Amano san's history and aquarium tanks

Amano Takashi san was born in Niigata-shi (Former Maki-machi), Niigata, Japan in 1954. He has incorporated ecosystem and other elements found in nature to aquatic plant layout and established his own unique style called “Nature Aquarium”. In 1982, Amano founded Aqua Design Amano. The company attracted much attention for its aquarium equipment “Nature Aquarium Goods” featuring excellent quality and design. In 1992, Amano published a photo book “Glass no Naka no Daishizen”. This book was translated into seven languages together with “Mizu-Shizen eno Kaiki”. There is now a growing number of Nature Aquarium fans all over the world. Along with the activities as an entrepreneur, Amano has visited the world’s three major tropical rainforests, namely Amazon, Borneo and West Africa, and pristine forests in Japan since 1975 and has been working on series of photos focusing on “untouched nature” with his large-format cameras. He captures minute details of nature found at site on extra large size films (up to 8x20 inches). Amano’s works have been introduced and highly appreciated internationally through several exhibitions and publications. In recent years, Amano has given numerous lectures on his rich experiences in nature in Japan and many other countries, including Germany, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Russia, USA, China, India and Malaysia, and he has advocated the importance of tree-planting programs to protect the earth’s environment.

・President of the International Environment Photographers Association
・Member of the Society of Scientific Photography
・Member of the Japan Advertising Photographers’ Association
・Member of the Society of Scientific Photography

Learn from Nature, Create Nature - Envisage Nature Aquarium with the Images Drawn from Nature

Planted aquarium and landscape photographs are seemingly not related. But in Amano’s mind, they are closely linked with each other as a seamless process of creative activity. Nature Aquarium is absolutely not created from nothing. As suggested by its concept “Learn from Nature”, Nature Aquarium is an approach for planted aquarium layout which could not be achieved without the existence of nature. Amano said he accumulates countless images of nature in his mind by taking numerous number of landscape photographs. These images will be reflected in the creation of Nature Aquarium layouts. This is what Nature Aquarium is crucially different from other planted aquarium layout techniques.