A new IAPLC: what has really changed?

 

Another year has passed by, and as traditionally, this August we had got the chance to see the aquascaping works that made it to the IAPLC top 100 of this edition.

For those who did not, you can watch the entire streaming event in YouTube in the following link.

In this occasion, the community was paying more attention than ever to the contest. But not much for the excitement of the new works -which each year triggers lot of hype-, rather than closely monitoring the behaviour of the organisation. There are a few reasons for it, but mainly linked to the following aspects: (a) a change of the general rules of the contest; (b) a change in the selection of judges; (c) a need to reconsider the evaluation criteria.

In this article, we review a few of those aspects, starting from why such changes were required, and then reviewing how this has impacted the results of this year.

The Spirit of Amano

As probably many of you already know, last days have been times of turmoil for the international community in Aquascaping. Unfortunately, apparently there have been a number of cases of breach of rules of various contests, with the subsequent disqualifications of those participants in some of them. I am sure those disqualifications will continue for the remaining of this 2020 season of contests, as result of those events.

However, I do not want to linger in this article in what happened or not, nor mention individuals or organisations involved into that. Instead, I prefer to discuss about the context and what this means for Aquascaping.

News - Results on IAPLC 2016 -Rankings & Facts

Advert for IAPLC 2016

As many of you already know, the results of the Internatonal Aquatic Plants Layout Contest (IAPLC) for 2016 have been published today. This is a long-waited moment for many of the participants, and as every year, it is also the moment in which some of the submitted works start to appear in the social media. These works will, undoubtedly, condition the Aquascaping trend for the next year, so it is worth to keep an eye into them.

The full ranking is available through the IAPLC website, but I provide you a direct link to it, here.

In The Living Tank, we have thought to provide some information based on these results, with some facts and side rankings that you can find interesting.