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This year has been quite an active year for the AGA Showcase, both in pre-judging participation and post-judging commentary. I've now been on both sides of the showcase and would like to give some feedback to help the participants and observers understand why some things worked out as they did. While I can only speak in detail about my portion of the deal, there are some generalities that I can make.
First off, and most importantly, this was a VERY close year as far as quality of aquascapes is concerned. More often than not the top aquascapes came down to single points between aquariums. In cases like this it came down to tiny details to determine which aquarium should be ranked higher. It could have been something as simple as a more mature vs. slightly less mature foreground or planting group.
Some have made the comment that maintenance played an over large role in the scoring this year. In most cases Viability was the detail that made the difference between to excellent aquascapes. If two equally beautiful aquascapes were tied for a position and one had a species of plant that could potentially take over easily without regular pruning and the other didn't, it's a good chance that the former was docked a point to break the tie.
Regarding the high proportion of maintenance oriented comments: Given the quality of aquascapes and the increased ability to successfully grow difficult plants, maintenance technique and care for long term success are given more attention as areas for improvement. Regardless of whether the aquarist commonly redesigns his/her aquascape every six months long term stability is one of the criteria of adjudication and is still counted. In the cases where so many fast growing plants are used that the design changes from week to week as the different groups dominate consideration is given to how well the aquascape will maintain the state submitted, not what the aquarist may have had in mind at the time of design.
As far as actual placement is concerned, in just about every case the ranking aquascapes were ranked by some sort of averaging calculation. This means that it was exceedingly rare that any single ranking aquascape was placed in rank by more than two judges. In just about every case the ranking aquascapes were those that scored consistently high with all the judges. Often, they would have a place ranking among one of the judges scores, but not always by all.
One must also keep in mind that different judges weight different deficiencies more or less highly than another. For example, what I may have considered a 4 point deduction, Mr. Amano may have deducted 6 points for and vice versa. Generally, this worked out well as the opinions of the various judges worked themselves out into a pretty harmonious agreement.
As far as scoring goes, keep in mind that only 30 points out of the total 100 are given for Aquascaping/Composition. An aquarium which may have had a mind blowing aquascape that was presented poorly, had poor choices of species, or issues with long term stability of design could potentially have lost enough points to take it out of contention for rank. This happened very often and in some cases took an otherwise #1 aquarium down to #2, #3 or even out of contention at all.
More later...
First off, and most importantly, this was a VERY close year as far as quality of aquascapes is concerned. More often than not the top aquascapes came down to single points between aquariums. In cases like this it came down to tiny details to determine which aquarium should be ranked higher. It could have been something as simple as a more mature vs. slightly less mature foreground or planting group.
Some have made the comment that maintenance played an over large role in the scoring this year. In most cases Viability was the detail that made the difference between to excellent aquascapes. If two equally beautiful aquascapes were tied for a position and one had a species of plant that could potentially take over easily without regular pruning and the other didn't, it's a good chance that the former was docked a point to break the tie.
Regarding the high proportion of maintenance oriented comments: Given the quality of aquascapes and the increased ability to successfully grow difficult plants, maintenance technique and care for long term success are given more attention as areas for improvement. Regardless of whether the aquarist commonly redesigns his/her aquascape every six months long term stability is one of the criteria of adjudication and is still counted. In the cases where so many fast growing plants are used that the design changes from week to week as the different groups dominate consideration is given to how well the aquascape will maintain the state submitted, not what the aquarist may have had in mind at the time of design.
As far as actual placement is concerned, in just about every case the ranking aquascapes were ranked by some sort of averaging calculation. This means that it was exceedingly rare that any single ranking aquascape was placed in rank by more than two judges. In just about every case the ranking aquascapes were those that scored consistently high with all the judges. Often, they would have a place ranking among one of the judges scores, but not always by all.
One must also keep in mind that different judges weight different deficiencies more or less highly than another. For example, what I may have considered a 4 point deduction, Mr. Amano may have deducted 6 points for and vice versa. Generally, this worked out well as the opinions of the various judges worked themselves out into a pretty harmonious agreement.
As far as scoring goes, keep in mind that only 30 points out of the total 100 are given for Aquascaping/Composition. An aquarium which may have had a mind blowing aquascape that was presented poorly, had poor choices of species, or issues with long term stability of design could potentially have lost enough points to take it out of contention for rank. This happened very often and in some cases took an otherwise #1 aquarium down to #2, #3 or even out of contention at all.
More later...