MY TOP 10 BEST AQUARIUM SETUPS OF ALL TIME!

This is a compilation of my best and favourite aquarium setups!

🚨Watch this next!🚨
Inspiration playlist! https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrlvf56gZy-ipL3105SdfKsUBrMUSttoh
CO2 buying guide! https://youtu.be/dIVrr1yS3sU
How to SETUP your CO2! https://youtu.be/qSHZ4F2PI2o
Simple fertilizer dosing! https://youtu.be/I_KBOUM1RXM

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0:00 – Intro
0:48 – XXL no filter vase
19:06 – 30C Blackwater
42:47 – Blue shrimp tank
1:06:12 – No filter nano
1:27:15 – Big Shallow V1
1:39:02 – Forest jungle nano
1:46:50 – ScaperLine 90 V1
2:31:59 – Mini Desk Aquarium
2:43:33 – Moss on the rocks
2:55:35 – Amazon inspired Big Shallow

So at the moment I’m still very much in the middle of moving house so a lot of my time is spent on painting assembling furniture and in general just lifting heavy things so there’s very little time

Left to create new content now I still wanted to upload a video this week so I thought why not do a compilation video of the best setups that I’ve created in this old place kind of as a way to say

Goodbye you know so I’ve created a top 10 and it’s basically a mix of videos that either got a lot of views or just videos that I personally really liked so let’s get straight to it so on

Number 10 you have the XXL no filter vase this one kind of deserves to be higher in the top 10 but I also wanted to start this compleation with just a really good video you know it also did really

Well I think it got over 300,000 views so that’s a lot yeah I found this massive phas in my local Garden Center and I just had to buy it so I’ve actually made a no filter planted vase 2 years

Ago and that was kind of my first experience with noof Filter aquariums so it’s just a very simple setup we had a vase we had a light and that was all the technical equipment uh the plants

Were doing infiltration and every so often I would just do a water change and a little bit of Maintenance it was very easy to care for we also had a thriving colony of cherry shrimp and

I really got a lot of enjoyment out of the setup I think it was also one of the most viewed videos on my Channel right now so at some point I got rid of it but I always told myself like I want

To do something like that again but maybe on a slightly larger scale yeah so a few weeks ago I went to my local Garden Center to look for something slightly bigger and somehow I came home with this Behemoth so this thing measures 40 cm tall and it’s 28 CM across so it holds

Roughly 25 L yeah I think that’s roughly 6 or S US gallons so that’s a 35 L tank right there so you can kind of see the yeah the scale it’s a it’s a pretty big vase so they had a lot of these

Things in my local Garden Center but I chose this one because it has relatively thick glass I think this is maybe 3 or 4 mm something like that and the base is relatively thick as well so sometimes

You know these glass faces can be very thin and fragile because you know normally a vase you would only fill up to about here because the rest will be just flowers or a bouquet or something like

That you know but I made sure that this one is H quite thick yeah I think this is a good vessel for our uh our new no filter scape okay first thing I want to do is cut out a little fat for this vase

So I have these fats underneath all my things and they’re just a bit of a security measure you can imagine once this vase is filled up with water and rocks and gravel is quite heavy and if you have like a tiny object sitting underneath this vase that can become a pressure point and

Actually can actually break the glass so we want to of course prevent that from happening so just a little format this cost absolutely nothing so I’m just going to cut out the circle that’s [Music] it okay that’s our format done now we need a light this was a bit tricky because of

The round corners you know not every CR light fits on there but I think I found something good I recently got a few new products from Dana they’ve also sent me this troo style 2

8 wats so this is for tanks from 30 to 60 L 1280 lumens and it’s 6,500 Kevin so it’s a nice daylight so let’s see if this fits on this vase here we go that’s the light it’s quite big

But it’s perfect for this vase because it has this sort of like a clip on the back that’s a little bit flex flexible as well so we should be able to clamp this on top of the

Vase here we go boom we have light here we go that’s our light installed looking good it’s quite bright it’s quite powerful maybe a bit too powerful actually for a low Tech setup but uh we

Can always just use a bunch of floating plants to dim the light a bit let’s move on let’s uh go make a nice Hardscape I’ve already been playing around with The Hardscape these past few days so

I know I exactly what we’re going to make today I have a couple of really nice pieces of wood this stuff right here is called Endwood it’s a product from stride ways and I’ve already used this piece once before in my no filter copy aquarium I’ll overlay a clip so you guys can

See how that looked and I really like this wood because it’s very easy to work with I mean this stuff doesn’t release any tenants it doesn’t grow any mold like some other types of wood do red more wood for example and yeah it has some really nice lines so I have three pieces

Of this two big ones and one small one and then I also have three big rocks this is uh called Rel Stone it’s basically lava rock but it’s a bit more dense and it has a bit more character

Than your regular black lava rock so yeah really good stuff so let me show you guys what I have in [Music] mind [Music] so this is basically what I had in mind I think that looks pretty good I like all the curves

That we have going on here so I would like to have some cosmetic sand in the foreground here then the background we can fill in with aqua Sole and substrate and make that a good biological filter because we’re not going to have any filtration here and then we can just add in a

Load of plants I think it’s going to look really good now these pieces would have been outside so they’re a bit wet but I’m pretty sure that they are still going to float up to the surface so I’m

Just going to glue everything down just to uh just to be safe and as always I’m going to use my cotton pads for that so for anyone who hasn’t seen this method yet I always like to use these

Cotton pads I kind of pull them apart and then just take little pieces like that kind of push them together and then with my tweezers I’ll grab them and then I’m wedge them in between

The two points that I want to connect so here in front for example for example the two the piece of wood and the rocks are touching each other so I’m going to wedge it in between there you

Can see that it’s tightly wedged in between the Rock and the wood so now we take some liquid type super glue and we basically saturate the entire cotton piece with the super glue and if you need

A really strong bond you can take a little bit of baking soda just sprinkle a little bit of that baking soda on top of the cotton pad then apply some more glue and then you have a super

Strong bond like nothing is going to move that anymore of course this will kind of alter the water parameters a little bit as well so it might raise the water hardness a little bit so if you’re using a lot of this just make sure you do an extra water change or [Music]

Something okay we’re done gluing I basically just repeated that process about five or six times and now everything is just completely stuck together nothing’s going to move anymore so now we can move on to the substrate so I have a few things I want to use first of all

Wetland eonian black this basically just crushed black lava rock and this will be a good home for beneficial bacteria which is something we definitely need a lot of in a no filter set up then I have some leftover uh fral strum so this is aquaco contains some uh some nutrients

As well and then in the foreground so basically that area I want to have some nice cosmetic sand so I’ve got some wi sand tiis in my first no filter phas I had some cosmetic sand in the foreground as well but one issue that kept coming back is that the aquasol will start

Rolling forward and start mixing with the soap with the sand that just looks very unsightly so I have some small gaps here in underneath the rocks and on the sides so I’m going to close those gaps with a little bit of filter wool and this uh you might see it in the beginning

But after after a while that will get dirty and will get darker and we’re not going to see it [Music] anymore okay there’s all the gaps closed yeah it just looks a little bit OD right

Now but uh by the end of this video none of that will be visible anymore so now we can move on to the substrate I’ll first fill in the layer of the crush lava rock then I’ll top that with

The flu stratum and I might do the Str the sand straight away maybe I will save it for [Music] later okay that’s the subside layer in let’s take a look from the top so we have quite

A thick subsrate layer I think in the back it’s almost like 10 cm that’s good you know especially in these no filter tanks you want to have quite a thick substate layer because the substate will do a lot of defiltration for you and also it’s quite a high vase you know

It’s 40 cm so if you have a higher substrate then the stems will be closer to the light as well and you will not have these like bare stems with without any leaves so thick substrate layer now let’s move in with the Cosmetic sand I’ve also washed

Some of these um small Pebbles so they look a little bit they almost the same color as the Black lav Rock so they will match nicely and give a nice contrast in the uh in the white Sand [Music] all right then I think that’s the hardcap done little look from the top nice yeah the uh the sand really brought it together the small little Pebbles as well some nice details most of the white filter floss has already been covered up as well so

Now we just need to figure out which plants we want to use and as always we have a beautiful healthy selection of plants kindly provided by D plant so we have some nice in vitro giant Moss I

Have a crypt here the Crypt W broadleaf some boo of L of course boo serum Boo brown and they have a new plant here the anubius Nana Jade so this is a jade green anubius really really beautiful

Yeah the color is not really showing but is a really interesting color and then here we have some water Sprite we have some lopis we have some mum and a few other plants I’m going to start with

This probably end up using a lot more than this but uh let’s just start with [Music] this okay so plants are all prepared but I do have some doubts about the anubius Jade the jade green um

The leaves are quite big and I think it’s going to kind of ruin the sense of scale that we have going on right here so for example I was thinking maybe somewhere over here inside the gap for

Example you know I know it’s quite big you know it just yeah it’s a beautiful plant I just don’t think it really fits in this particular layout over here in this equ I have some really small

Anubius look at that I think that will actually work much better in this cape okay I’m going to start in the center area here there’s a lava rock underneath there so I just need to check where I

Can actually plant in so here’s Rock here’s rock this part here is all empty and then here we have Rock again so there’s not really a lot of space but we can make it work so the first plant to go

In there will be the bla Japonica been using this a lot lately and it’s really is one of my favorite plants then on the left side I’m going to plant mirum Guana so this is a very small very delicate stem plant but it’s really beautiful it doesn’t grow too fast either so it

