About Aquascape Studio
An independent reference for planted aquariums and aquascaping — the equipment, the chemistry, and the biology that decides whether any of it works.
What this is
Aquascape Studio is a reference site. It catalogues the equipment used in planted freshwater aquariums, explains what each item actually does to the water and the organisms in it, and provides interactive tools for working out the numbers — volume, CO₂, stocking density, water-change schedules.
It exists because most of the information available to a new aquascaper is either retail copy or forum opinion. Both have their place, but neither is much use when you are trying to work out why your carpet is growing upward instead of sideways, or whether the GH of your tap water will let shrimp moult.
What it is not
There is no shop here. There are no affiliate links, no sponsored placements, no product recommendations, and nothing is for sale. Where a specification is quoted, it is the range you should expect across the category, not the claim of one manufacturer.
Nothing on this site guarantees that a plant will grow or a fish will survive. Aquarium keeping is a biological process with a lot of variables, and any site that promises an outcome is selling something.
The interactive tools
Four simulators run in your browser using WebGL: an aquarium builder, a plant growth simulator, a water chemistry model and a fish compatibility checker. They are educational models, not predictions. They are built to show the direction and rough magnitude of an effect — raise light without raising CO₂ and algae gain an advantage — not to tell you the exact nitrate reading in your tank next Tuesday.
Every one of them falls back to a static 2D view if WebGL is unavailable, and every animation respects the operating system reduced-motion setting.
Sources and accuracy
Parameters quoted here are conventional ranges from established aquarium practice — the pH and hardness bands that a species is commonly kept in, the turnover multiples that a filter is sized by, the cycling times that nitrifying bacteria actually need. Where the underlying science is well established, the site says so plainly. Where practice varies, it gives the range and explains what moves it.