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Josh Sim's Top Picks for Stunning Aquascapes in Aquarium Contest Session 2023 - 2024

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A curated list of the most visually stunning aquariums from the 2023-2024 aquascaping season, as judged by the acclaimed aquascaper, Josh Sim. This compilation offers insights into the latest trends and techniques in the world of aquatic plant arrangement

With the revelation of IAPLC last weekend, i think we have seen 90% of all the layouts in 2024. Therefore, I would like to do something fun and pick my best tanks in various categories (combination of different contests):

Josh Sim's Top Picks for Stunning Aquascapes in Aquarium Contest Session 2023 - 2024

Best Hardscape

Best Forest

Best Underwater

Best NA - Rock

Best NA - Wood

Best Execution (plants & details)

Most Creative

Best Hardscape

I would like to share - in my humble opinion - the best Hardscape of 2024 

 

Best Forest

Surprisingly, there arent too many forest layout this year as compared to few years back, but these outstanding forest layouts still took home some remarkable placements (including 2 GPs) in the few contests already announced. This shows that forest layout will always have a place in aquascaping contest - if you do it right!

Now let's enjoy my favorite Forest Theme aquascape of 2024:

 

Best Underwater

It is not a very well-kept secret that i am an underwater guy in recent years. So i am very happy to see many great layouts with underwater feeling in 2024 and some high rankers too. I picked 8 of my favorite....here they are:

 

Best NA - Rock

I didnot really count but i believe rock layouts contributed about 30% of total submission and out of this number, approximately half of it are NA-Rock. Not a big number of entries with this style but there are still quite some remarkable NA-Rock works this year. These are my 6 favorites

 

Best NA - Wood

This group is tough because sometime it is not easy to say if a certain wood layouts are "NA" or not NA. You can very well argue that tank #5 and #6 are not NA...but this is my list so i don't care. Here are my choices of Best NA-Wood Layout this year:

 

Best Execution

Best execution here means: good usage of plants, great details, clever use of light & shadow, good photography skills etc....in short, the best presentation of your layout in the final photo.

In this category, we are not purely looking at "aquascaping" skill anymore, but more maintenance skill, plant knowledge and most importantly, the artistic sense of a creator.

Here are the layout with the Best Execution in 2024

 

Best Innovative Idea

It is not easy to have totally new and original ideas after so many years of development in the hobby, this is understandable. But if we pay attention and appreciate the smaller details, we can still find innovative and fun element every year. This is what kept the hobby interesting and bring smiles to our face

Here are the Best Innovative Idea of 2024:

Vietnamese scapers took 4 of the 8 spots. The future is bright for this group

Author Josh Sim
https://www.facebook.com/josh.sim.566

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