրում են բույսերն ու կենդանիները։ Այն միավորում է կարբոնատային քիմիան, իսկ գազերի փոխանակումը սահմանափակվում է ջրի բաց մակերեսով։ Երեք գիտական ուղղություն և Սևանի մասին 356 հոդվածի արխիվ։
- [Պլանավորեք ակվարիումը․ տարածք, ջուր, ջերմություն և հոսանք](https://aquascaping.am/hy/water/planning/): Որտեղ դնել ակվարիումը, ինչպես է հայկական ամառը ազդում դրա թթվածնի վրա, ինչ հզորության ջեռուցիչ ընտրել, ինչպես կազմակերպել էլեկտրական միացումները և ինչու է քլորի հեռացումը պաշտպանում ֆիլտրը, ոչ թե ձկներին։ Ներառված են գնումներից առաջ ստուգումների ցանկը և դժվար փոխվող որոշումները։
- [Aquascaping in Armenia: planted aquarium guides](https://aquascaping.am/): Styles and their history, the competitions and who won them, stone and water chemistry, livestock and where in the world it comes from, the Armenian scene, reading lists and material for children. Every claim carries its source.
- [Make a pond jar: watch tiny water animals appear](https://aquascaping.am/jar/): Collect a little sediment, water and leaf litter into a two litre jar, cover it with cloth, put it on a windowsill and watch. The animals that appear were already in the mud as resting eggs. A science project with a schedule, a log, and an honest account of when the jar crashes.
- [Pond jar biology: what lives in the mud](https://aquascaping.am/jar/science/): The animals in a pond jar do not arrive. They are already in the mud, waiting. This page is the biology underneath the jar: the egg bank, the order in which organisms appear and why that order and not another, why leaf litter is the fuel without which the jar is a glass of water with mud in it, and the Winogradsky column, which is the same mud stood on end so the bacteria sort themselves into stripes.
- [Choosing fish for an aquascape](https://aquascaping.am/livestock/in-a-layout/): ADA gives 50 of its 100 points to recreation of a natural habitat for fish, and one named part of that criterion is blending of the fish type, size and ecology in the layout. What placing contest tanks really stock, why the species count fell while the fish count rose, and which six of them are on a shelf in Yerevan.
- [Aquarium fish: natural habitats and temperature needs](https://aquascaping.am/livestock/): Nobody keeps a cold tank. They keep an unheated one, which in a heated Yerevan apartment is subtropical. Fish, shrimp and snails with the river they are actually from, the water that follows, and the three species still routinely mis-sold.
- [Cycling an aquarium: how filter bacteria work](https://aquascaping.am/method/cycling/): Dr Tim is Timothy A. Hovanec and the 1998 paper is real. The hobby has named the wrong nitrite oxidiser for nearly thirty years. Nitrifying bacteria do not eat waste, heterotrophs do, and the soil carbon dioxide claim is partly true in a way that matters.
- [Aquarium cycling: microbes, ammonia, and water tests](https://aquascaping.am/method/cycling/microbes/): Meet the microbes that process aquarium waste, understand what ammonia tests show, and avoid chasing a magic dose while cycling a fish-free tank.
- [The Walstad aquarium method: soil, plants and care](https://aquascaping.am/method/walstad/): No maintenance, any garden soil, and proof of allelopathy are all things Diana Walstad did not say. And in a country with no ADA or Tropica distribution, free soil and river gravel is not the budget option. It is the structurally correct one.
- [Aquarium myths: practical answers for beginners](https://aquascaping.am/myths/): Thirty-one pieces of received aquarium advice, checked against the primary literature. What is commonly said, what the evidence shows, what to do instead, and why the common version exists. Including the six things this site itself got wrong.
- [Aquarium plant myths: light, growth and outdoor ponds](https://aquascaping.am/myths/plants/): Light is the accelerator, not the food, and buying more of it is the most expensive way to make a problem worse. Four myths about the room change what you buy, including one that may mean you do not need an air pump at all. And the outdoor pond literature is written for northern Europe, which makes one of its habits dangerous in Armenia.
- [Aquarium water myths: rocks, hardness and filters](https://aquascaping.am/myths/water/): The two clusters of hobby folklore that are about water chemistry and biological filtration. The most feared beginner mistake, putting the wrong stone in a tank, is mostly not a disaster and the arithmetic says why. And almost nothing in a filter is a nitrifier, with the textbook names decades out of date.
- [Find aquarium plants for your light and tank](https://aquascaping.am/plants/): A plant filter that takes a measured PPFD rather than the words low, medium and high, that separates root feeders from leaf feeders, and that never hides an invasive or Red Book warning. 93 plants, 42 of them wild in Armenia, and the finding that not one of those 42 is on a shelf here.