Should be relatively low maintenance as well so that’s good then in front of the Guana I’m going to plant Lim noila Vietnam so this is another small and slow growing stem plant and just in front of that I’m going to plant one bunch of the cryp wended broad leaf I’ve not used this

Crypt a whole lot but I feel like because it’s in vetro it stays relatively small as well so it should work in that position I’m going to wedge another one over there The Roots will eventually

Find their way into the substrate then I’m going to use a little bit of this giant Moss to cover up those last bits of white filter floss so I’ve just applied a little bit of super glue to the

And then I’m just going to press it in there then the initro bu of lra I’m actually going to glue them to some of these smaller works like I’ve already used in the foreground here and then I

Can just place them on top of there and just kind of move them around wherever I [Music] like yeah I think we’re almost there I’ve planted the waterite behind the wood I think that look looks nice and

On the right side I’ve planted some of the Lili opsis I think we have a little bit more space in between there for one stem plant so we should grab something red I have some crazy red rotala orange

Juice in this tank so I think I’m going to take a few stems of that and plant that in the vase as Well okay I think that’s our XXL V is planted all done I’m really happy with the end result I think it’s going to look amazing I like that we still kept most of the heartscape visible yeah let’s uh let’s fill it [Music] up [Music]

So the vas has been up and running for 3 weeks now it’s definitely grown in a bit it’s looking good so it’s ready for some inhabitants I’m thinking we should definitely get some shrimp but maybe some

Fish as well I mean it’s a vase but it’s still quite big I mean it’s 25 L so I think it’s big enough for some small fish but just not really sure what to get yet so I’m in my local fish

Shop hes and I mean in terms of shrimp we are definitely spoil for choice they have loads of red Ries they’ve got the blue ones they’ve got orange ones we’ve got some really nice Crystal Reds uh yellow shrimp Crystal blacks and the red ones as well and here they have the green jads

So they have loads of options water is slightly murky here I think they just did some maintenance but yeah which one should we go for I already have the orange ones I already have the blue ones and I

Have the red ones as well but I think I’m actually leaning more towards the red ones because they will definitely pop in a V you know and then in terms of fish they have these small chili

Ras boras so these guys are really nice and they could definitely be a a good option for their vase I was also looking at these guys it’s a bit hard to see but these are called Emerald Ros Bora so

Slightly different than the galaxies but um still a very nice fish maybe just a bit too big for her face I’m not sure yeah I think I’m going to go for the red cherry shrimp I already have some at

Home but these guys are just better colored they just look nicer and they will definitely stand out in their vas and a small group of the chili West BS as well I think that’s just a really nice

[Music] combination we’re back home so we’ve got eight of the chili Ras boras and I’ve got uh 10 of the red cherry shrimp super exciting fun fact the cherry shrimp are actually bigger than the chil boros yeah they’ve been acclimating for a little bit and we’re going to release them soon

I’m sure some people are wondering like Mark how on Earth are you going to do maintenance on this vase because it’s quite tall and I’m not going to line that was actually something I kind of overlooked as well I knew that I wanted to place the vase on the Shelf but kind of

Forgot that there would be limited space on top it’s actually it’s actually fine I mean doing water changes is easy I’ve also got a little LG magnet here on the side so that’s also going to make maintenance easier so really the only difficult thing will be trimming plants

But it’s a no filter setup plants are growing quite slowly so should be fine oh by the way we actually already have some fish in the face two days ago I added two other sink gles to kind

Of help with the algae cleanup not like there was any algae but just to uh make sure the tank stays nice and clean you know the only thing I’m having doubts about is the Cosmetic sand because

As you can see there’s already some fish poop and snail poop visible so that’s not very attractive but if it starts to B me then I can always swap to some gravel or something yeah fish are and shrimp

Are acclimated so let’s release them I’ve got all the cherry shrimp let’s release them first first I think I saw a few buried as well so that’s nice should have some babies soon they’re really super

Red they’re big as well it’s going to be fun to see because the vase sort of has a magnifying effect so the piece of wood in the middle for example looks much bigger right now so I think

The shrimp will look much bigger as well that’s cool yeah I think going for the red cherry shrimp I mean even though they’re quite standard and basic they’re still very nice and they will

Definitely stand out in here I mean we mostly have green plants we do have the red stems on the side there but they’re just not as vibrant red anymore as when I first planted them so these Cherry shm

Are definitely going to stand out really happy with that okay here come the chili res boras I’ve moved the camera closer because these guys are tiny literally half the size of the uh the cherry shrimp here you go guys welcome to your new home it’s going to be quite difficult to get

A good focus on these chili R BS they’re so small they’re very pale right now as well but um last weekend I was in the UK Horizon Aquatics and they had a display tank there with some chili BS as well and they were super super red never seen chil

Was Bor that vibrant red before but so it would be nice if these guys can get the same color Are [Music] then on number nine we have a little blackw setup so I’ve done a few blackw setups in the past but I think this one was my favorite and I also really like the fish in this one in the

Past couple of weeks I’ve kind of been changing up my style a little bit with these build videos going away from these really heavily planted tanks to a bit more of a mix between biotopes and aquascaping so we already did the South American inspired big shello with the epist

Ground and the green neon tetras recently we did the river Style with the celestial PE Danos and today we’re transforming this UNS 30C into a blackw cube for blue neon rasboras now I’d really love to display this Cube on our Shelf but that brings us with a few issues biggest one being the

Fact that we don’t have space anymore we already have five tanks up and running so that means that one tank has to go I’m currently still very happy with this one still very happy with this one happy

With this one also happy with this one but I’m not happy with this one already mentioned in the previous video that I wanted to start taking this one down this used to be the blue velvet shrimp

Scape I already moved most of the shrimp out into the new uh River Starscape with the celestial P danios I think there might still be one or two in here I is actually still one there on the filter

So I initially set this one up as a high-tech tank with CO2 injection but after a few months you know all the plants are grown in properly and I decided to try and remove the C see what would happen actually for the first one or two months everything was looking good plants were

Still growing nicely but then after 2 months the ha grass in the back started to turn brown and after that it just kind of started looking a little bit sad so I could of course you know

Try to fix the Aquascape add the CO2 back in get the plants fully growing again I don’t know I’ve just kind of lost interested with this Aquascape and I think it’s more fun to start something new again so while we’re getting ready to set up this new tank I’m just going to

Keep this filter running somewhere else just so we can keep all these benefit beneficial bacteria alive and then that way the new tank can get cycled faster as well you Know yes this is kind of where my second issue comes in some people might not really find this a big deal but all four tanks that we have up and running are rectangular tanks and then to

Have a cube there it just looks a little bit or you know kind of first my OCD also this is going to be a natural style black water tank and all four of them are like super heavily

Planted so it’s going to look completely out of place so I was talking about this with my girlfriend the other day and she actually came up with this genius solution to put that tank over there in the middle on the right side we already have the natural style big shellow which

Is also a little bit black water has a little tint to the water so if we going to have the cube next to it it’s going to look much more balanced you know so we’re want to move that

Tank to that shelf move the cube to there I think then we have a nice yeah just a nice [Music] setup okay then that’s our tank swap done looking pretty good so that’s our empty canvas for today we have a UNS 30C TwinStar B series LED light and then the hang on the

Back filter that I showed you earlier I’m sure some of you are thinking like hey Mark that’s a UNS tank UNS is an American brand aren’t you like in the Netherlands that’s true I’m still in the Netherlands haven’t moved to the US yet U it’s an American brand but they actually now

Available in Europe as well I got this one sponsored I got it directly from the German distributor who is importing them so super cool to see UNS here in Europe really happy with the quality of the tank super low iron glass invisible silicone and I really like the

Thick format it’s much thicker than other brands that I’ve seen so far so really happy with this little Cube the only thing this cube is still missing is a background now I thought because we’re doing a black water scape I’m going to go with a black background but because

All the other tanks have a white background I think I’m going to go with white [Music] again okay the background is done which means that we can now move on to our Hardscape the idea

That I have for this little cube is to make like a mini version of the big shellow the big shellow is South American themed this is going to be more like Asian themed I think the blue n as blue neon

Ras are from Malaysia not sure actually so it’s going to be like Asian themed black water now in the big shello I’ve used black Lavar rocks and Centurion wood I’m definitely not going to use the Centurion wood because it gave me a lot of troubles with yeah mold and water Clarity

And stuff like that but I’m definitely going to use black lava rocks in here as Well this actually not your typical black Lava Rock This is called relief stone and it’s bit more dense bit more textured than regular black lava rocks looks pretty cool in the back I’ve just used

A regular one just kind of close the gap because I want to have some aquasol in the back and decorative sense in the front next up let’s move on to some wood and the piece of wood that I want

To use is currently in this tank bit of a story here I’ve used this piece of wood before in my 10 L no filter Aquascape and I took that tank down like I don’t know 6 months ago 7 months ago but

I kept the wood submerged in that tank in the in my window it was basically like serving as a plant holding tank so I kept the wood in there because there was a lot of M on the wood and I knew that

Someday I’m going to use this P piece of wood again so I kept it in that plant holding tank and and yesterday I took it out I dropped it in here because there was a little bit of algae on there

But now the shrimp have cleared it out completely so now we can take it out and start building our [Music] highcap okay we’re making progress so I moved the bigger Rock more to the side and the

Smaller one in the middle there so yeah starting to look good we’re not done yet I want to close the gaps that you see over there and over there and I think for that I want to use this stuff

