Oooooh too bad, no discounts for you. This book has become a collector's item, it seems. It is quite expensive now so just forget the whole thing. You can do as well by buying the whole set in one.
I have three of his books. They are based on size of aquarium, from nano cubes to huge hundred gallon tanks.
He applied the knowledge he gained in 3rd grade level science and asked would it help the plants to add CO2, and would it hurt the fish?
By asking, he changed the whole world of freshwater aquarium plants.
He began answering his own question by adding bottled soda water and tonic water to his tank. The additional CO2 did not hurt the fish but Amano quickly learned he must increase light to power plants underwater.
That is the key, increased light, good substrate, additional CO2 for improved plant life.
Until eventually his whole Tokyo apartment was filled with empty soda and tonic water bottles.
The above tank is in his home. The whole room is devoted to the tank. The roof is skylight for the tank.
The answer to the above question is never! The whole line of specialized substrate, frameless tanks, and hardware is incredibly lucrative. And there is no point in messing around, you get best results with extravagant volumes. Everything counts in large amounts.
Every aquarium enthusiast knows this many angelfish in one tank invites problems. They pair off as they mature and it is nothing but breeding cycles and territorial disputes after that. All the unpaired fish are held at bay in a corner while the breeders fiercely dominate the tank. Then the mated pair clears out all their young for the next mating round by eating them all within minutes once the impulse kicks in.
In Amano's tanks the fish are always in schools, and as if the fish are incidental to the plants.
Because they are!
It makes me want to change out my whole tank continuously. I never get tired of it but then I never get tired of changing it.
Plus, right now I could have neon tetras happily breeding all over the place every day in exceedingly soft water but the snails gobble up the eggs. The eggs need only survive 24 hours but they can never make it that long because of the snails. The snails come in with the plants. I haven't figured out yet how to get cool plants without also bringing in snails.
There are fish that eat snails but when they are done they eat everything else, taking nips out of fins of fish that are sleeping.
It's a problem.
Now there are competitions for the whole of Asia for aquariums in this Takashi Amano style. [AGA 2014] They're not finished this year, entries will be at the link. Results in November.
[AGA 2013] Results are by tank size. In liters, 200 L is 53 gallons. A 50 gallon tank is a nice size. 100 gallon tank is quite large and 20 gallons is hardly worth the trouble.
So, 200L-320L group,
2013 #1 in 200L-320L category. Oh, my goodness, they are all fantastic. Everyone is much better at this than I.
Underneath is a black and white key that helpfully names all the plants.
Rotala Sp Green
Rotala indica
Limnophila Vietnam
Hydrocotyle triponita
Collitriche sp.
Hemianthus calitrichoides cuba
Hotonia palustris
Hygrophilapinnatifida
Microsorum pteporus sp.
Ludwigia glandulosa
Bucephalandra sp.
Staurogyne repens
You can buy all these plants here. And here. And many other places too, the whole field has grown impressively and mostly because of Takashi Amano.
One of the reviewers to one of Amano's books wrote that while traveling to Tokyo specifically to visit Amano's Aqua Forest Aquarium Store and taking in other tropical fish shops while there in the city, it was odd and eerie and wonderful hearing the Latin names for plants and for fish rattled off in the shops integrated with Japanese language.
My sense is most of the aquarium scenes look to be landscapes underwater. Here are the same pathways and arroyos and streams created underwater.
This one titled "Verdant Hills and Green Waters." The fish look like geese flying across. And I must add, verdant and green are the same thing. If water is green it will be from photo plankton, moss, algae, what have you.
All this came to mind by the item in Ace's sidebar about the cenote Angelita (little angel) with its halocline, a geologic situation caused by a strong vertical salinity gradient, that is, bodies of water mingling with profound difference in concentration of salinity. The result is an obvious river underwater with its own fog, that looks like an aboveground landscape with a river or swamp but is entirely underwater.
All this came to mind by the item in Ace's sidebar about the cenote Angelita (little angel) with its halocline, a geologic situation caused by a strong vertical salinity gradient, that is, bodies of water mingling with profound difference in concentration of salinity. The result is an obvious river underwater with its own fog, that looks like an aboveground landscape with a river or swamp but is entirely underwater.