- [Aquarium plant species: compare light and care needs](https://aquascaping.am/plants/species/): Ninety three aquatic and marginal plants with every recorded field: light floor, CO2, growth, difficulty, temperature, pH, hardness, whether it feeds through roots or leaves, whether it grows emersed, whether it is wild in Armenia and whether anyone here sells it.
- [Aquarium plant supplements: read the label before you mix](https://aquascaping.am/plants/supplements/): Understand aquarium fertilizers, amino acids, kelp extracts, and boron—and why a cheap garden powder is not automatically a safe aquarium substitute.
- [Aquascaping in Armenia: press kit and brand assets](https://aquascaping.am/press/): Marks, colour and usage for aquascaping.am. Everything on this page is generated from the brand system.
- [Aquariums and well-being: what research shows](https://aquascaping.am/psychology/): What the research actually shows about aquariums and how people feel. The only systematic review rated zero of nineteen studies at low risk of bias, and the best powered study is negative. Thirty honest reasons to keep a tank, each graded, plus the eighteen claims we deleted and verified mental health services in Armenia.
- [Thirty reasons to keep an aquarium](https://aquascaping.am/psychology/reasons/): Thirty reasons people give for keeping an aquarium, each with its evidence printed next to it and each carrying the same grade the rest of this section uses. Some of them are supported, several are supported only for something adjacent, and a few are repeated everywhere and rest on nothing at all.
- [Aquarium books, articles and journals](https://aquascaping.am/reading/): A tiered book list with verified ISBNs, the ten most useful scientific papers with DOIs and open access marked, and the Aquatic Gardeners Association journal as a resource. Includes what forty one years of the field's only journal does not cover, and the fact that Russia's largest bookshop returns no results for aquascaping.
- [Об этом путеводителе по акваскейпингу в Армении](https://aquascaping.am/ru/about/): Об аквариуме с растениями — впервые на армянском. Водопроводная вода по районам, растения, которые растут здесь, и клуб, который создаётся открыто.
- [Научные задания для детей на примере аквариума](https://aquascaping.am/ru/children/science/): Химия, физика, биология и математика на примере растительного аквариума. В каждом разделе есть ссылки на учебные страницы и задания по их материалам. Ответы не опубликованы.
- [Простой уход за аквариумом: 5 вариантов обустройства](https://aquascaping.am/ru/easy/): Шесть способов начать. Четырём не нужны обогреватель, фильтр, насос и подача углекислого газа. Для каждого указаны размеры, заселение, оборудование, время ухода за неделю и возможные проблемы с учётом климата Армении. Мелкая вода быстрее восстанавливает кислород, поэтому широкому тазу воздушный насос не нужен, а бочке нужен.
- [Выберите простой аквариум](https://aquascaping.am/ru/easy/setup-guide/): Сравните шесть вариантов аквариумов и уличных водоемов по месту, сезону, оборудованию, еженедельному уходу и цене.
- [Акваскейпинг в Армении: руководства по растительному аквариуму](https://aquascaping.am/ru/): Стили и их история, конкурсы и победители, камни и химия воды, обитатели аквариума и их происхождение, сообщество Армении, книги и материалы для детей. У утверждений указаны источники.
- [Биология гаммарусов озера Севан](https://aquascaping.am/ru/science/archive/arar-135013/): Краткий обзор статьи A. K. Markosyan 1948 года: основные результаты и оригинал в PDF.
- [Наука об аквариуме: биология, химия и физика](https://aquascaping.am/ru/science/): В основе аквариума — система микроорганизмов, вместе с которыми живут растения и животные. Её связывает карбонатная химия, а обмен газами ограничен открытой поверхностью воды. Три научных направления и архив из 356 статей о Севане.
- [Планируем аквариум: место, вода, тепло и электричество](https://aquascaping.am/ru/water/planning/): Где поставить аквариум, как армянское лето влияет на кислород, какую мощность обогревателя выбрать, как организовать электроподключение и почему удаление хлора защищает фильтр, а не рыб. Список проверок перед покупками с отмеченными трудноизменяемыми решениями.
- [The biology of Lake Sevan’s gammarids](https://aquascaping.am/science/archive/arar-135013/): A short guide to A. K. Markosyan’s 1948 paper, with key findings and the original PDF.
- [Lake Sevan research: explore free articles](https://aquascaping.am/science/archive/): Armenia has studied one lake continuously since 1927. The papers are free to download and invisible to every academic index in the world, because they are in Russian and nobody deposited a DOI. This is the whole run, searchable, with a direct PDF link on every record.