Right here this is gravel Druid from wi I’ve used the same stuff in the in the big shallow as well it’s the gravel that you see scattered around the base yeah let’s see if that looks nice or [Music] not [Music] right it’s starting to look pretty good already right now it feels very

Much aquascaped and we’re trying to go for that natural style almost biotope style so I want to add in a little bit more wood in the form of like twigs and branches for that I’m going to use this

Stuff this is wi Elder root so basic just a bag full of twig and branches I guess you can go to your local force and get the same thing but I have this stuff so I’m going to use it [Music]

Okay I am pleasantly surprised by how that looks those twigs and branches instantly made it look more natural of course they’re all dry so we have to glue everything together I also really like that little Gap that we have created here almost like a little tunnel we have to

Make sure that we put a a plant behind there or something just to give it more depth even [Music] okay while we’re waiting for the glue to cure we can talk about the sand yes we’re talking

About sand it’s come to this point right now for the sand I’m going to use this product this is wi Bots mirror not sure how you pronounce that it’s like yellowish sand actually let me open

It up so we can see it properly here we go that’s what was in the back so we have like a yellowish orangey sand we have some Twix we have some Pebbles small gravel as well so it’s like a

Really cool super natural mix I used a different bag in the uh Celestial podan escape this one is called the Glazer so it had like a dark scand different colors of gravel different colors of Pebbles so all the we products that I’m using for this build so the Druid gravel the elderly roots

And the sand those products are all sponsored and I’ll leave links in the description if you guys want to check it out yourself buy some yourself uh now before we continue we do need to wash this

Gravel because it is quite dirty it’s very dusty just give it a wash and then we can can [Music] continue so while we’re making an absolute mess of this tank I want to continue with the substrate in

The back for that I want to use a little bit of old Aqua soil so over here I have the tank that we just took down previously in here we still have a lot of Aqua soil and this stuff contains

A lot of beneficial bacteria already so I want to use a little bit of this on the bottom then cap it with fresh aiso and then we just have a lot of beneficial bacteria from the start

We can get the fish in faster we should have less issues with LG as well so let’s try that yeah just a little bit should be enough drop that in the back maybe we’ll do one more and

Then we cap it with fresh [Music] oil okay I think that’s the hardc cape sand straight all done currently it’s looking a little bit messy so I think I’m just going to fill the tank up

With water I think then we can take a better look at what we’re doing what kind of plants we’re going to add you can also add in the filter yeah let’s do [Music] that right tanks

All filled up filters up and running water is a little bit cloudy though so let’s see if we can clear it up with CM Clarity so we’ll add this in wait a few hours come back and do the plant

[Music] well a few hours actually turned into a few days and it’s now been a full week since we finished The Hardscape of this Cube that’s okay we’re not in a rush actually gave me some time

To think about the plans for this layout because it is going to be a black water tank but I still want some green in there you know but yeah the water cleared up nicely and I think the highcap

Is looking and good it’s quite simple I mean it’s only two lava rocks and a couple of Twigs but especially in these black water tanks you don’t really need much more than that you know like there’s no there’s no point in going really heavy on the details with the hard

Skape because we’re going to add floating plants we’re going to add tannins and then you won’t be you won’t be able to see half The Hardscape right so here’s our plant selection for today and we have a little guest as well hello so we have some floating plants they’ve already been

Inside the tank we’re going to add them back later we have a few pots of giant hair grass it’s going to be way too much but but you see how much we use then underneath here we have a java

Fern of course can’t go wrong with a java fern this is yeah forgot the name of this plant I’ll put all the names of the plants on the screen as I’m planting them and then underneath here we have some plants that I basically rescued from the previous tank that was on the Shelf

So we have some small Crypts we have some small boosters as well and we’ll just see how much of this we’re going to add okay I’m going to start with the background and with the giant

Hair grass because I’m very curious how it’s going to look so that was just one plug of that giant hair grass and it immediately brought the whole thing to life let’s add in a few [Music] more let’s move on to the Java F I’ve actually split that

Pot in half so we have two portions I’m thinking one portion over there on the left side maybe one more portion behind that piece of wood [Music] yeah Java F looking good next let’s fill in the background with more of the giant hair [Music]

Grass okay moving on to a few Crypts this is the Crypt be brown that came from the other tank I’m going to place this in mix in with the giant hair grass so I should be just poking over that uh lava rock [Music]

Basically now I don’t really like this Gap that we have over here there’s some light coming from there it just looks B weird so what I’m going to do is I’m going to take a little bit of moss from this Aquascape and use that to basically fill up that Gap should look

[Music] better that’s a bit better I think once we have the floing plants in there and once we have the tenants in there shouldn’t really be that light anymore now I think the only thing left to do is to basically plant some small Crypts

And small boosters in the foreground area and then I think the planting is Done So I decided not to use this plant anymore I don’t think we need it in here and also it just looks a bit off so I think that’s the planting done I’m really happy with that looks super good we just

Need some little bit more floating plants we can add them and then we can move on to creating some tenants okay time to make some tenants for that I’m going to use this stuff this is mulch bed

From wi it’s the same stuff that I used in a big shallow as well it’s basically just a bag full of yeah small piece of twig small piece of bark so we put this in a small bucket pour on some boiling

Water let it sew for a little bit I might add in some katapa leaves as well and then we’ll let it sew for a little bit and then we can add all of it to the aqu The Mulch and also the the tinted

[Music] water there’s actually one more thing that I want to add to this Cube so a few weeks ago we did the big shallow and I went to my local Garden Center to pick up some house plants I only

Ended up using this little Fern over there but I bought a few more and I placed them behind some of my tanks so there’s one over there looks really really good there’s another one over there and I

Wanted to do something similar over here on this on this little Cube and I found this one and I think this is what people call a phos photos I don’t know how to pronounce it but I think

This plant should be able to grow from the hang on the back filter I think that will be pretty cool it’s just a bit of an experiment so I think I’m just going to remove all the soil from this

Pot so we just have the roots place it in the hang on the back filter just see if it [Music] Works okay few days have passed again the tank is ready it’s cycled ready for fish actually had some troubles finding these fish I guess it was a little friendly reminder to myself that

If I want to set up a tank for a little bit more or a little bit less common fish I need to find them first before I start the tank because tank was ready and then none of the shops in my local

Area actually had them for sale so that was a bit of an issue but I found them we are back at UT I was actually here a few weeks ago and this store specializes in like more rare fish so I checked

Out their website they have a complete stock list on their website and they said they have some U yeah blue neon Ras BS in stock so let’s go inside let’s see if they actually still have [Music] them

Here they are so they actually have two types this is the one that I’m looking for the suel Axel Roi and then on top of here I noticed that they have another similar species this is the sundan rarus yeah slightly different but I think I like the uh the Axor better these have

A little bit more blue it seems and these fish are actually wild CAU so yesterday I messaged them and said hey what kind of water parameters are you guys keeping these fish on they’re keeping them on reversal smoke water I set up the tank with tap water so we slowly

Have to change that to reverse M water so yesterday I already did a water change with pure R water this morning I did another one and I think when I come home I’ll do a third one so hopefully the water parameters will sort of be matching with what they’re keeping

Them here because there are quite Sensi the ficial we have to be really careful with that okay fish are acquired we got 10 of the neon blue rasboras so we do a little quick store tour not sure if everybody saw that other video that I made yeah this store

Is divided into um continents basically so this area here is pure Asia it’s not the biggest area the biggest area is downstairs in the basement but yeah they have a really good selection of fish from Asia in general they have a couple of really nice display tanks as well lots of

Black water theme going on here huge selection of plants as well then if you move over to this side this is where they keep all the fish from Africa I guess this is the smallest section of

The entire store this is all Africa so of course lamp ailles of course some uh creanza cichlids here as well the uh famous cono tetras and then you think that’s it no there’s more next we go

Downstairs and this is where it’s super dark so it might be a little bit hard to film but downstairs there’s a whole other section this is all South America so they have a huge display tank in the

Center here with discus and then just a lot of a lot of tanks with all fish from South America mostly these are the like the the smaller fish so like the tetras the dwarf cichlids and then

If you move over to this side there’s another section and here we have all the bigger South American fish so like the angel fish discus fish big plos big cichet stuff like that and a massive

Massive shell display tank here as well this one is actually going to be rescaped soon I think it’s going to be another Black Water okay so that’s it just a quick tour of this store definitely worth a

Visit if you’re in the neighborhood let me go and pay for the fish and I’ll see you guys back home And we’re back home so currently all the lights on the things are actually off that’s because we just had a bit of a heat wer in the mland and all these lights together produce quite a bit

Of heat so in order to reduce it I switched to a very short photo period from like 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m. just for a few hours so as I mentioned I want to do one more water change before we start acclimating these guys because the water parameters are still slightly

Different currently in this aquarium we have a TDS of about 133 and in there it’s like 55 so it’s almost triple the TDS I could probably just start activating them now and just get them adjusted to a slightly higher TDS but because these fish are a little bit sensitive I don’t

Really want to take any risk and I rather just get the water water parameters adjusted to what they’re used to you know so let’s just start doing water chains and then start acclimating them here we go water chain done so we are now at a TDS of 50 no 76 so that’s

Much closer to 55 I’ve actually started to drip acclimate them so I just took a little piece of Airline tubing tied the knot in there and now we just slowly slowly drip pin into the bag

With a fish and I’m going to leave it like that for I know 2 3 hours or so so just they can get really slowly acclimated should be super safe and yeah we’ll come back [Music]

