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Aquarium guides/Aquascaping styles

Aquascaping styles: nature, Dutch, Iwagumi, jungle, biotope

Aquascapes fall into a few broad styles: the nature style copies a landscape with wood, stone and small-leaved plants; the Dutch style is a garden of colorful stem plants in terraces; Iwagumi is stone and one or two carpet plants; jungle is dense and wild; a biotope recreates one real river or lake with its own fish and plants.

Forests Underwater, Takashi Amano's planted freshwater exhibit at the Lisbon Oceanarium (2015 to 2026)
Shown: Forests Underwater, Takashi Amano's planted freshwater exhibit at the Lisbon Oceanarium (2015 to 2026). Photo: Georg Pirrung, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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The styles

  • Nature aquarium: made popular by Takashi Amano; a scene such as a forest or hillside, built from wood and stone, with mosses, carpets and small-leaved plants. Usually needs CO₂ and good light.
  • Dutch: rows and terraces of stem plants in contrasting colors and leaf shapes, with little or no hardscape. Needs frequent trimming.
  • Iwagumi: a few stones set by size, with one main stone, over a single carpet plant. Simple to look at, demanding to keep clean.
  • Jungle: tall, overlapping plants, floating plants and roots; suits low-tech tanks and shy fish.
  • Biotope: sand, leaves, wood and only the fish and plants of one habitat, such as an Amazon blackwater stream.

Where to start

A jungle or simple nature-style tank with low-light plants is the easiest first aquascape. Arrange the stone and wood in the dry tank first and look at it from your usual seat; the plants fill in around it. Low-tech planted tank · Decor and substrate.

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