https://aquafishtips.blogspot.com/2017/01/iwagumi-layout-create-impression-of-water-flow.html
Stones and driftwood are often used in an aquatic plant layout in addition to aquatic plants. Stones and driftwood are indispensable, especially for the Nature Aquarium, which recreates natural scenery in a layout. Since these layout materials are unaltered or slightly altered natural materials, you can render a natural feel to a layout by taking advantage of their shapes and texture.
For example, you can create an impression of a natural rock by placing a stone in the aquarium or an impression of a fallen tree by placing driftwood. The impression changes depending on the scale of natural scenery that you try to recreate. In an actual-sized layout, an impression of nature is created by using stones and driftwood just as they are. On the other hand, when recreating the grandeur of a natural landscape, stones will become mountains and driftwood will become trees.
Such large-scale natural scenery has become a new trend in recent years in the International Aquatic Plant Layout Contest as well. When it is taken to an extreme, it starts to look like a diorama model rather than an aquatic plant layout. An aquatic plant layout can create underwater scenery that can only be produced by an aquatic plant layout.
It is not my intention to repudiate diorama-like layouts, but 1 find a layout of underwater scenery more relaxing as I think about the comfort of fish or maintaining a layout. This may be because growing aquatic plants is easier in a layout of underwater scenery or because it does not feel unnatural to find fish swimming in it. In this article, 1 am going to introduce an iwagumi layout that recreates underwater scenery.
Recreating Underwater Scenery
There are many types of iwagumi layouts, such as one created in the image of a tall mountain, a strange rock formation, a bluff or reef, or a natural underwater scene in a river. Such images depend not only on the arrangement of stones, but also on the shape and texture of stones used in the layouts. For example, a ryuoh-sehi stone, which is shaped like eroded limestone, resembles the ridgeline of a mountain or an unusually-shaped rock. A manten-seki stone, which is shaped like a collapsed sedimentary rock, looks like a seaside bluff. Various types and shapes of stones conjure up different sceneries as described above and inspire us with various ideas for layouts.