Later St way went to hide in the back yeah that was to be expected of course well let’s give them some time to get adjusted now because we did like three water changes in like last

Than 24 hours we kind of lost the tint to the water so let’s fix that [Music] again [Music] on number eight we have a little shrimp tank I made this one early 2022 really enjoyed it the video got over 100,000 views so I guess you guys enjoyed it as well [Music]

Okay that was just some leftover aquaco that I had lying around I wanted to use probably not enough but it’s a good base layer for our Hardscape I’m not sure yet if I want to use a Cosmetics send

In the forground ground or just keep it soil and go for a carpet but uh yeah we’ll see along the Way All right I think that looks pretty good so just like four pieces all kind of intertwined just to make it look like it’s one big piece and this wood is like some type of spider wood and but it’s a bit darker than usual so if you see over there the on that

Piece like you see those black patches so used to be completely black like that but I think the uh the shrimp and the other sinkist uh kind of ate the bark from it I’ve used these

Pieces before that’s why uh next up is to add some small rocks so I’m going to be using the exact same rocks as I’ve used in this aquarium this is called Geo rock or geost stone it’s very interesting really textured so let’s uh let’s add some small stones [Music] here [Music]

Yeah I think we’re on to something here I think it’s starting to look nice I might still change the position of the Rocks I’m still not 100% sure about that uh we still need to add in more

Soil as well so then we can make the final adjustments I think it’s a good ide a good idea not to go for a sand substrate because these rocks are are very small and to be able to create

A barrier with them might be tricky so let’s just go with a nice Green carpet in the [Music] foreground I just had a quick lunch break while I was eating the doorbell ring and box full of

Plants couldn’t be more on time uh thank you D plans for sponsoring the plans for this setup let’s open this up let’s see what we have to work with a little sneak peek behind the box here this

Week I’m actually setting up two tanks this is the first one the one behind it is the second one so that’s going to be another video so plans for these two setups are sponsored by Den plants

So huge shout out to them thank you very much as always actually one month ago I was in Germany at D plants I set up two tanks there as well made two videos if you didn’t see those videos

I’ll leave them in the description and on top of the screen right now all right let’s see what we got long list all right here we go that’s most of it like I said we’re going to be setting up two tanks this

Week so this is not all for that 20 L Nano uh what we what we are going to be using is some hair grass IO car AIS we’re going to be using some he ancal Kuba some beautiful Crypt barva it’s one

Of my favorites some more Crypt barva and then I also saw a here it is another one of my favorites Crypt luteo Hobbit super small Crypt all right so that was our PL selection now moving back to the

Tank I think The Hardscape is about 90% done so I just covered everything in a nice layer of uh powder soil of using the I’m using the Aquario neop powder soil it just looks better in these

Small tanks you know if you have these really big grains of soil it just looks a bit off uh next up is to glue The Hardscape I’m going to glue all the pieces of wood together so it’s just one

Solid piece and then see if I can glue it to small some of these smaller rocks just to make sure it doesn’t float [Music] all right that’s the gluing done I think do a little test yeah feels pretty

Secure so let’s see so over there I have connected it on two points it’s on the lower end there as well in between there in between there behind there so you see all those white pieces of cotton

Pad so we need to cover that up and for that I have actual soil powder so here we have just regular soil old stuff that I’ve just literally just grinded into a powder so we’re going to apply

That we’re first going to apply a little bit more glue onto those white spots then Dust a little bit of that soil on top of it and then it’s all black and you literally don’t see it [Music] anymore

So I just finished Bally removing most of the rock W from other plants look at this Crypt L Hobbit super cute what I want to show you is the hont kuuba so here I left the rock W on because there’s little a little tip that I learned from Mr Yuri’s is to actually

Leave a small portion of the rock W on um so we actually just cuts it off like this I think so this portion you just cut off and you leave like a small amount on so

We’re just going to cut this in half cut this in smaller portions again so we cut this in half so I think I divided this one port of hon scuba into like 15 small portions and every portion has a little piece of rock wool attached to it and this little piece of rock

Wool we’re going to be using to basically plant it into the aqua soil because this hont scuba has super small Roots it’s really difficult to plant it and to make sure that it doesn’t float up again so this little piece of rock wool just serves as a little anchor basically the first

Time I tried it was like a month ago when I was actually scaping together with the ues I tried it and it actually works really really well so it’s definitely something I would recommend do doing if you’re using these small carpeting plants like h on to scuba all right we’re basically

Ready to start planting super exced it now me personally I like to plant in very bad soil so what I’m going to do is I’ll add about half a liter maybe even a liter of water just to make

Sure that the soil is completely saturated before I start planting I’m not sure if it makes any difference but I feel like aquasol also soaks up water so if you add a plant that has a

Little bit of moisture in it into dry soil the soil is going to soak up all the moisture from the plant and the plant is going to dry out quicker which is even more stressful [Music] plants [Music] right here we go so first plan going in is of course the hantos Kuba actually

Very excited about this because it’s been a very long time since I had a carpet of Kuba so right now I have I think I have two tanks with glos of stickma as a carpet I have two

Tanks with Monte Carlo as a carpet um what else I I have a tank with the Marcela as a carpet but nothing with Kuba for a long time already so yeah I’m excited about this so this is just a

Small tank and I have more than enough plants but if you’re planting a bigger tank it’s always good to kind of think beforehand how how far apart you’re going to plant these small patches you know just to make sure that you have enough just make sure you cover the entire surface

Area yeah in this case we don’t really have to worry about that all right so that was one part worth of the hean scuba I’m definitely going to add more but I first want to move on to

Some CPS just to make sure that we don’t fill up all the space with Kuba and then we don’t have any spots left for the uh for the grip so yeah let’s do that so I have two types of

Crypts we have here Crypt parva this is cryp luta Hobbit so the cryp parva is very small right now I think it will still gr a little bit bigger the L hobit actually the immersed leaves

Are a little bit smaller than than this so I’m not sure which one to use in front which one to use behind it but I think I’m just going to mix them up a little bit we’ll look good Anyway that’s both the Crypt Hobbit and The Crypt part of our planted try to keep everything as close to the rocks and the wood if it’s if a crypt is too much in the open I feel

Like it’s it’s not really natural you know like these plants should be close to rocks close to W in shaded areas preferably so now we’ll fill up the rest of the empty spaces with more him Scuba the next PL going in is this one I colon scarum this one is a bit of a gamble not sure if it’s going to work it’s an advanced plant uh needs highlight high CO2 I think preferably soft water as well which I don’t have so this is going to be tricky it’s

Going to go right behind the the piece of wood over there and yeah I have an idea not sure if it’s going to work this plant grows very spiky so I want to I want to see those

Spikes just behind that piece of wood so I hope it’s going to work keep your fingers Crossed just a little side view on the aial column so just behind the wood I do have some doubts right now because if it doesn’t grow those spikes you see we’re basically not going to see it so I’m thinking to also place a little bit on either side here

Just just behind those rocks just behind the Kuba basically I think they also look Nice okay next I’m planting the Alo carvis the the longer hair grass so I want this to basically fill up the entire background because I didn’t want to go with stems again just the usual you know

Like rotala or whatever I wanted to do something different I think an entire carpet of hair grass in the background I think they can be pretty cool and hopefully it will kind of stay this long as

Well so if we don’t trim it should be fine and since this is going to be a shrimp tank like an entire carpet of hair grass like shrimp shrimp can like literally hide in there so that’s yeah

That’s a good thing as well so I had five pots of this longer hair grass I’m pretty sure I’m going to use all of it so that’s five pots of the elaris AAR planted I think that looks really good

Like like nice and grassy something different I just had an idea for the the other scape that I’m doing this week I’ve ordered this plant yunus repens and I have three pots of this I think one

Pot mixed in with the ELO cars will actually look really nice as well a bit more bit more wild bit more chaotic so that’s just a random idea that I had let’s go with [Music] it so

We have a few more spaces just around the wood and for that I have this plant right here this one is actually not from Dena this one’s from tropica um so I hope then will forgive me but

This one has been on my wish list for a very long time it’s somehow it was always out of stock this is crypto Corin orida Brown and I’m very excited about this plant it will also add some nice color

To this to this layout because we have only green plants so some brown cryp will look really nice I think [Music] right [Music] 0:56:56.240,1193:02:47.295 [Music] w all right little YouTube magic is now 3 weeks later uh just did a water test few

Days ago still had some nitrites but this morning they were gone so tank is fully cycled ready for some shrimp so I’m back at my local fish shop know if you guys can see that HS let’s see if they still have some beautiful [Music]

Shrimp here we go still have a lot of them so here they have the blue ones looking really good that’s the blue velvet then they have the the red ones well we already have red ones um then they have kadina as well but I don’t want kadas they’re

A bit too sensitive for me yellow ones also really nice looking really really good uh some Crystal red some orange ones and over here they have some what is this green jade also looking really good so let’s see which one should we go for oh they have some

More over here these are look cool this is the Sunkist Riley also really nice so I think I’m either going for the blue ones or the yellow ones okay so the shrimp are currently being caught I

Went with the blue ones super exciting in the meantime let’s take a quick look at the store because they have some really nice display thingss over here mean look at the ones over here and some crazy colors look at the rotala atra super super red peanut also turning nice

And pink really beautiful fish this is the uh I think they call Rainbow Shine or something this is cool they have these pillows with the riia Ria fluids this one is nice as well bit more like a uh classic Dutch style and this plant I really like is the uh ammania picala golden

