I Judged 18 of the Best Aquascapes in America

WERBEVIDEO | I JUDGED 18 OF THE BEST AQUASCAPES IN AMERICA 🇺🇸 In this video, I take you behind the scenes of the Aquashella Aquascaping Contest 2026 in New Jersey, where I had the honor of judging 18 incredible aquascapes created by some of the most talented aquascapers competing at the event. We take a close look at all 18 contest aquariums, meet some of the aquascapers behind them and explore the huge variety of styles, techniques and ideas on display. One of my favorite moments of the event was meeting 14-year-old aquascaper Pranav Redlapalli, who competed as Jimmy Nguyen’s apprentice. Check out Pranav: Website: https://tpstanks.com YouTube:    / @theplantedscape   Instagram:   / the_planted_scape   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🌿 AQUASHELLA AQUASCAPING CONTEST 2026 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The Aquashella Aquascaping Contest is presented by Aqua Forest Aquarium × Aqua Design Amano. Aquashella: https://aquashella.com ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚖️ CONTEST JUDGES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The 18 aquascapes were evaluated by a three-person judging panel: Ryan Noel / The Aquascaping RyNo   / the_aquascaping_ryno   Daichi Araki / ADA SUIKEI Creator   / daichi_araki_ada   Jurijs Jutjajevs   / juri_js   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🙏 HUGE THANK YOU ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A very special thank you and massive shoutout to Ryan Noel for the incredible amount of work that went into making this competition happen. Ryan was one of the driving forces behind planning, organizing and running the aquascaping contest, and events like this simply wouldn't be possible without people putting in this kind of time, energy and passion behind the scenes. Ryan Noel / The Aquascaping RyNo   / the_aquascaping_ryno   A huge thank you as well to George Mavrakis for creating and organizing Aquashella and providing a stage where the aquarium community can come together, compete, share ideas and celebrate the hobby. George Mavrakis / CoralFish12g   / coralfish12g   And finally, a massive thank you to the entire team of volunteers who helped make the competition happen. From setting everything up to keeping things running throughout the event — this would not have been possible without you! Alex Franqui   / aquascape_af   Justin / Algae King   / algae_king   Austin Kwan   / akwascapes   Channing Miskel   / channingmiskel   Chantz Cramer   / chantz_the_scaper   Thank you all for the time, work and passion you put into making this event possible! 🙏 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🏆 THE 18 AQUASCAPES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TANK 01 Hiep Hong Apprentice: Matthew Obcamp “Life in Color” TANK 02 Howard Lowenthal Apprentice: Joshua James “Fallen Angel” TANK 03 Steven Chong Apprentice: Luke Wang “Nook (Sumi)” TANK 04 Marc Tell Apprentice: Jason Reusch “Endless” TANK 05 Yetong Zhang + Tianxin Shen “Fallen Giants” TANK 06 Hayley Zimmermann “Black Coffee” TANK 07 Asa Bennett “For Rosie ... breath.” TANK 08 Jimmy Nguyen Apprentice: Pranav Redlapalli “The Crash” TANK 09 Shelby Kaye Brown “Into the Calm” TANK 10 Jacob Smiley Apprentice: Caleb Dilthey “Carved by Time” TANK 11 Jeff Miotke + Dan Zmuda “EGG”-stream TANK 12 Fabian Beck Apprentice: Jonathan Hernandez “Dance” TANK 13 James Biggers “Unicorn Dreams” TANK 14 Austin Lushinski “Black Cleaver” TANK 15 Eduard Kim + Ludmila Kim “Canyon on the Rise” TANK 16 Grant Eder “Into the Rift” TANK 17 Jennifer Bujalski Apprentice: Derek Pugh “Supernova” TANK 18 Andrew Huang + Andre Ho “Spirit of the Forest” ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📸 PHOTO & VIDEO CREDITS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Additional photo and video material used in this video courtesy of: Anemone Aquascaping / James   / anemone_aquascaping   Alex Franqui / Aquascape AF   / aquascape_af   Steven Lo   / afa.stevenlo   Logan Rando Aquascaping   / loganrandoaqua   A huge thank you to everyone who allowed me to use their footage and photography. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🌿 FOLLOW ME ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Instagram:   / juri_js   If you had to choose ONE of these 18 aquascapes for your home, which one would it be? Let me know your favorite in the comments!