You’ve seen youtubers compete, you’ve even seen podcasters vs. youtubers (I have participated in this one), but have you ever seen professionals go head to head in an aquascaping competition?

For this video, with the blessings of the ReefAPalooza Chicago show and Julian Sprung of Two Little Fishies, I captured footage of none other than Terence Fugazzi of Neptune Systems (who undoubtedly has some of the nicest tanks at many trade show) vs. Joseph Caparatta of UniqueCorals Wholesale Manhattan Aquariums, and MarcoRocks.com; who has perfected his technique through aquascaping for decades. These two have different thought processes, methods, and visions that we, the regular hobbyists, often fail to catch or even replicate in our own aquariums.

For this challenge, they were given:

– the same amount of space (equivalent to about 75g size)
– 2 identical sealed boxes of Julian’s Stax rocks

– 15 min. to complete the aquascape

But wait! That’s not all!

Julian himself was the judge. He was not allowed to watch the proceedings, in order to eliminate any bias.

If you know these two men, you know that they are some of the wittiest and funniest guys to be around. Watch these two as they race in a mad scramble to complete an epic aquascaping while dishing out some friendly banter and constructive criticism(?) on each other’s work. 😉

Let the greatness commence!

Huge thanks to Peter Cherrick of Reef News Network for providing commentary on this event during the show–a random, last-minute decision.