Yeah really nice over here they have another small display tank it’s like a d escapers tank 55 or 70 something like that I think they just uh replanted foreground here with some marala some beautiful um green Ras boras in here I like this plant as well this the P Paka palus or I

Think it’s called mermaid mermade wheed something like that that’s a nice little display tank um here they have the plant section so they have this huge you know display in the middle here and then this these tanks here also fully stock with plants really nice invitro fridge as well and yeah

Guys this shop is absolutely massive uh they have another display tank in front where we just passed by nice o Highline I think this one was also rescaped recently shop has an absolutely massive fish selection as well so over here they

Have like a corner so there are some of the bigger fish then over there in the corner where we just were where the shrimp are and some nano fish and then over there they have like the yeah all the pond fish basically let’s take a quick look over here as well

Some nice discus these are looking nice what are these leopard snakes skin discus really nice o some nice angel fish as well these are looking good angel fish blue Pinoy okay never heard of that some nice cories in the pist

Grma more cories the blue uh Rami the normal German blue Rams I should buy one of some of those as well should set up a tank for [Music] them and we’re back home again so let’s see we got the shrimp in the back here we’re going to start drip

Acclimating them soon let’s take a quick look at the tank because well it’s been 3 weeks since you guys last saw it for you guys it was only a few minutes but yeah the tank is doing really good

I’ve installed a hang on the back filter this one is from a Azu I think I’ll leave a link in the description very good filter very cheap do remind me that I put a little uh sponge

On the intake just to make sure we don’t get any shrimp sucked into the filter I’ve added some CO2 as well this is my dii CO2 system with yeast and sugar and yeah plung growth has been

Quite good uh I did have a little bit of diom LG some regular startup LGA nothing to worry about but uh to kind of help get rid of it I added one Auto sinkless he will go back to his body soon

Again yeah plant’s been growing really well we already have a full carpet of the hon scuba it kind of needs a need a trim already but I’ll I’ll wait another another week with that and the hairr

In the background has filled up nicely could also use a trim maybe oh and I don’t think I showed it but I’ve also added some ricardia M here there’s some ricardian fidant over there and rard over there and all three are kind of looking a little bit rough kind of covered in

Diom LG but they will uh they’ll bounce back for sure I think it’s time we drip start drip acclimating the shrimp there they are so we got 10 of the Neo Carina blue velvet I think these are going to look absolutely amazing in this little scape I was really having doubts between

The blue ones and the yellow ones and even the orange ones as well so I think I think we have to go back for the yellow ones as well I still have some baby cuppies in here but I think we

Can uh we can move them to a bigger tank and then we can make space here for the maybe the orange ones I think orange would look really cool in here what do you guys think let me know in the comments

All right so we’re draining some water from the tank through this hose going down going down going down then I’ve tied a knot here just to kind of reduce the water flow so right now it’s yeah just dripping so this is sort of like

Drip acclimating so we’ll come back in an hour and then we will release the shrimp [Applause] Then on number seven we have another no filter setup and I think this was actually my first no filter aquarium but guys this one really really surprised me it was just a very small

Tank but yeah it was no filter no heater and no CO2 so literally just a tank and a light and the plants in this one just looked absolutely amazing really enjoyed this one okay it’s Sunday today the weather outside is horrible uh Netherlands is still in lockdown so perfect conditions to

Set up a new tank so we’re going to be making a small Aquascape for the baby cuppies I’m saying it’s for the baby cuppies I think they’re just an excuse for me to set up another tank okay

So I’m currently in the process of kind of changing up the Shelf a little bit so on the empty spot I used to have the 10 L Cube uh that one didn’t really have a purpose anymore I mean

The glass was prettyy scratched um it was quite old already there was just a few shrimp inside so I took that one down a few days ago I did still have some really good plans in there

So we might reuse some of those today then the 20 L Cube I’ve also rescaped that one recently uh there going to be another video because I’m going to get rid of that one as well I’m going

To give it away as a birthday present to a family member so I rescaped it into something that’s a little bit more low Tech easy to maintain in a few weeks I’ll get rid of that one and then of

Course we still have the vase so that’s where the baby guppies are in right now of course they are all hiding now oh there’s one and yeah the face is I still really love the face I can’t

Get rid of this one so I think this one will get a different place in the house and then we have three empty spots and today we’re going to fill up the first first spot with a new [Music]

Tank all right here we go this will be the smallest out of the three so this one is well I’m not even sure how big it is I think it’s about 10 lers maybe 15 but this is an Opti white

Rimless from stride ways so I found this brand like a few weeks ago uh when I was shopping in one of my local fish stores and these tanks kind of caught my eye because they were very affordable

I mean normally these Optic White TS tanks are quite pricey but these were like well below the uh prices of other brands so quite nice it already comes with this foam leveling mat underneath which

Is super handy and the glass is cut at a 45° angle I if you can see that so that’s something you don’t really see very often yet um I know in the in United States you have the old tomator systems

That does this as well and recently oasi came out with a aquarium with this 45° angle glass and now stri Bas has has it as well so a pretty cool high quality tank and next up we need a [Music]

Light oh that already looks good on his own like that so this light is a twin star 30 yeah 30b so the b stands for Budget like literally joking this light is I think it’s €30 or something

It’s $35 and look how bright it is and look at those greas greasy fingerprints yeah this is a nice budget light and I think uh I think we got ourselves a nice combination here so like

A small 10 15 L tank I’m not going to use any filter not going to use any CO2 I know most of my tanks here and everything that I show on the channel is pretty much Hightech and I

Know a lot of you guys that are watching also prefer the the low Tech side of the the hobby so this one’s for you um I don’t have a lot of experience with no filter aquariums I mean

The vase was pretty much the first one that I did without a filter um so yeah let’s see how this goes I mean the first previous 10 L Cube that was here was also without a filter but I

Did set the one up initially with a filter and I just removed the filter later on so yeah I think this will be my first real no filter aquarium so let’s see how it goes so full transparency the the tank and the light were sponsored by TwinStar and stride aways I’m collaborating

With them to kind of show off some of their new products so I have a few more tanks and a few more lights as well so in the in the coming weeks you’ll see more of these two brands on the Channel okay so let the substrate in next up is The Hardscape I’ve already pre-selected The Hardscape I got a combination of rock and wood so these rocks are called Millennium stones or oania stones or Spirit Stones all these weird names uh really nice details on

It some really nice lines and textures and then I got this piece of wood this is Endwood this is also from from stride RS and I got a couple of these pieces but all of them were very like straight and pointy and this was the only piece that had

Like a curve in it so this is uh I think this is perfect for that little [Music] tank yeah I think this piece of wood was destined to be in this small tank I think that looks really good right we have a nice little curve in there starting high on the on

The left ending low on the right so I think we can turn this into a nice triangle style layout so we have some tall stems in the back left corner something a bit more low on the

On the right here I actually didn’t buy any plants for this for this layout um I’m just going to pick up some some random bits and pieces from all my tanks I have a few pots left over from the 70 L scapers tank as well so yeah let’s just continue with the [Music] Rocks So it’s not ready yet but this is kind of the main idea that I’m going with um I never really come up with these layouts just on the fly like that I’ve been playing messing around since since

Yesterday but I really like this one so we have a nice curve with the wood then two pieces of stone underneath the the wood and one piece on on the front here and little side view you can

See it’s very narrow I think it’s only 14 cm but we still have enough space in the back to uh to add some plant so yeah I think this is good uh the mood is see it’s touching the glass here so

We need to make sure that that does not happen so we still need to make some adjustments also the piece on on top here I want to make sure I’m able to to move the light back and forth

Without U disturbing the HC basically I think now I’m just going to attach the piece of wood to the rocks with some super glue then we have one solid structure and we can still kind of move it around to make sure that it’s not touching the glass anywhere cuz if it’s

Touching the glass here then it’s going to get very dirty and it’s going to be impossible to clean so we need to make sure that that doesn’t happen so yeah let’s start [Music] gluing [Music] okay I’ve run into some issues with the gluing part so my usual method of uh paper towels and

Liquid super glue always works for me but with this piece of wood it’s not really sticking properly so I’m going to try something else I’ve got some cotton pads this a little different consistency than the uh the paper towels so let’s see if this works [Music] Oh yes so we’re all good the cotton pads were a lifesaver everything is stuck together now the cotton pads stuck a lot better to the wood comparing to the kitchen paper so top tip there um now the wood is finally in the perfect position took a little time to

Adjust everything but right now the wood is not touching the glass so that’s good also here it’s free so I can slide the light back and forth so I think The Hardscape is ready um I’m just going to add a little bit more substrate to the aquarium and then we can start Planting okay so The Hardscape is now ready I think that looks really good really happy with the uh with the end result so now we can start planting as I said I didn’t really buy any plans

For this small project so I’m just going to use whatever I have so I just took down the previous tank that was on that position and over here I still have all the The Leftovers basically so we

Have some some beautiful red root floaters we have a bunch of like small nuas and some small Crips as well and this is some really small [ __ ] parva looks really good so we can use that for sure um

Over here I have two pots of the glosso stigma just set up the 70 L scaper stank I use gloss of stigma as a carpet there and I have still two plus left over so I’m thinking of using this

Although this is not a uh yeah it’s not really an easy plant since we’re not going to be using any filter or any CO2 this might be a little tricky but I’m going to try anyway um I mean we have two

Pots so we should be able to basically get a full a full C caret from the very beginning so yeah let’s just give it a try if it doesn’t work we can replace it with something else let’s see what else

