Last weekend the final of the aquarium designing competition #HannoverScape2016 took place as part of the Heimtiermesse Hannover.
The 12 contestants who succeeded in the preliminary round to reach the final, were each awarded an aquarium ( Fluval Vue ), aquatic plants ( Tropica Aquarium Plants ) and numerous JBL products ( JBL PROFLORA u501 , Water test , ProScape Substrate of soil and sand, ProScape tools in a X JBL PROSCAPE TOOL BAG , ProScape PROSCAPE Special fertiliser and further care and accessory products) for the setting up and maintenance free of charge. They didn’t have much time and exactly that was the challenge. A few weeks before the day of the final decision the finalists had to design the aquarium at home and to prepare for the event down to the last detail. The sky was the limit for their creativity.
The challenge was to transport the aquarium undamaged to the exhibition, so that only slight adjustments were needed on-site. Everything worked out extremely well, except for one participant. She had a small mishap en route which she felt ruled her out from taking part. And this was what set this competition apart from the others; several other contestants immediately set to work to put together the remains of her layout for her.
They did more than just repair it, they added their ideas to it, so that an eye-catchingly beautiful, intact aquarium was created. We had to admire the way that the aquascapers exchanged tips, tricks and contacts with each other for two days and were more a team than “opponents”. The team of sponsors, who were there to help the contestants round the clock, were also reminded that aquarium keeping is a wonderful hobby and one which is even better when it is shared.
The time had finally come on Saturday afternoon. The tension was written in the contestants’ faces. Everyone was hoping for the prize money of €200. The jury, consisting of Adrie Baumann ( Aquascaping Symphony ), Anne Braun ( Tropica Aquarium Plants ), Roland Zobel & Anry Zyrus ( Hagen Deutschland ) and Matthias Wiesensee ( Home ), had closed off the exhibition area for the judging for nearly 2 hours. A difficult job because the devil is in the details. Following a well-defined ranking system laid down in a questionnaire the layouts were put to the acid test and examined carefully. Along with the jury’s evaluation the spectators were given the opportunity to vote for their favourites and to take part in a competition. The winner of this prize was Florian Neumann from SoNA Aquascaping .
Together with the organizer of the event we now would like to present the final placements.
1st place: Sascha Hoyer
2nd place: Garvin Borschewski
3rd place: Florian Neumann
4th place: Dennis Laufer
5th place: Alexander Paulus
6th place: David Blohm
7th place: Benjamin Hamann
8th place: Bernd Terletzki
9th place: Claudia Riesen
10th place: Jan Philipp Orthey
11th place: Lucas Müller
Participant Dennis Laufer has written a guest post on lernscapen.de about his participation and impressions of the competition. Have a look at it to view this competiton from a contestant’s perspective: My first aquascaping competition
You will find a detailed report with the layout and maintenance plan of every aquarium in the next issue of the Aquaristiek . The photos are courtesy of Dähne Verlag, the media partner of the event, in cooperation with Fenja Hardel - aufmDach .
