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AGAIAC Results Announced for top tanks.

Another diorama win, WHO could have predicted that outcome 🧐

It’s beautiful for sure, just same old song and dance
 
Did you see the Dutch category? Maybe I don't understand Dutch rules...at all. I'll just make background plants and call it a day.
 
Did you see the Dutch category? Maybe I don't understand Dutch rules...at all. I'll just make background plants and call it a day.
Oh yeah I saw. I would like to break these down more once I can full screen the pictures. 2nd place is the one I question the most. Curious to see what other entries look like.
 
Agree on second place. Maybe the rules no longer apply and it's about showing good healthy plant groups. I feel Omids tank should have beaten those above what we can see.

Also, where's the top ten? I know @Burr740 tank looked spectacular and why are they not showing all the tanks? Where are the Judges comments?
 
Agree on second place. Maybe the rules no longer apply and it's about showing good healthy plant groups. I feel Omids tank should have beaten those above what we can see.

Also, where's the top ten? I know @Burr740 tank looked spectacular and why are they not showing all the tanks? Where are the Judges comments?
I believe they will later show all tanks but are only showing the winners for each category now. At least that's what is said on the facebook post. If there are no longer comments the value of entering has diminished in my opinion. We will see when they release all entries.

I agree with you regarding Omids tank. The lobelia on the first place tank should've lost him points since they are two different heights/ages/densities.
 
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Agree on second place. Maybe the rules no longer apply and it's about showing good healthy plant groups. I feel Omids tank should have beaten those above what we can see.

Also, where's the top ten? I know @Burr740 tank looked spectacular and why are they not showing all the tanks? Where are the Judges comments?
Someone with a YouTube channel should do their own ranking of all the entries
 
Someone with a YouTube channel should do their own ranking of all the entries
Possibly, just going off the Bart and Vin articles. The symmetries in both first and second place are extensive. Second place has a straight line of plants across the front glass. But I'm nobody, well I'm a good tank wrecker 😆
 
Is it just me or 1st place doesn't have any focal point and middle ground plants?

The lotus in 2nd place is very nice. Macrandra in 3rd place.

I saw Joe Harvey's tank on FB and it's very nice.
 
Is it just me or 1st place doesn't have any focal point and middle ground plants?

The lotus in 2nd place is very nice. Macrandra in 3rd place.

I saw Joe Harvey's tank on FB and it's very nice.
1st place would have benefited from a focal point in the front right and there are not many midground plants causing the tank to lack depth imo. This tank also loses points in the trimming category for me. specifically the rotala vietnam in the back right and the lobelia cardinalis in the front left.

The lotus is very nice but I feel it is a bit to large and takes over. I also feel the different shades of red next to each other is non traditional and am not a fan. It creates a "C".

3rd place is personally my favorite of the bunch. One change that would have benefited is the barclaya and macrandra being in opposite corners. They are almost exactly in the same spot in the midground.

Joe's tank was also very nice. Joe has a very unique style and if you did not put a name on the tank I could imagine many would know who created it. He manages to pull off shades of red better then most in a Dutch shape. However, as he said too many plant species and tank feels a bit too crowded. Bailin also mentioned in the comments that the Dutch category had strong entries which is encouraging.
 
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One thing that I personally find could really be improved about several of these tanks in this competition particularly is the yellowish incandescent bulb color profile. It's not doing the plants justice. Even green plants look yellowish in some cases.

It also fails to accentuate the different shades of green. Notice how the colors of different green plants in the 1st ranking tank almost all look the same, and compare that with the 2nd tank (using a Chihiros Vivid if I recall), see for example how different his lobelia looks compared to the other greenies.

Even Joe's tank this year (which I love) suffers from this and from some colored plants not being done justice. But he did mention that he had an incident with one of his T5 bulbs dying.

I think more should use modern RGB fixtures tuned to a good white balance (as opposed to the trendy purple strip club color), as is already widely the case in IAPLC for example. See how Dennis Wong uses and tunes his light fixtures for example.

I also think wider and rimless tank formats feel more open and are a bit less prone to feeling overcrowded.
 
One thing that I personally find could really be improved about several of these tanks in this competition particularly is the yellowish incandescent bulb color profile. It's not doing the plants justice. Even green plants look yellowish in some cases.

It also fails to accentuate the different shades of green. Notice how the colors of different green plants in the 1st ranking tank almost all look the same, and compare that with the 2nd tank (using a Chihiros Vivid if I recall), see for example how different his lobelia looks compared to the other greenies.

Even Joe's tank this year (which I love) suffers from this and from some colored plants not being done justice. But he did mention that he had an incident with one of his T5 bulbs dying.

I think more should use modern RGB fixtures tuned to a good white balance (as opposed to the trendy purple strip club color), as is already widely the case in IAPLC for example. See how Dennis Wong uses and tunes his light fixtures for example.

I also think wider and rimless tank formats feel more open and are a bit less prone to feeling overcrowded.
This is a fair call. Dutch tanks have always focused more on that yellowish incandescent bulb color profile.

I think this also goes beyond just lights but also color adjustments in post editing software and how camera's react to different colors of light this seems to be particularly true on smartphone camera's.. When I used my phone camera the color profile was strictly wrong based on the balancing of the smartphone camera processing. I even attempted to shoot in RAW and manually adjusted iso and speed, however on a phone camera this caused noise in the image. See below pictures:

This was directly from my camera no editing changes to it. The tank was not this pink nor was it green diluted to the human eye.
20241206_173634.jpg

This is adjustment in color and one filter of sharpness:
MP_Kaley2024.jpg

This is just what I noticed every time I took a picture with my phone. I look forward to the differences between my phone camera and the Canon R8 I bought a month ago.
 
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It's all personal opinion to some extent, but I thought I'd comment.

Tanks
I too am over dioramas. As Dennis Wong said, stick and moss tanks. However, sometimes I see a diorama I like, and Luca's is one of those. He is a master aquascaper and, generally, I like most things he does.

As far as the Dutch, again, a lot of personal bias comes into play. I can find an issue here and there with all three of the winners, and I'm not sure which I'd put as first. Tim is a good guy, and I think he did a great job. I'm not a fan of that Fissidens part. I don't know the #2 person, and I agree with other's comments there. I like Omid's as well and feel he did a better job with the "street" leading to a focal point (the Barclaya) than any of the others. That's a requirement to me, and the others don't have it. Yeah, they have streets, but they aren't supposed to go off to random places. IMO. I have to 100% agree with the comments above about the yellow lights. It's hard to get a good depth of field, in focus, saturated pic of a tank though, and pics sometimes come out a little yellow even when the tank might not be.

I'm not as concerned with number of plant species as other people. I think a tank can look over stuffed with just a few species and perfect with what is defined with too many. Its all in how they are placed.

AGA
1. In the "Aquatic Garden" category, I wish the AGA would do away with categorizing by tank size and change to single diorama category and a single nature aquarium category without separation by size.

2. I also wish the AGA would do a "Garden Style" category for all the multi colored tanks everyone likes these days. I think Tom Barr had one of the first ones a few years ago. I called it his Pride tank because of all the colors. It was over the top. I loved it. People love these tanks and the AGA is neglecting the interest.

3. One thing I'm very happy with is the push from the AGA and people here to educate about true Dutch style as opposed to the multi colored garden style. When I see someone post a pic of a many color tank and label it "Dutch," I just cringe.
 

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