Joined forces in the aquatics sector

Heiko Blessin, head of marketing at JBL, believes the Russian people have a mindset that lies somewhere between the serenity of the East and the creativity of Europe. Maybe that is the reason why the Russians have become increasingly enthusiastic in the last few years about aquariums and especially about aquascaping and biotope scaping. Their success in this field is growing, too, because more and more of the victors in such competitions come from eastern European states. “Once the Russians get an idea into their heads, there’s no stopping them,” says Blessin. And potential abounds here – after all, Russia has a population of 145 mio, but only 1 mio have an aquarium according to unofficial figures. To develop the trend for modern aquariums in Russia and the other Russian states, the German aquatics company JBL has been acting as a sponsor and source of ideas for the various aquatics competitions in Russia for some time. It also provides ex­perts to give talks at trade fairs and other events. The competition scene in particular has changed in recent years. In 2012 Danil Zatravkin and his team started organising aquarium days in Moscow, which were then integrated into the ADA Aquascaping World Championship. Russia then left the competition in 2013 and established its own Russian Open Championship with JBL as sponsor and with its Russian importer Unitex.

The competition was advertised mainly on the Internet, in forums, by leaflets and at the Park Zoo fair in Moscow. The results are plainly evident: 650 applications were received. The advertised aquarium design championship prompted 164 participants to submit photographs of large aquariums and forty participants sent in pictures for a nano aquarium contest. Ten were eventually selected for the final. The overwhelming majority of the nano-aquascapers were women, according to Blessin. Serkan Ce¸tinkol from Turkey was the winner of the aquascaping competition. As there were already plenty of aqua-scaping competitions, the hunt was also on for something new – and the answer came in the form of the biotope aquarium. Blessin says that this decision follows the trend among a growing number of aquascapers to switch to biotopes. Biotope scaping means that aquariums must be…