Tips for becoming a professional aquascaper

[AmeliaLowe]

Hi,
So I don’t know if this is a severely naïve question, but is it possible to get a job professionally designing tanks for a living? If so, how? There’s not much info on the web and I don’t have any other fish hobby friends. I live in the UK if that helps?

 

[Revan]

I mean, if you're like Takashi Amano and you can generate insane amounts of internet traffic, I guess its possible, but i doubt you'd want that to be your main job...

 

[Dunk2]

Hi,
So I don’t know if this is a severely naïve question, but is it possible to get a job professionally designing tanks for a living? If so, how? There’s not much info on the web and I don’t have any other fish hobby friends. I live in the UK if that helps?

Not naive at all.
Custom Fish Tanks | Aquarium Design | London | UK

 

[Yeoy]

It's certainly not easy to have that as a full-time job, but it's also not impossible. I think what you'd find is you'll end up being a youtuber or vlogger who focuses on aquascaping.

The best thing to do would be to start with a job at a pet/aquarium shop. They might let you scape some of their tanks. And then you can maybe get in touch with their customers... and so on... It might take a while but if you have a genuine interest then just keep pressing with it. Try everything, experiment with everything.

 

[Mudminnow]

Another option is to start your own business designing, creating, and maintaining aquariums for other people. I've spoken to a couple of people that have made this their job. You'll be the person that maintains tanks at the doctor's office, restaurants, expensive homes, etc. From what I understand, you'll typically have to live in a big city to be able to drum up enough business to make this a full time job.

 

[ruud]

If you are really good, competing at the IAPLC could give you an enormous boost, depending on the result of course. I thought of competing at one point in time, but then holiday was over, and life took over once again...

 

[MacZ]

I think what you'd find is you'll end up being a youtuber or vlogger who focuses on aquascaping.

Or you end up owning a fish store specialized on aquascaping.

But either way: Needs a lot of work, a lot of PR, talent (either in scaping or in marketing yourself). You need to get yourself and your name out there somehow.

 

[SotaAquatics]

Big cities tend to have businesses already working on this - saltwater is probably still quite a bit more popular these days from a business standpoint. Look to see if you could get hired on for that experience first. Once you have a good idea of what's going on you can look at the market to see if it would be viable to go on your own.

I am also working on going a similar route but have different product ideas that I am working on towards tank scaping market. Needless to say, I am not quitting my bank job anytime soon

Social media here is going to be your biggest help getting your name, style and 'brand' out there. Unfortunately for me, I am old and don't enjoy that side of things anymore.