Pictorial journal of Phil's Aquascaping Adventures, 2002-

[Phil Edwards]

Hello folks,

George asked me to post up a timeline journal of my aquariums so here's the abridged version of some of my tanks. I've lost a lot of photos, especially the really early ones, as I've changed computers or lost hard drives. The only pics I've got of early tanks are the ones I submitted to the AGA contests.
2002 Sri Lanka biotope, 20g 2nd place-

2003 West Africa biotope, 10g, 2nd place (due to no fish; it's a long story)

2003 Pencilfish biotope, 20g long

2003 discus tank, 90g, 3rd place Large Aquatic Garden

2005 North Carolina beaver pond biotope, 29g

2009 Rio Atrato biotope. 20g long, soil substrate

2009 Cameroon biotope, 90g, no place. I'm going to keep trying this concept until I take 1st place, damnit. LOL

2009 75g Dutch inspired. This was my first serious effort at Dutch aquascaping. A lot needed to be fixed, but it was still a pretty tank.

The same 75g 8 months earlier; "Study of the Hoh Rainforest 1", my first time ever using ADA substrates. Boy, oh boy, did I have algae issues at the start. I had no idea AquaSoil released all the nutrients it did. I even talked to Amano about it at the AGA convention that year (2008) and he just said "do water changes".

Same tank a month or two later-

2008 90g, "Study of the Hoh Rainforest 2"

same tank a month or two later- This one eventually became the Cameroon biotope.

2008 20g high, can't remember how old the tank was at the time I took this pic

2010 225g Dutch soil substrate recently re-planted after a massive plant die-off. I was experimenting with soil mixtures and didn't age a very rich mix. Needless to say the plants didn't like a very anaerobic substrate, nor all the nasties it was putting off. Should have aged/mineralized it first. Lost hundreds of dollars worth of plants.

Same tank a few months later just before I tore it down to sell

2012 100% ADA (even the container) wabi kusa in Japan

There we go; an almost chronological journey through my planted tank keeping life. Some of the 2008-2009 aquascapes are out of order. The Hoh Rainforest tanks came before the Dutch style and Cameroon biotope.

 

[Alastair]

The cameroon and Dutch are gorgeous phil. Really nice. Cameroon is actually my favourite from all.

 

[Phil Edwards]

Thank you Alastair. That's one of my all time favorite setups too. I love Anubias and Bolbitis! It was also sort of an experiment as I was growing "low light" plants under 2x 250w HQI bulbs...LET THERE BE LIGHT!

 

[NanoJames]

2003 Pencilfish biotope, 20g long

This one's my favourite Phil! Really nice.

 

[Phil Edwards]

Thank you James. That tank was my first effort at making a 3D background so even though it wasn't the best, I was still proud of it. It was a remarkably simple tank too. Low light, no water changes, and let the Mayaca grow, grow, grow.

In going through this post I've noticed something interesting to me. I can see the point in my hobby life when I went from blindly following accepted best practices to experimenting. Anything post '03 has an element of experimentation in it, even if it was just trying a bunch of species to see how they react in each system. I guess that's what I get for studying aquatic plant biology and aquatic soil processes. Maybe my upcoming project will get me back to aquascaping as the main focus again.

 

[George Farmer]

Thanks for sharing, Phil.

I really like the more natural style of aquascaping we see here in the biotopes. Makes a refreshing change to the underwater landscapes that are saturating the hobby IMHO.

 

[Phil Edwards]

Thanks George. Naturally inspired biotope aquascaping is a bit of a soapbox crusade for me. I'm a stubborn purist when it comes to that. I don't feel any biotope that's aquascaped with traditional aquatic gardening methods is a true biotope. I realize that's pretty hardline and certainly hasn't won me many awards in competition (and has lead to a few arguments/disagreements with some folks), but at least I can be proud of my efforts. That being said, some of my biotope entries fall into the "pretty biotope" rather than "true biotope" category and shouldn't rightly be called biotopes at all. In fact, the beaver pond tank is the only one I'd consider a true biotope. The rest are still pretty tanks and I loved them all for what they were even so.

 

[foxfish]

Nice record of your work with plants.

 

[roadmaster]

I liked your tank's, and very much like the more natural looking growth rather than those tank's where everything look's more contrived.

 

[Phil Edwards]

Thank you for the kind words Foxfish and Roadmaster. I really don't like the highly contrived nature of many [competetive] aquascapes these days. Trying new things and innovating is a good thing; but what I've seen so far is not to my taste.

 

[Edvet]

Nice job on the biotope tanks,or more ecotope as they are called nowadays i think. I also always try to go that way. Luckily there are a ton of underwatervideos around which help in getting inspiration. The natural environment isn't always, or most times even, very pleasing to copy in our tanks. So just having fish and plants from a region and trying to emulate the actual biotope is what i try to do.