The Aquatic Gardeners Association is pleased to announce the results for the 2019 International Aquascaping Contest. We had another outstanding year with almost 600 different aquascapes entered in the various categories, including our newest Wabi-Kusa category. We had outstanding showings in the 60L-120L and the 120L-200L category, from where our Best of Show and Larry Lampert Most Innovative awards were chosen, but all the other categories were also well represented!
As in year’s past, the success of the contest is dependent on the hard work of our esteemed panel of judges. Each year, our judges take time from their very busy schedules to participate in our contest, and our contest would not be the success it is today without their efforts. For this year’s judges, we have returning as a judge, Andre Longarco from Aquabase Brazil, Jennifer Williams from the Greater Washington Aquatic Plant Association, and Esther Mous from Aquaflora. We were again very fortunate to have Marco Aukes judge our Dutch category and to have the AGA’s own Phil Edwards and Karen Randall also assisting with judging of the Biotope, Paludarium, and Dutch categories. Karen was also involved with judging the Wabi Kusa category, something we hope will expand in future years! As the chair of the contest and a former judge, I cannot stress enough how thankful the AGA is to have these individuals judge our contest.
Our contest would not be the success it is without the generosity of sponsors. We had some outstanding companies support this year's contest including Seachem, Ultum Nature Systems, Aquael, Florida Aquatic Nurseries, SevenPorts, and Amazonas Magazine. In addition to our corporate sponsors, the Chicago Aquatic Plant Society again supported this year’s contest, sponsoring the inaugural Wabi-Kusa category. Thank you to our sponsors! Without all the support provided by these companies and clubs, our contest would not be nearly as successful!
Finally, I would also like to thank Jen Williams for not only providing judging this year’s contest, but also providing the contest graphics. And a huge thank you to Erik Olson our tech guru, who does an outstanding job on all the behind the scenes work to ensure that the contest runs smoothly.
So, without further ado, enjoy this year's aquascapes!
Bailin Shaw
AGA Contest Chair
Hello members. I come to you with some very disappointing news. It was brought to our attention earlier this week that there were several rules broken in our contest this year. Our contest does its best to maintain a high quality and fair competition and our rules are available to our contestants to read and follow before they enter our contest. So, when the rules are broken, it is disappointing to the AGA, our judges, and to our fellow aquascapers. Given the seriousness of the issue and after much discussion with the committee, we have chosen to disqualify all aquascapes where the rules were broken.
The committee does NOT take this action lightly and only did so after careful and extensive discussions. Our rules were very clear, we felt there was no other option that would satisfy the integrity of our contest for the committee, judges, and our fellow contestants.
Sincerely,
Bailin Shaw
AGA Contest Chair
Sponsors
Comments
It is public and notorious that aquascaping is growing and developing all over the world and without a doubt the AGA contest is a major responsible for this.
I want to thank the governing body of the contest for always trust in my work and congratulate all participants without exception for the courage dedication and passion for this wonderful hobby. I hope to be with you all in the next edition and certainly with much more participants. Long life to aquascaping.