We got so the two twins Scapes are both looking really good maybe a little bit overgrown but we really have some really nice uh weeping moss in here it’s looking super super Lush we can maybe

Take some from there I also have two beautiful clumps of anubias in here look at this how good does that look those two clums of anubias we’re going to use for sure I think for sure I think

Yeah for sure or you think I think we’re going to use those nuas as well let’s see maybe we have something in the big shallow I do really love these these Crypts this is crypto Korean V compact

From Dena it’s a really small it’s not small it’s like medium siiz Crypt but it looks really really good especially in combination with the glosso carpet so I might steal a small patch from here

And and then we also have a load of the um the Tre partita the Tre partita mini this is that fresh green plant over there uh this is I think this is a perfect plant for a no CO2 tank so I’m

Going to steal some of that as well over here we have my redcape I just trimmed this one yesterday um so we can’t really take anything from here but I saved all the trimmings so I might be able to

Get some from there I mean in the back I have some Luda Luda super red so I might take some stems from that this tank is now just over 2 weeks old just uploaded a video yesterday seems like you

Guys are really enjoying it so that’s good yeah let’s take some plants and then we can start planting [Music] nah [Music] I All right fast forward it’s now been 10 days since we set up this little Nano tank and I’m absolutely loving it there’s something so refreshing about a tank without a filter and without suit to injection so I just want to do one more water test just check if if all the

Parameters are okay and then I think it’s time we add our guppy babies actually just two days ago the the Guppies just had another batch of babies so the the face is getting a little bit

Crowded now so yeah this is how the tank looks after 10 days it’s not a huge difference with day one but there definitely has been some some decent plant growth especially with the the red

Stem plant the ludia super red that one seems to be uh enjoying this tank also really like how this Moss is starting to grow so this is weeping moss and now you can kind of see that it’s starting

To grow it sort of starts to bend uh towards the the ground so it starts to weep I guess um we have some melt as well unfortunately but that was kind of to be expected so these small

Crypts here in the corner a few leaves are starting to melt but yeah that was totally expected so I’ve added in a couple of small shrimp you can see one over there so they uh there’ll be the cleanup crew of this tank so yeah doing good like I said just want to do

One more water test just to make sure we have no ammonia and no nitrite then we should be able to add the uh the guppy babies so they’re still all in the phase I think we have about 15 or

20 right now so we just had another batch of babies two days ago so as you can see it’s getting a little bit crowd in here it’s going to be fun catching these it’s definitely going to be difficult

All right so it’s a good thing we tested the water because actually the equirement is not ready yet so I tested for ammonia and nitrite and the green one here this is the ammonia

Test so as you can see I think we’re at about 1 milligram per liter so that is too much and the nitroid test is actually quite high it’s actually more or less 5 Mig per lit

So that is definitely toxic so the E is not ready for fish yet so good we tested uh we just wait a few more days do a few more water changes and then we we’ll try again in a few Days Okay so we had a bunch of Nano setups now it’s time for something bigger on number six we have the first layout in the big shallow this one was definitely not my best work but it was kind of

The first time that I had a bigger tank in this space so that was quite quite a quite a thing quite memorable so yeah enjoy plant growth has been insane in only 13 days so I’ve been using

These for 3 weeks now on this tank and they’re still completely clean I haven’t cleaned them once hello you want to go hey what’s up guys welcome back hope you’re doing well uh it’s

Time to give you guys an update on the big shello it’s now 2 weeks old well 13 days tomorrow will be 2 weeks but tomorrow it’s going to be very hot here in the nland and I’m not going to pick up a

Camera so yeah 13 days old a lot of things are happening so let me show you actually before I get behind the camera I want to give a massive thanks to all of you guys uh who gave me some

Great suggestions for the big shallow I’ve ordered the fish I’m going to pick them up next week so that’s going to be a nice uh nice video as well all right where do I start well let’s of course

Talk about the plants because plant growth has been insane in only 13 days uh first up the the carpet gloss of stigma I’ve actually already trimmed it once because I had some shoes that were growing vertically growing up and of course you want to have a nice carpet so all these shoots

That were growing upwards I’ve trimmed those and now if you look at it from the top you can see that it’s starting to carpet really nice all those side shoots so let’s see hopefully soon

We will have a nice carpet and then what else I had the the crypts remember that the Crypt green W Tha compact I’ve trimmed off all the immersed leaves so everything you see here is completely new growth so that’s that’s insane they say crypto greens are slow growing well not this

One and behind that this is the helanthium Thum red it’s not red yet but it’s also growing like crazy a bit too big so we’re going to have to trim that soon as well and the hair grass in the back

It’s sort of growing and sort of melting because yeah the hair grass is also being grown immersed and so now it needs to transition to submerged so we have a little die off on the um yeah on

The hairgrass but nothing nothing to worry about really um what else a yeah the this one this plant right here hedril tripartita mini also a lot of new growth there just doing really well in the middle we have the uh in the back we have the ug utricularia graminifolia also still doing really

Well this was the most difficult plant that’s in here but it’s yeah still growing I’ve actually also trimmed that one already just to promote a bit more horizontal growth uh what else ah over here we have the Crypt lutea Hobbit this one is looking really good but this one over here

I don’t know if you guys can see that there’s little like black fungus or something on it not sure if that’s LG or what it is so I’ll try to rub that off with my fingers but it’s

I think it’s also good if we start adding some algae eaters because we’re getting a little bit of algae here and there if I stand up see on this side of the rock there’s a lot of green

LG pairing and we have a bit of items as well you can see on this rock there’s some brown LGA right there yeah there’s some brown LGA on the on the on the glass as well got small little bits of

Algae appearing but it’s completely normal in the beginning nothing to worry about so I think it’s good idea to already add a few LG eaters so over here in the plant holding tank I have a few othero

Sinkus and I have a few Amano shrimp as well see one is actually pregnant has a lot of babies but amount of shim cannot reproduce in fresh water unfortunately so I think in this tank I have about three aoas and three Amano shrimp so I think

It’s a good idea if we just catch them and move them over to the big [Music] shallow [Music] yeah I don’t know why I thought I was going to catch these guys so easily in this dense jungle but so far we have two Auto sinkers and we have two Amano shrimp

So I’ll put these in and I’ll catch the other ones at a later date I’m not going to bother temperature acclimating these guys because the temperature in these tanks is exactly the same water is the same so they can go straight in

Here you go guys come on come on hello you want to go yes where did you go all the sinks on the glass I’m on of shrimp right there so hopefully this guys will will get to work really soon and start packing off some of

The LGA there’s some spot LGA here on this big rock I don’t know if you guys can see that yeah you see a little bit here these green spots it’s completely normal a lot of algae on this

Rock some LGA on that rock and if you look at the edge of the glass there you can see some diom starting starting to appear really minimal so I’m sure even these four guys the

Two all sinkers and the two monor shm they will they will get that under control in no time look at this one go there racing yeah good job get to work straight away getting to work starting

To pack away at some of that algae really nice let’s see how long it takes them to get to clean that entire rock over there I’m pretty sure if I wake up tomorrow morning it’s going to be all

Clean it’s so nice to finally see some some animals in here you know of course it’s fun just looking at the plants but now that we have some fish in there it’s really nice so yeah so

Far I’m really happy with how this uh C is turning out I’m sure the the tioms will start to increase over this over this week but tioms is always it’s always part of the the startup phase so that will

Disappear soon enough uh what else can I tell you so far uh the lights they’re on for about 8 hours now they start at 12:30 and then half an hour they ramp up to 75% intensity I was afraid

That might be too much 75% because this is a super strong light but so far it seems okay you know it’s suspended 30 cm above above the aquarium so yeah 75% I think is perfect right

Now uh um so yeah the lights are on from 12:30 at 1:00 there’ll be at full power and then at 8:00 they Ram down and 8:30 they’ll switch off uh CO2 is actually on from 10:00 till I would

Say 7 yeah from 10 till 7 the CO2 is on um in terms of fertilization I’m starting to dose a little bit of liquid fertilizer excuse the mess don’t pay attention to that so this is what I’m

Dosing right now this is potassium and I’m only dosing about 10 drops of this so one drop or 20 lit adds 7 PPM of potassium so I’m adding about 10 drops every day and I’m also adding a little

Bit of this this is just Trace elements so yeah a little bit of iron and some some other vitamins I’m dosing about five drops of this per day now and that’s it really I think I will not start

Dosing nitrate and phosphate for at least another 3 weeks or so but it it depends a little bit on the plants I’ll just keep an eye on the plants and if they start showing signs of deficiencies

I’ll start dosing some nitrates or phosphates so in total the tank is now 3 weeks old uh two weeks with plants and one week before that with just Hardscape uh so in total three weeks and um

Until it’s a month old I will keep doing regular water changes so right now I’m doing a water change every 3 days or so so this week I’ll do a few more water changes and then I’ll just switch

To a weekly water change schedule I’ll do about 50% every week I have to say that I’m really happy with the in and out flow from aario the uh the plastic mini pipes that I that I showed

You guys so I’ve been using these for 3 weeks now on this tank and they’re still completely clean I haven’t cleaned them once and yeah the inflow is great because it’s it’s very short so it’s perfect for the shallow aquarium and The outflow is great because I’ve installed the um

The spin pipe attachment so we’re getting a very gentle flow right now you know because I’m running an AAS biomas on this tank which is a very powerful filter and this aquarium is still

Only 180 l or 45 gallons so still it’s still not a lot of water volume you know so it’s a a very strong filter for this aquarium but now with the attachment here it’s the flow is very

