Takashi Amano

Nature Aqiarium World: How You Can Make A Most Beautiful Aquarium Vol. 1

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 CO_2, 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} CO_{2 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 rotundifolia
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. 

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.

moss balls, algae balls

Unusual spheres of moss collect on Sydney beach.

Dailymail

Many more photos at the link.

Beach-goers said they had not seen the likes of it, why, it is like an alien invasion. They described them as alien eggs and alien hairballs and unidentified floating objects.

Scarlett de Villers walks the beach every day,

It was a windy day with a very high tide. I picked one up and squeezed it and it was so squishy - but I wasn't sure if it was alive and was worried I might hurt anything inside!' she told the Daily Mail. 'It struck me how perfectly shaped they all were and how green and alive they looked.

Alistair Poore, Associate Professor School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of NSW says it is probably a rare type of living green algae that has been seen in only a handful of times around the world.

University of New South Wales, I suppose, on account of this being Australian but for a minute there it looked not safe for work.

Then the associate professor delivers my favorite quote, says Alistair,

I’ve seen similar things - sometimes dead sea grass can roll around and form balls like underwater tumbleweeds but that’s made of dead material and these look to be living,' he told The Manly Daily.  

'It is a habit known as "aegagropilious", where the algae is free living (not on rocks) and forms into spherical balls.

The Mail article contains a box that explains the questions the article raises, beginning.

The balls are thought to be an extremely rare species of filamentous green algae.

The explanation in the box ends with as much uncertainty as certainty.

It's unknown why the algae forms into balls. One hypothesis is that a ball-shape helps protect the algae from hungry fish, another that it may help them roll back into the water and avoid drying out when they wash ashore. 

Breathless.

The whole thing is breathless invasion of the rare ocean moss balls. It explains nothing clearly and its added explanation explains nothing except moss balls are known.

If this were an article in Smithsonian then readers would respond with precise knowledge and experience that advances the discussion with intimate insight, but this is the Mail. What do the Mail's reader say in comments?

• Okay now I'm going to have nightmares about green balls. 

• Just wait till they start to hatch. 

• They are Obama's balls. He lost them 6 years ago. 

• Seems to me that the first thing scientist would do is collect them, quarantine them, then slice one open and find out what's in them! 

• We wrecked the planet..why not give someone else a chance. 

• GET OUT A DAM MICROSCOPE AND LOOK AT IT.. DUMBAZZ! 

• Here is a unique outlook on this dilemma...WHY DOESNT A SCIENTIST STUDY IT UNDER A MICROSCOPE?

I know what these are. I owned similar moss balls before. The freshwater version. Put me off the idea of introducing moss and algae forms into the tank altogether. This and another Thai species turned out to be quite impossibly invasive. I wanted to do things with the tank. The Thai moss still is a serious problem. The ball moss was okay for awhile, from a designer tank point of view, but that's it. Now that I'm thinking about it, another species was worse. It came with the Thai moss and it formed a wire-thin chain of interlinked segments and grew impressively. If a link broke it grew two new ones. Like kudzu, it grew visibly everyday. I could get rid of great masses of of interlinked lacy chain link plants but it would be impossible to track down and destroy the very last filament-link. But I did.

These balls are common in the world of aquarium plants. Although not a plant particularly useful in the Takashi Amano style of natural underwater landscaping it was nonetheless part of the whole plant explosion that Amano facilitated. Designers are interested in species that oxidate with visible bubbles in response to intense lighting.

[aquarium plants moss balls]

Ebay.

99¢

Liveaquaria.com

$5.99

overview 

The Moss Ball is a spongy velvet-like green algae ball that in the wild is found around Japan and Northern Europe. They were once thought to be extremely slow growing, but recent studies suggest that the growth can be accelerated by providing more nutrients. In its natural habitat, they are moved around by undercurrents and sink or rise in order to receive plenty of light to carry out photosynthesis. 

The Moss Ball requires moderate to high lighting, approximately 3 watts per gallon provided by full spectrum (5000-7000K) bulbs. The temperature of the water should be between 72°-82°F, with an alkalinity of 3-8 dKH and a neutral pH. 

The Moss Ball propagates by division. It starts with a division line which progresses to the splitting off of a smaller new Moss Ball.

Aquariumplants.com

Cladophora aegagropila is an aquatic moss that is slowly formed into a ball over a long period of time.  Originating in very cold rivers and lakes throughout Northern Europe and Japan these Marimo Balls or Moss Balls as they are more commonly take long periods of time to form.  Cladophora aegagropila will not cause algae to form in your tank.  In fact, Marimo Balls will do the opposite by taking nutrients out of the water.  Moss Balls are a different type of algae than those that normally form in an aquarium and are very slow growing.  Cladophora aegagropila comes in a range of sizes with the small size in the 3-4 cm range and the XL size in the 10 cm range.   Marimo Balls are very easy to decorate with and use for aquascaping. 

4 per order, $16.49