Italy as an aquascaping nation, their trend in the IAPLC Nations Challenge history is rather "unpredictable", if you look at the graph of Italy for the past 10 years, you will understand what it means.
Looking at the top5 scapers coming from Italy in the last 10 years IAPLC records, you will notice that they have quite a stable group of scapers that can contribute to the country's ranking. As a team competition like the Nations Challenge, this is quite important and therefore, even without eye-catching individual results, as a nation, Italy can still achieve a respectable world ranking of 12th in 2018. We believe that if this group of scapers continue to develop, there are good potential that Italy can break into top10 soon...or maybe 2019?
Italian aquascaping style is calm, peaceful and very "zen". Look at some outstanding layouts from Italy in the last few years, those are the layout that you can look at it for ages without getting tired of it - evergreen, is the right word. However, in the world of competitive aquascaping, is this kind of "safe" style sufficient to break into top ranking? We don't know....but observing the competition trend in recent years, we can only say that this kind of "safe" style will not get you into big trouble, but may not be easy to land you the biggest prize too.
If we compare Italy's style to another country we just introduced - France, both are NA dominated layouts, but one is wild, the other is calm. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, some like sexy ladies some like sweet girls next door. The main question is, which one will the judges like more?
Highest ever individual ranking from Italy is #4 in2014, by a top Italian scaper who is no longer in competitive aquascaping.
The up and down trend is making Italy quite unpredictable!
Strength and weakness
As mentioned above, the main strength of Italy is that they already have a stable group of scapers who can contribute to the country's ranking, they have a good base to work on and to strengthen. Their aquascaping style is easy to appreciate and basically "won't go wrong". However, they still need some breakthrough and perhaps a little bit of risk-taking.
Author: IAPLC Nations Challenge
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