# Iwagumi and sand



## Geniusdudekiran (Dec 6, 2010)

Yes. EVERY SINGLE ONE of Mr. Amano's older scapes all have inert sand substrate. He used to be really resourceful in his aquascaping; I'm not saying that now he's not, but his tanks are much higher tech now.


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## Kitty_Kitsch (Apr 27, 2011)

#5 is actually one of my favorite shots that I've seen online! I've seen it before and I LOVE it!


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## houseofcards (Mar 21, 2009)

Geniusdudekiran said:


> Yes. EVERY SINGLE ONE of Mr. Amano's older scapes all have inert sand substrate. He used to be really resourceful in his aquascaping; I'm not saying that now he's not, but his tanks are much higher tech now.


How old we talking about?


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## Geniusdudekiran (Dec 6, 2010)

I honestly don't know, but I do know that in his book Nature Aquarium World, the substrate for all of them is listed as inert sand.


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## houseofcards (Mar 21, 2009)

Geniusdudekiran said:


> I honestly don't know, but I do know that in his book Nature Aquarium World, the substrate for all of them is listed as inert sand.


If you go by the text in those books, yes it does seem like that, but most of those earlier books had terrible translation and a lot of errors tying the text to the pictures. You could clearly see a type of 'aquasoil' in those tanks (or something that resembles it maybe before it was commercially marketed as such.


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## Geniusdudekiran (Dec 6, 2010)

Perhaps. A lot of those tanks have such heavy groundcover that it would be next to impossible to tell. But it really does look like inert sand in a lot of the pics. And I don't really get how "ADA Amazonia Aquasoil" can be mixed up in translation as "inert sand"... Of course, like you said, it would not be called AS at the time, but... Whatever LOL


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## houseofcards (Mar 21, 2009)

Geniusdudekiran said:


> Perhaps. A lot of those tanks have such heavy groundcover that it would be next to impossible to tell. But it really does look like inert sand in a lot of the pics. And I don't really get how "ADA Amazonia Aquasoil" can be mixed up in translation as "inert sand"... Of course, like you said, it would not be called AS at the time, but... Whatever LOL


I know it seems strange, but this is about translation and mistakes. I happen to have the book "Aquarium Plant Paradise" by Takashi Amano the copyright is 1997. All the pics of the setups say fine sand or inert sand, but in the beginning of the book he talks about substrate made of clay and slow release fertilizer and sometimes it needs to be baked. Many of the setup pics don't even have the correct plant list. It lists plants that aren't even in the setup. This book was put out by TFH. I'm wondering if they even had an editor for this.


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## slicebo123 (Jan 4, 2010)

I finally found something in the ball park. Check out this legit iwagumi set-up.

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w22/recavox/Maxoijuallumi.jpg

My biggest problem with sand/iwagumi layouts is that the rock placement usually seems to suffer because of the need to keep the sand and plant substrate separate. This scape has seemed to overcome that.


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## Kitty_Kitsch (Apr 27, 2011)

That's very nice, I like the trimmed arch


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