My tank spilled water onto the carpet the other day while I was filling it.
Turned on a timer but set if for six hours instead of six minutes. Became engrossed reading. Heard splashing. Hastened to shut off the water before gallons spilled out. Luckily the carpet cleaner with its powerful vacuum was right there. More powerful than a shop vac.
11 comments:
(1) I knew nothing about this guy and his astonishing art so thank you very much, Mr. Ahoy.
(2) I had to do one of those silent laughs because admiring Mr. Amano's work cause me to remember my first fish tank, a 10 gallon starter set. Stainless steel frame and it came with a brick red, vacuform plastic thing you were supposed to put inside on the bottom of the tank.
It had elliptical depressions in it. The starter set came with plastic plants that had elliptical bases that snapped into their assigned places.
The plastic bottom piece also had something that approached topography. The idea was you took the 2 1/2 lbs of white gravel included and spread it out so the low parts were covered but the higher brick red plastic parts stuck up as if they were rocks.
It was like paint-by-numbers in 3-D, submersed in water. Actually, not even that, given it's total absence of appreciable detail.
Yikes!
(3) I redid the whole thing after about a week, IIRC. (It's been a while.)
(4) I only got so advanced as African Cichlids. Doing the rock formations was a big part of the fun. Much more fun than watching them beat on each other.
Hey! (hey!) You! (you!) Get away from my rock!
The fish tank enthusiast in our am is my brother in law back in NJ. He kept turtles at one time.
Speaking of African Cichlids, when I was listening to the ecology lectures (fascinating stuff) the guy talked about the African rift lakes.
One of them is much younger than the other two. Victoria? Anyway, scientists have figured out that the mega-number of species in one of them works out to something like a species every 500 years or so.
And that's our vocabulary word for the day: Speciation.
The guy that stood out as most innovative last year changed the perspective to do it.
It looks like you are laying on the ground of forest looking up.
Beautiful. I've always liked the idea of a fish tank or terrarium in the home. Lovely to look at.
The idea of the tank though. Not the actual tank. Too much work to maintain.
I have two goldfish and a pleco... um... it's a "hill stream loach"... in a 10 gallon tank with so much algae on the glass you can't even see in.
But the water is clean and the fish seem to like it and eventually I'll get a new set up.
Reminds me a little bit of one of my favorite artists. Robert Bissell.
The release
Rhapsody
All in all, I don't like sticking things in cages. If you are going to do an Aquarium, he gets it.
the swimmer. this is the one I was thinking about.
My 50 gallon always looks great even when it is so overgrown the fish have no room to swim.
They do not seem to mind. They like being hugged by plants.
In one go I can clear out 75% of the plants, just toss them, and it still looks lush and great.
There are so many plants that even with additional bright lights algae does not grow on the sides. The higher level plants including moss take most everything algae uses.
Right now the CO2 is off because the yeast cup needs to be replenished about a month ago. Even so, the plants are making so much oxygen that its being picked by the filter, collected, and sparged throughout the thank.
The last time I cleared out plants drastically I got tired half way through and only did the front.
Now I'm looking at the back and it is completely overgrown.
I just learned a few new things with my ongoing snail control project.
A scritchy-scratchy sponge on a stick used to clear things, like snails from the filter intake holes, and that thin film of algae that does occasionally form on some areas of glass where the sun hits, fell into the tank and snails climbed all over and covered it. It's like a snail magnet on a shish kabob skewer. Who would have thought an aquarium sponge would attract snails? I can use the same idea with lettuce, a lettuce wad tied on a stick. Collect the sticks, flick off the snails into a plastic trash bag, reset traps.
I see sparged is underlined. It's a wuuuuuuurd! A farm word. Means sprinkled.
So even in neglected shape, people walk in and go straight to it. Often people want to talk about it. Some are fascinated.
The fish, assume the people are there to feed them and sometimes collect near their feeding spot if they are hungry, and I say so,
"Don't just stand there, Slave, feed the fish.
Is what the fish are thinking. They think that is what you are for.
The food is right there."
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