- [Aquarium communities: algae, new life and change](https://aquascaping.am/science/biology/communities/): The order in which a new body of water is colonised was written down in 1912 and has not needed correcting. This page carries the processes that work on whole communities rather than single organisms: succession, the egg bank that means the animals arrive in the mud and not in the water, algae as the other photosynthesiser rather than a disease, and Lake Sevan as the same mechanisms running at the scale of a whole lake.
- [Aquarium biology: plants, animals and microbes](https://aquascaping.am/science/biology/): The nitrogen cycle as the sequencing actually reads it, root versus leaf feeding in aquatic plants, the egg bank in the sediment, microbial succession, decomposition and tannins, and shoaling. The biology of a planted aquarium, gathered in one place.
- [Aquarium microbes: filters, decay and plant roots](https://aquascaping.am/science/biology/microbes/): Nitrification is not two genera and most of a filter is not doing it. This page carries the microbial and root processes underneath a planted tank: who actually oxidises ammonia, why decomposition is the engine and tannins are the brake fitted to it, why root uptake substitutes for leaf uptake rather than adding to it, and how a wetland root carries its own oxygen down and leaks it into the sediment on purpose.
- [Aquarium water chemistry explained](https://aquascaping.am/science/chemistry/): The carbonate system solved from first principles, the ammonia equilibrium by pH and temperature, Henry's law for CO2 at Yerevan's altitude, the unit conversions written as formulas, and what a dechlorinator really does. Every number shown with its inputs so it can be recomputed.
- [Aquarium nutrients and metals: phosphate, iron and copper](https://aquascaping.am/science/chemistry/minor/): The chemistry of a tank that is not the carbonate system. Phosphate and where it hides, iron and why it will not stay available, copper and the concentrations that matter to an invertebrate, tannins and what they actually do to water, and the one reaction in a tank that proceeds whether or not anybody intervenes.
- [Aquarium science: biology, chemistry and physics](https://aquascaping.am/science/): A tank is a microbial system with plants and animals living on top of it, held together by carbonate chemistry and limited by gas transport across one open surface. Three pages, one per discipline, and an archive of 356 papers on Lake Sevan.
- [Aquarium physics: oxygen, light and water flow](https://aquascaping.am/science/physics/): Surface gas exchange scales with mean depth and volume cancels. Yerevan sits at 1113 m and every oxygen table in the hobby is about 13 percent too high here. Diffusion in water is 10,000 times slower than in air, which is why flow matters more than concentration. Optics, heat and floor loading, with the equations shown.
- [Aquarium light: reflections and refraction](https://aquascaping.am/science/physics/optics/): Why a tank looks deeper than it is, why the underside of the water surface behaves as a mirror over most of its area, and what total internal reflection means for what a fish can see out of and a viewer can see in. Including an honest answer on dispersion, which is the part of aquarium optics most often asserted and least often worked out.
- [Aquarium glass thickness and floor weight](https://aquascaping.am/science/physics/structure/): A full aquarium is a concentrated load on a floor that was designed for a distributed one, and this page includes the correction this site had to publish against its own earlier arithmetic. Then glass thickness, which is set by water height and not by volume, and the assumption every thickness table on the internet makes quietly.
- [A Lake Sevan biotope aquarium: habitat and care](https://aquascaping.am/sevan/biotope/): A tank that matches Lake Sevan is cold, hard and alkaline, which is the reverse of almost every other build described here. This page carries the water chemistry to match, which of the stone, sand and water is actually worth carrying home and the arithmetic on the water, and the build itself, whose temperature problem is worse than the summer version of it.
- [Explore Lake Sevan and its underwater habitats](https://aquascaping.am/sevan/): A diving centre on Lake Sevan, the lake it opens onto, and how to turn a day there into a cold hard alkaline biotope tank at home. What the law lets you take, what you should never take, and whether a Yerevan flat can hold 1,900 metres of altitude in a glass box.
- [Lake Sevan: wildlife protection and collecting rules](https://aquascaping.am/sevan/law/): The whole of Lake Sevan is a national park and a Ramsar site, which changes what a visitor may lawfully take from it and what they may put back. This page carries the legal position and the biosecurity, which runs in both directions: a lake that has already lost that argument twice, and a tank that can lose it once.
- [Shoaling aquarium fish: choosing a group size](https://aquascaping.am/shoaling/group-size/): Why six is a convention rather than a universal biological threshold, what experiments do show, and how a larger group changes vigilance and behavior.