Gentle it is skimming a little bit right now I don’t know if you can see that small Vortex it’s skimming a little bit sometimes at night I’ll attach the actual skimmer and then you get this

Idea it’s a bit exaggerator right now but yeah then also bring a lot of oxygen in in the crime at night which is always good so yeah uh what else ah the diaza biomas it was a little bit

Noisy this is not a final final look of course I’m going to clean this up a little bit but I’ve added some foam pads just to absorb some of the sound I’ve got these Pham pads from a

Good friend of mine and they helped to absorb the sound a little bit because actually when I uh when I was recording videos in in front of the aquarium you could sort of hear the filter in the background yeah it’s a beautiful filter it’s tiny bit noisy though you know what’s really amazing

Like this right here is my it’s my spot on the couch this is where I usually edit the videos so I look at the aquir from this side from the the right side and I absolutely love this long

Long view of the tank see seeing all the way to the end actually seeing another Aquascape seeing another Aquascape there on the other side of the glass yeah I really love this view so if

You guys watch a lot of my videos then you know that I like to keep my hardscapes quite simple but this next one was far from simple on number five we have my most detailed [Music] Aquascape [Music] oh [Music] A [Laughter] [Music] tell [Music] me [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] tell me how [Music] we tell me how [Music] me [Music] me [Music] we don’t me [Music] how we tell [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] okay then on number four we have this thing but then the previous layout in here and I think this is actually the longest setup video I’ve ever made I think originally it was actually two or three separate parts but I stitch them all together for

You okay we’ve managed to get through all three layers of cardboard so it’s definitely well protected now let’s remove all this foil yeah like I’m able to do that with one [Music] hand wow I know it’s just a glass box but this is a very very nice glass box let me actually

Put the light on so we can get a proper look at the glass that’s much better so yeah o Caper line 90 well I think everybody has kind of seen it by now definitely not

The first one to have this tank so it’s 90 CM I think it’s 45x 45 and then the glass has these mited edges super nice okay let’s move on to the uh to the cabinet Okay so that’s the cabinet clean up as well they gave it this wooden plate to basically Place between the um between the cabinet and the glass but I kind of broke mine while when I was lifting

It uh up the stairs so I think I’m going to skip this wooden plate and go for a fomat instead hope that’s okay let’s take a look inside okay so we have the slide out drawer we have the magnets

On the door then what else do we have over here this little handle I guess for your fishnet and your towel stuff like that we have a gap over there not sure if that’s for the filter for the

Hoses I think this is removable we can use that for the hoses but I’ll show you that in a minute then we also have a gap in the back for your all your electrical wies stuff like that and then on

The bottom we have some holes that is I think for the adjustable feet that’s perfect because my floor is very uneven so I’m definitely going to need that well current situation is not very good

Not good like that either so let me grab an alen key let’s actually see they include an Alan Kee here as well so let me grab that one let me adjust the feet and then we can put the tank back [Music] on took a little bit of time but we got it done

Let’s see the level thingy that is good and that looks good [Music] enough and there it is in its full Glory that looks very good okay so let’s see we’re going to have the external canister fil on this side of course the question is what am I

Going to be keeping on the Shelf probably just some fertilizers some fish food just a few supplies nothing special really so yeah let’s just put the Shelf in the middle for now nice is the Shelf in and I’ve also covered the holes for the adjustable feet so they give

You six of those really tiny white covers just to make it look super clean you know a few moments later so I’ve basically just been decorating the inside of the cabinet so here on the right side I have my 2hour accur fertilizer Newan organics food

Line my cam products on the bottom the uh the power plug for the light and also for the CO2 system yeah now it’s complete with the oaza biomas I haven’t been using the biomaster in a while on the big shello I was using a different filter but I feel like for

This set we just have to use the biomaster right so yeah I could hook it up already but I don’t have any um glass Lily pipes actually for this tank I need to buy some

Big glass Lily pipes set then we can hook up the filter so I think for now this is [Music] it okay back home from a pretty successful shopping trip I’ve got two pieces of really nice spiderwood

And then I also bought roughly 8 kilos of a type of lava rock now normal like red or black lav rock is sometimes a little bit boring and pretty straight this stuff however has a lot more like

Detail to it a lot more or yeah just really nice edges you know so yeah I’ve got roughly 8 kilos of this stuff and I already had a little bit of it at home so we should have enough to play around

With now those pieces of wood are quite clean but the rocks are relatively dirty they’re just very dusty so I’m just going to give them a rinse under the tap and then we can get started on our Layout okay so the rocks are all clean the wood is pretty much ready to go as well now one thing with rocks is I would always recommend to try to find like a mix of different sizes so over

Here I got a couple big ones then on this side we have mostly smaller ones because it’s just very difficult to make a nice hard skip Lou if you only have rocks that are all the same size

You know so always try to go for a mixed size I think the next step is to go for a bit of a dry test run so I’m going to get some hardcap in the tank just play around a little bit and then see

If we can come up something nice okay so of course I already had a play around in the store so I kind of already know what I want to make but maybe you don’t let’s say this is your first time or I know

You don’t you don’t really have any inspiration how do you get started I think the best way to get started in this case is just by placing some things some materials inside the tank so just

Find your nicest piece of wood or your nicest Rock place it in the tank and just start playing around and just yeah see how it looks maybe change the angle maybe like this and just keep doing

That until you find something that looks good that looks pleasing to the eye and then you start and or you move on from there now another thing that always really helps me is to make a decision on

The kind of the the shape of the layout so either a triangular style shape convex shape or a concave shape let me just quickly demonstrate that so if this piece of wood would be our only piece

Of Hardscape we could actually make a pretty nice uh convex layout or also refer to as an island style layout so we place this uh Hardscape directly in the center keep the left side and the

Right side Side open as much as possible and just focus on the plant plung growth in the middle as well so we could really like yeah almost create like an island style layout that would be pretty

Cool um then triangular style if you just move it to the left side we could do a triangular style like this and have the plants starting high on the left and moving down lower to the right we

Could do a triangular sty out in the opposite direction as well so have plants high on this side and much lower on that side if you want to go for a concave style layout you would have High

Escape on the right side as well as on the left side and keep the center area mostly open now I really love to do triangular style layouts I actually currently have a few so there’s one

On this side yeah so it’s mostly triangular like this the stamp LS on the right side you still need to grow a little bit taller I have one here in the opposite direction so it’s very tall on the

Left side and much lower on the right side and here we have another triangular style so stamp L still need to grow a little bit taller on the left side but once they do we have a nice shape

Like this and I’m going to go for a triangular Style this tank as well basically with the way the wood sits right now I’ll adjust a little bit but we’ll have t St plants on this on this side

And then lower plants on that side so it’s going to be a triangular style like this the reason I chose that because over here we have our couch so this is where we sit at night maybe we’ll watch a

Movie maybe we’ll have some dinner and I can still view the tank from the uh from the side as well so it’s viewable from the front but also from the side if you would flip that around and I would

Have a triangular style like this like it would wouldn’t be as nice because then on this side would be a lot of Hardscape a lot of tall stem plants and it wouldn’t really look it be as as

Pleasurable to view from this side you know so something you can think about as well whenever you’re making a new Hardscape think about the placement of the tank see from which side you view it the most maybe just from the front but maybe from the side as well and think about that

With the uh with how you make your layout so for this particular layout I’m going to add in the subsite first of course I’m using aqua soil and then I’m going to add The Hardscape on top of that

Doesn’t always have to be like that sometimes I can also add in The Hardscape first and do the subsrate after that it just kind of depends on what you’re making and it also depends on if you’re using just aquasoil or just plant substrate or using plant substrate and sand if you’re using

Sand in the foreground for example it’s a lot easier to First add in The Hardscape create a proper barrier and then add the substate in the back and the sand in the foreground you know but for this particular head I’m going with just acoso just plant substrate and no [Music] sand [Music]

Now when it comes to smoothing out the uh the soil I always see people using these sorts like called sand flatteners I’m actually not really a big fan of those I might rather use a uh a large

Paintbrush just a little bit smoother even if you if you hit this against the glass you know there’s nothing wrong if you hit this against the glass I don’t know I just don’t really like the

Sound of that so I’d much rather use a paint brush yeah I can see this not really enough I want to go for like roughly 5 cm in front and almost double like 10 12 CM in the back

So I’m going to add a little bit more Aqua soil so I found some leftover D escaper soil I found some leftover Amazonia version 2 and I found some leftover Tropa soil the Tropa is actually the powder variant so it’s a much smaller grain so I’m going to save that till last

Finish the hardcare first and then add a nice thin layer of the powder soil on top [Music] [Music] okay there most of the substate in I’ve kind of brushed it away from the front glass later

On we’re going to fill that in with the powder our so so we don’t mix the two different grain sizes it’s not really big deal but if you can try to avoid it then would be nice and of course a nice

Slope towards the back just to help increase that sense of depth yeah I think we can now uh start adding in our Hardscape good thing about the substate as well is that it kind of acts as a

Cushion so once you place in The Hardscape it just stands up a lot easier you know can kind of just push it in and it will just stand on its own we don’t need to support with rocks anymore so

Yeah see that’s looking good this one is not super straight anymore this one has a nice flow towards that area I like that so at this point a lot of it is just like uh experimenting and trial and error

You just have to start adding things start moving things tilt it this way that way until you’re happy with it you know like same thing with the Rocks I like to just look at the Rocks see which

