Yup, they’re real aquariums!
George and Steven Lo of Aqua Forest Aquarium in San Francisco make aquariums – but not just any ol’ fish tank. Their creations of "Nature Aquariums" are simply stunning: real plants are used to create a natural (albeit underwater) diorama.
Link [website has self-starting background music] | Portfolio – via Apartment Therapy San Francisco
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The “Nature Aquarium” style was pioneered by Takashi Amano… Check out a search on Google Images for more of the masters work:
To answer the other commenter, they aren’t hard to “clean” per se, because the plants eat the fish wastes and you stock them with a variety of algae-eating animals (notably otocinclus and Amano shrimp) that do that part for you. As far as maintenance though they ARE demanding, requiring frequent pruning and more equipment than a regular “fishtank”. As an example, I have a pressurized CO2 tank and 100W of light(a “moderate-high” level in planted-tank terms) on a 20G tank. A tank that size would normally have about 20W of light on it. Additionally, other fertilizers must be added several times a week.
In my opinion, worth the effort, but there is a learning curve for sure.
J'ni
I hope to customize one of my tanks like this! check out my custom aquariums – http://www.orbedge.com!
Christophe
Snails can be useful for algeas too, like the ampuleer. Oh yes, they’ll eat your plants too;)
Owner of a fish tank, I’m amazed by the gardening time those pieces of art represent.
Ali S.
So beautiful! Yeah just get a few snails and algae eating fish and bam the cleanest Aquariam ever.
andy cochrane
I have slowly lost several aquariums to algae and disrepair over the years- as amazing and beautiful as these are, I don’t think I could ever trust myself to keep them looking like this! Very cool find, guys.
Lea
I’ve seen something like this before. They’re beautiful. Be careful with snails though. They breed like…well…certainly more fruitfully than rabbits. I bought two for my mom’s aquarium and had a couple hundred in a week…
Alex
I agree with Lea on snails: pretty much all aquatic plants bought from stores will have snails. I used to treat the plants with potassium permanganate before putting it into my tank.
If you have a snail infestation, it’s quite difficult to get rid of. For mild infestation you can float a piece of lettuce – snails will flock to the lettuce. Simply float new lettuce leaf every few hours or every day until you don’t have snail anymore.
oakling
Those are amazing! I’m so glad I live near SF 
I’ve been putting off restocking my aquarium for months!
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