- [Shoaling and schooling: how aquarium fish move together](https://aquascaping.am/shoaling/): Tony Pitcher's 1983 definition, what the hobby drops from it, and why polarisation is a number rather than an adjective: undisturbed rummynose tetras hold 94.5 to 98 percent. Where the minimum of six came from, which is nowhere, and what the measured evidence on group size actually says.
- [Swimming room for shoaling aquarium fish](https://aquascaping.am/shoaling/space/): How group width, turning room and observable behavior help size an aquarium for shoaling fish.
- [Aquarium and pet shops in Armenia](https://aquascaping.am/shops/): 849 places in twenty Armenian cities that could plausibly sell something an aquarium needs, split into aquarium and pet shops, stone and builders yards, and unconfirmed. Filterable by city, district and trade. It is a list of map records, not a list of shops anyone has visited, telephoned or recommended.
- [Aquarium references and sources](https://aquascaping.am/sources/): Books, journals, public databases, Armenian records, and topic-by-topic source links for aquascaping.am.
- [Aquascaping styles: history and planted-tank designs](https://aquascaping.am/styles/): Takashi Amano raced professional keirin for eight years while running ADA. Riparium is a German word from 1912. Every metric Dutch rule in English comes from one 2009 forum post that disclaimed itself. The styles of the planted aquarium, with sources.
- [Aquarium substrate: choose soil, sand or gravel](https://aquascaping.am/substrate/): A practical guide to aquarium substrate: inert sand and gravel, capped mineral soil and aquasoil; what happens as oxygen falls with depth; how rooted plants survive; and which bed fits a planted tank, a biotope or a tank you expect to rescape.
- [Armenia’s aquarium fish trade](https://aquascaping.am/trade/): World trade in ornamental fish is 310 to 330 million US dollars a year at the border, not the 15 to 30 billion everyone repeats. Armenia's entire 2024 import was 16,416 dollars, direct from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand by air. Every supply route an individual can use is a hardware route.
- [Aquarium top-offs and water changes: the calculations](https://aquascaping.am/water/changes/arithmetic/): Water leaves a tank as vapour and the vapour carries nothing with it. This page works the two equations that follow from that: what topping up does to a tank over two years at three evaporation rates, and what ceiling a repeated water change actually sets. Both are our own calculation, both print their inputs, and both are worked for Yerevan tap water by district.
- [Aquarium water changes: why they matter](https://aquascaping.am/water/changes/): A planted tank can read zero nitrate and still need a water change. A test kit reading zero tells you about uptake, not about input. Fifteen mechanisms, each rated for how well it is supported, the evaporation arithmetic worked out for Yerevan tap water by district, and the growth inhibiting pheromone claim checked and rejected.
- [What an aquarium water change does](https://aquascaping.am/water/changes/mechanisms/): A water change is claimed to do about fifteen different things. They are not equally well evidenced and almost nobody separates them. This page lists all fifteen with a support rating on each: alkalinity consumed by nitrification, dissolved organic matter no test kit can see, metal accumulation, nitrogen that is not nitrate, trace depletion, and the medications that never leave.
- [Water changes for old and low-change aquariums](https://aquascaping.am/water/changes/special-cases/): How to handle a large rescue water change, what the familiar old-tank warnings leave out, and why a heavily planted low-change tank is a different case.
- [Aquarium rocks and water chemistry](https://aquascaping.am/water/): An uninjected limestone tank cannot pass about 3 dGH. CO2 injection roughly quadruples that ceiling, which is why Seiryu ruins some tanks and not others. Stone, wood, substrate, carbon dioxide, light and water chemistry, each claim sourced.
- [Aquarium oxidators: oxygen without surface agitation](https://aquascaping.am/water/oxidators/): How peroxide aquarium oxidators work, how long a refill lasts, how to adjust output, and what the extra oxygen changes for bacteria, iron and phosphate.
- [Aquarium oxygen: aeration and gas exchange](https://aquascaping.am/water/oxygen/): How aquarium aeration works: surface exchange, bubble size, sponge-filter airlifts, outlet placement, and the balance between oxygen and carbon dioxide.
- [Plan an aquarium: space, water, heat and power](https://aquascaping.am/water/planning/): Where the tank goes, what an Armenian summer does to the oxygen in it, how big the heater should be, how the electrics should be arranged, and why dechlorination protects the filter rather than the fish. With the pre-purchase checklist and the irreversible decisions marked.
- [Where to put an aquarium](https://aquascaping.am/water/planning/placement/): Choose a floor, wall, stand and route to water before the aquarium is filled, with practical checks for weight, sunlight and maintenance access.
