Olga Baranovska (Ukraine): The value of the competitive movement can hardly be overestimated, especially when it comes to such a young art form, as aquascape. Attracting a large number of participants from countries with different traditions in culture can significantly extend the art range of entries, and modern technology can help not to restrict the fantasy of artists. There is nothing that pushes to the creative achievements as much as healthy competition, uncompromising criticism and advice of professionals. And nothing pleases as much, as a just reward. The contest disciplines, makes work on yourself, compare, evaluate current results soberly. Contest is a dynamic and multi-level system. For someone it is a school for getting skills, improving techniques, developing approaches to the modeling of aquascapes. As a rule, for these contestants battle goes under winning places: competent composition and basic techniques are importanta here. The requirements for winners are higher. When standard layouts are perfect, there is time and place for improvisation, creativity and variations in approach. To become a winner you should submit not just high quality entry, but a new, unusual, original one. Each prize entry at its birth and completion should be inherently a Grand Prix. A prize winner is creative, it is the start of a new trend or an original version of the old one, this is what is now aquarium design in its artistic incarnation, constantly evolving and making new trends. This year the contest surprised and pleased with the excellent entries. It was difficult to distribute places between the top three winners: all layouts are great and worthy. I wish the participants further creative endeavors, successful discoveries and will to win.

Sergey Kochetov (Russia): Planted aquarium contest 2013 seemed to be very interesting and evoked memories of USSR times, when our aquaristic was one of the strongest in the world thanks to its traditions and the number of enthusiasts. First of all, I liked the variety of aquatic plants and, most importantly, fishes. Fish species composition, in my estimation, was almost more vast than in Amano's contest. Bright multicolor layouts taken from the Dutch aquarium are a great proof. I would like to express my appreciation to the organizers who sent large files to me, and I managed to see a lot on my one meter monitor, where I usually edit videos. Everything looked differently on it and I could feel the effort of the authors of layouts and their aiming for excellence, as they understand it. In addition to the evaluation criteria recommended by the organizers, out of habit I checked correspondence of aquariums to their names. Some entries were set up unpretentiously but vividly and nicely, despite the compositional defects. In others there were few elements used with constant precision of setup. It should also be noted, and it was rated with points. However, when looking at the entries and judging them I could not help thinking that I've seen them somewhere before. As for the entries used earlier in Amano's contests, like in the previous judicial protocols of Russian contests I took them beyond prize places for so-called autoplagiarism, although the entries were undoubtedly interesting, with a high level of setup. I would suggest a separate category for them. Understanding the efforts of participants, their differences in the aquarium experience and level of modern aesthetic perception, I tried to minimize the difference in the final estimates not to offend anyone. As disadvantages I would like to note numerous miniaquariums that are likely to be in Nano Cube Contest, although among them there were entries with grea ideas and their implementation. Also, I do not like aquariums without fishes, because I believe that no shrimp or other invertebrates can replace fishes. Dynamics of underwater pictures is lost, the photo an not show it, but my mind makes it visible. With the permission of the organizers of the contest I hope I willbe able to use some of the entries for my videos, that I believe will help in the rehabilitation of children with autism and patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Alex Veres (Romania): Stunning tank! In my opinion this is the absolute winner. Congrats for the beautiful effect!

2. Change of Seasons

Olga Baranovska (Ukraine): In whole the entry is strong, good job with color and texture, the mood is shown perfectly, the composition is easily combined with the selected species of fishes and invertebrates. But putting the pretty heavy element in the center of almost symmetrical composition is somewhat surprising, given the high level of skill of the author.

Mustafa Erdoğar (Turkey): I think this layout is a wonderful combination of Dutch style and Iwagumi. Therefore I love it very much! Rock type is very impressive but the usage is a little more symetric for my taste.

Bosko Jovanovic (Serbia): The most realistic underwater scene at the contest. In the nature shallow water and flooded area habitats looked just like this tank. Fantastic lightning.