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Nature Aquarium Party 2009 - Live reporting from Tokyo!
Nature Aquarium Party is one of the biggest events in the world of Aquascaping, if not the biggest! Each year, the award winning tanks from the most prestigious International Aquatic Plant Layout Contest (IAPLC) will be revealed for the first time to the world during this award ceremony and aquascapers around the world will gather in Japan for this exciting moment. As the Grand Finale to the Global Aquascaping scene, it is only after the Nature Aquarium Party that aquascaping event around the world will be considered concluded for that year!
The IAPLC 2009 has a record breaking 1342 participants from 51 countries. 127 of the top tanks were selected from 1342 entries and these 127 tanks were sent to 18 judges around the world in anonymity to ensure fair judgment. Final world ranking was tabulated after totaling up all the points from these 18 judges. Every year, participants are pushing the bar of this contest upward and the difficulty of getting good ranking in this contest is also getting higher.
Now let us look at some of the photo from Nature Aquarium Party 2009 and all the winning tank photos!
Participants of the contest, Aquascaping enthusiast and world media are eagerly awaiting for the start of the ceremony:
MC of the event:
World top 27 tanks in 2009:
Grand Champion (world ranking #1)
Gold Prize (world ranking #2)
Silver Prize (world ranking #3)
Silver Prize (world ranking #4) – From Little Green Corner
Bronze Prize (world ranking #5)
Bronze Prize (world ranking #6)
Bronze Prize (world ranking #7)
Honor Prize (world ranking # 8 – world ranking #27)
world ranking # 8
world ranking # 9
world ranking # 10
world ranking # 11
world ranking # 12
world ranking # 13
world ranking # 14
world ranking # 15
world ranking # 16
world ranking # 17
world ranking # 18
World ranking #19 – From Little Green Corner
world ranking # 20
world ranking # 21
world ranking # 22
world ranking # 23
world ranking # 24
world ranking # 25
world ranking # 26
world ranking # 27
Beside the top 27 tanks, there are many others notable tanks being showed during the ceremony and receive comment from the head judge Mr Amano, here are a few of them:
world ranking # 29
world ranking # 35
world ranking # 37
world ranking # 38
world ranking # 39
world ranking # 54
world ranking # 55
world ranking # 75
world ranking # 104
world ranking # 110
Another tank from Little Green Corner was also getting rave review during this session:
world ranking # 122 – From Little Green Corner
It is worth mentioning that tank #123 from Malaysia, receive a special award base on artistic impression, selected by a famous Artist from Japan.
world ranking # 123
Following are some photo from the winners of this contest:
Grand Champion from Vietnam receiving the award and 1 million Japanese Yen in cash from Mr Amano.
Josh from Little Green Corner receiving the award and cash prize from one of the judges.
Josh and the famous aquascaper from CAU, Mr Dave Chow (#6).
Josh and the top Taiwanese aquascapers, Mr Chan (#2) on the right and Mr Lin (#7) on the left.
Top 7 award winners and some of the judges
Little Green Corner has achieved encouraging result in IAPLC 2009, 2 tanks from Little Green Corner were in the top 27, total 3 tanks are in the top 100, and another 2 tanks are in the top 127.
Josh Sim - #4 (Silver Prize) and #86 (Winning Work)
SW Yeo - #19 (Honor Prize)
Robert Hartono - #122 (Winning Work)
William Ng - #127 (Winning Work)
It is also a very good year for Malaysian and Singaporean Aquascaper as a whole, apart from good result achieved by Little Green Corner, there are other Malaysian and Singaporean Aquascapers in the top 127:
Yee Kin Cheong (Malaysia) - #12 (Honor Prize)
Lim Yoon Thiam (Malaysia) - #28 (Winning Work)
Chia Chin Sing (Malaysia) - #57 (Winning Work)
Adrian Ng (Singapore) - #60 (Winning Work)
Tai Teck Leong (Malaysia) - #114 (Winning Work)
LC Chan (Malaysia) - #123 (Winning Work)
Kenny Tay (Malaysia) - #124 (Winning Work)
IAPLC is a great motivation for all of us to keep moving forward. We hope that 2010 will be another good year of Aquascaping for all aquascapers around the world, especially from Malaysia and Singapore.
We also hope that Little Green Corner will continue to maintain our high level of standard in our tanks and achieve consistent result in the contest.
But as the standard of this contest getting higher each year, it will be a daunting task for all of us to improve or even maintain our ranking. Therefore, we should keep an open heart and enjoy the process. Getting good results in the contest is no doubt a wonderful thing, but let’s not forgetting that Aquascaping is already a wonderful thing by itself, with or without the world ranking! So let’s work harder together and look forward to another year of wonderful experience in 2010! | 