- [Aquarium electricity: safe power and outages](https://aquascaping.am/water/planning/power/): An aquarium is the one appliance in the house that is deliberately full of water and plugged into the wall several times over. This page covers the wiring side of planning a tank: the drip loop, the residual current device, what shares a socket with what, and then the question nobody asks until it happens, which is how long a tank is safe with the power off and what to do first.
- [Aquarium tank sizes: choose the right dimensions](https://aquascaping.am/water/planning/tank-size/): Compare aquarium dimensions and water capacity, plan room for plants and fish, and choose a tank you can reach and maintain comfortably.
- [Treating tap water for an aquarium](https://aquascaping.am/water/planning/tap-water/): What chlorine and chloramine do, why dechlorination protects the biofilter, and how to prepare replacement water simply.
- [Aquarium temperature: heating and cooling in Armenia](https://aquascaping.am/water/planning/temperature/): Warm water holds less oxygen at exactly the moment the fish need more of it. This page carries the temperature half of planning a tank in Armenia: the two different numbers quoted for how hot a fish can survive and why the forum quotes the wrong one, five ways to cool a tank ranked by what they buy for what they cost, and how big a winter heater needs to be and why the way it fails matters more than the way it works.
- [Build a windowsill aquarium: sunlight, heat and costs](https://aquascaping.am/windowsill/build/): Indoors behind glass you keep the sun and lose the cooling, which is the single biggest risk to a windowsill tank in a Yerevan summer. This page carries the build: what the summer actually does, the four costs of the thing and why the two people expect are not the two that matter, and the assembly order including the two steps that get skipped.
- [A windowsill aquarium with pothos](https://aquascaping.am/windowsill/): Shallow water needs no air pump, and the reason is depth, not volume. A leaf in air is not carbon limited, and not because air holds more carbon dioxide. A Yerevan south window is the best winter plant light in the Caucasus and the most dangerous summer position in the flat. The build, with the drawbacks stated.
- [Growing pothos in an aquarium](https://aquascaping.am/windowsill/pothos/): A pothos with its roots in the tank is the engine of a windowsill build, and the thing everybody gets wrong about it is that uptake is not export. Nothing leaves the system until you cut. This page covers the pruning that is the water change, the houseplants that genuinely tolerate permanent submersion of the roots, and the cat and dog toxicity question, where the word that matters is the first word in the name of the toxic principle.
- [Frode Roe: aquascaping contest results](https://aquascaping.am/winners/frode-roe/): Frode Roe in the official competition record: 2 verified placings, AGA, 2000 to 2000. Tank dimensions, plant and animal lists, hardscape and signed judge comments, with no photograph reproduced.
- [Aquascaping winners and contest results](https://aquascaping.am/winners/): The full index of verified aquascaping contest placings from IAPLC, the AGA contest, CIAC and the 2015 biotope contest final, 2000 to 2025. Names exactly as each contest recorded them. Forty five people are listed without a page because the official record says nothing else about them.
- [liang jin: aquascaping contest results](https://aquascaping.am/winners/liang-jin/): liang jin in the official competition record: 2 verified placings, AGA, 2021 to 2023. Tank dimensions, plant and animal lists, hardscape and signed judge comments, with no photograph reproduced.
- [Luis Cardoso: aquascaping contest results](https://aquascaping.am/winners/luis-cardoso/): Luis Cardoso in the official competition record: 2 verified placings, AGA, 2022 to 2023. Tank dimensions, plant and animal lists, hardscape and signed judge comments, with no photograph reproduced.
- [Luis Carlos Galarraga: aquascaping contest results](https://aquascaping.am/winners/luis-carlos-galarraga/): Luis Carlos Galarraga in the official competition record: 5 verified placings, AGA and IAPLC, 2017 to 2024. Tank dimensions, plant and animal lists, hardscape and signed judge comments, with no photograph reproduced.
- [Michael G.W. Wong: aquascaping contest results](https://aquascaping.am/winners/michael-g-w-wong/): Michael G.W. Wong in the official competition record: 2 verified placings, AGA, 2010 to 2013. Tank dimensions, plant and animal lists, hardscape and signed judge comments, with no photograph reproduced.
- [赵刚: aquascaping contest results](https://aquascaping.am/winners/赵刚/): 赵刚 in the official competition record: 2 verified placings, AGA, 2022 to 2023. Tank dimensions, plant and animal lists, hardscape and signed judge comments, with no photograph reproduced.

## Optional

- [Short guide](https://aquascaping.am/llms-small.txt)
- [Full text](https://aquascaping.am/llms-full.txt)