Side has the most detail which side looks the best and then make sure that that side is facing forward but I’ll probably move it like a 100 times until I’m happy with it especially with this thing

You know like this is my biggest setup and I want to make sure that this one looks really really good so I’m going to take my time with it and this is also the time where you have to like get get in

The zone get in the focus mode and I’m also going to put the camera I’m not going to put the camera away but I’m going to put the microphone away and just get in the zone and just enjoy the [Music] process You All right it’s now the next day yesterday I left it like this I was really happy with it and this morning I woke up still happy with it so that’s good sometimes it’s good to take a few days and

Every day you can come back and make some adjustments yeah overall just good to take your time with uh with hardscaping so the next step is to secure The Hardscape because I’m lazy and impatient I didn’t pre-o the wood so still very dry and it’s going to float up so of course

I could just add a rock on top of the wood that should keep it down but I don’t really like how that looks I’d much rather just glue it to the rocks that we have right now U because we use

Lav rocks sometimes a little bit tricky I mean normal lav rocks are quite porous and they still want still very light so if you would glue a piece of wood to a very light lava rock it’s just yeah

Both of them are just going to float up these lava rocks however are quite dense and they’re still quite heavy so should be no problem um I’m going to use my favorite technique uh cotton pads and liquid super glue I showed this many times already on my channel but it’s just very easy

I’m just going to take a little bit of this cotton pad where it in between the points that I want to connect then add a few drops of liquid super glue just to saturate that cotton pad it’s

Going to stick everything together super easy so if we look at this biggest piece of wood um it’s touching a rock here so we can connect it there uh we can connect it somewhere over here

Um in front here maybe as well and then another one in the back over there so then we have four points where the wood is connected to the Rocks should be enough to keep it [Music] Down okay everything is stuck together but right now I do have quite a lot of that cotton pad visible kind of want to cover that up so I’ve poured a little bit of aquasol in this cup I’m kind of just going to crush it into a very

Fine powder then we’ll use that alosol powder to cover up the cotton [Music] pads okay so everything is secure we can do a little test nothing is really moving anymore this one’s still a little bit flexible but it’s not going to float up

So that’s fine so the only thing you have to do now is to finish the substrate I have the tropical powder aquasol just going to pour in front here and then we should be [Music] done [Music] so I think that’s The Hardscape done guys I’m really happy with it of course by no

Means this is a very complicated Hardscape it’s actually very simple we just have two pieces of wood and a couple rocks but yeah it’s kind of my style I like to keep things simple if you’ve been watching the channel for a while you might have noticed that already

Very simple hardscapes and then I like to make it look pretty with a lot of plants in there so can’t wait to see this planet as well I just remember that I still wanted to

Add a background to the aquarium so I’m going to add a layer of this glass foil to the back glass of the aquarium um in the future I might upgrade to one of those fancy light screens um

I currently have one on my 7 Cape s but I know I don’t really use it that often and it’s quite pricey so not sure yet for now we’re going to go with the uh the glass [Music] foil [Music] okay tank is filled up or almost filled up I just finished F fitting the Lily pipes and the hoses now it’s time to Prime the filter the filter is going to take up another about 10 15

L of water I guess so then we can fill all the way to the top and yeah call it a day I [Music] guess okay we’ve got a lot of plans to work with guys so my inspiration for this layout basically came

From a tank from the ada8 gallery in Japan I saw a video about it on YouTube and I have a picture overlay a picture right now so I tried to order as many yeah sort of similar plants yes we’ve

Got loads of dwarf haass for the foreground a couple pots of moss for the wood uh different types of crypts over here some really nice anubias uh normal ha grass and then loads of

Stems got the lrig super red H gra poly Sperma and then loads of Ro Tas as well so yeah this is going to be quite a challenge to prepare everything so let me just get started right [Music] away okay so I think that was like roughly 1 hour of plant preparing condensed

Into like five or 6 seconds so definitely took some time but we got there in the end I still have a few pots left we can always prepare more if we need it but I think for

Now we’ve uh got quite a lot already so this looks really good just loads of really healthy plants I think the next step is to drain the tank and get started yeah let’s start draining the water it’s actually quite clear yesterday it was uh quite cloudy so

I did a small water change but today the water is crystal clear so that’s [Music] good Okay water is drained so we can begin planting I’m going to start with the dwarf hair grass of course in the foreground but I also want to make a curve along to towards the back so we’re going to have

Like a little curve over here maybe a little bit in this section as well but we’ll have to see obviously this is going to take a long time I have a lot of plants and a lot of ground to cover

So I’m going to put on some music do a a time lapse on the camera and just enjoy the process Okay we got a good amount of hair glass in already I’m probably going to add more later but for now I want to move on to some GPS so the Crips are going to go between the rocks and the wood and

I’m probably going to have some empty spaces after that then I can fill it in with more ha glass okay the first grip going in is the Wendy TI compact I also used this one in the first

Layout of the big shallow and I really loved it there looks really good dark brown leaves I have three pots of this one and I’m thinking to just keep them I mean I could split split the pot up

Into smaller portions but I’m actually just going to keep these as it is the second cryp going in is the Crypt beti beety I don’t know actually haven’t used this one in a long time

So I don’t think I’ve ever used it in a Hightech setup so I’m curious to see how this one is going to develop again have three pots so one two and then the final one is going to go underneath

Here I think that’s a good spot for it slightly shaded but should be okay the third cryp was an in vitro pot so it’s still very small and it’s only going to grow to about 10 cm so it should

Stay slightly smaller than these two so I’m going to put it a little bit more in foreground so over here for example we can put a portion underneath this piece of wood here this this next plant is a

New favorite um I like it a lot it’s Lagan nandra me Bal ey red I have two pots for this I’m only going to plant it in one position so it’s going to be like a nice focal point I think a layout

Like this really need some anubia I got some really nice anubus Nana Bonsai got five pots of this and I’m going to try to wedge it in between the cracks of the wood and the [Music] rocks

Okay so I’ve used a lot of dwarf hair grass in the foreground and to the side but I’ve also ordered a few pots of the longer the normal hair grass and I’m going to use this basically over here and also on the left side over there just behind or just next

To the dwarf haass this is hopefully going to accentuate that triangular [Music] composition I think starting to look really good so we can now fill in the rest of the areas with more dwarf arras we still have an empty patch over there some more empty patches you know along the front here and then we can move on to the background I [Music] guess

Okay moving on to the background I was planning to have or four different stem plants in the background but I think something went wrong with the order because I’m missing one stem plant it’s not big deal though we can just uh add it later yeah the plan was to start in the

Corner with the hyr poly Sperma then move on to a red one and move on to a slightly orange stem plant and then finish with a green one again so we have green red orange green and

Then the Green carpet so still the plan but um yeah I just have to wait for the other stem plant so yeah first one going in I gr polish Perma uh this is yeah I think probably one of

The most popular aquarium plants very very fast growing as well so it’s going to be interesting to see if I can manage to keep it maintain it properly keep it trimmed or if it’s just going to take over too fast but we’ll see hopefully with a nice lean dozing routine it will not

Be too fast moving on to the ludia postris supered probably one of my favorite red stamp [Music] plants okay then the third stem plant is theala rolia Laos really like this one quite an easy plant as well it’s going to be like a nice orange orange

Color to the leaves okay the background planted as well I’m wondering if up until this point some of you have wondered where are the jav fs like surely he must be using Java friends in this layout right you’re absolutely right but I got the Java friends right here these are my Java

Friends let me just explain I had a lot of jern in my 70 L Capers tank and I’m planning to take the tank down uh replace it with something else but of course I didn’t want to throw away the

Jam FS I wanted to use them in here but I made a mistake in the thing by mixing two different types of jam ferns I thought it would look natural but actually I didn’t really like it so I used

Trident and the mini so I wanted to separate them but of course very difficult everything is grown together and Inter joined so I separated the Trident and basically cut out cut off all the

Leaves and just a bunch the few ROMs together I’m going to use it in this tank of course you’re not going to see it in the first week to two weeks but surely after a month we’re going to start

Seeing new growth and it’s going to look very good in in a little bit of time okay so I’ve got three of these Trident java fern rone bunches hopefully it stays that way maybe we’ll add a

Drop of super glue I’m thinking one in the center here maybe let’s do another one on this side as well and just like this layout can be without javs I think it also can be without Moss so I

Was thinking a lot about how to apply this if I’m going to tie it or if I’m going to glue it but tying is very difficult especially because the heartscape is already in place so I’m just going

To glue a little bit of more to some branches and then call it a [Music] day [Music] and it is now the next day things are looking good we had a few stamp plant bunches that floated to

The surface but we can fix it in a minute uh last night I also swwa the light around so we now have the cable on the left side so it’s yeah kind of a little bit more neat over here and on

This side we have just an completely clear view you know so really enjoying that now there’s a few things that we still need to do today to make sure that this thing gets the best possible start you know with the best possible PL growth and the least amount of problems I’ve already put

The light on a timer so I’m going for eight hours and I think it’s roughly 50% intensity um we still need to add the CO2 of course this is a high-tech setup so we need to get the CO2

Going uh we need to do water changes because we’ve used aquasol as substrate we need to do quite a lot of water changes so we’re going to be doing like 50% every day for the first week

And every other day for the second week and so on and so on uh besides that yeah I need to add some beneficial bacteria to the setup and oh there’s one more thing that I want to do that

I’ve actually never done before but you guys are going to see that in a minute okay so I’m currently draining the tank now to make sure that everybody understands why we need to do these water changes I just did a water test for ammonia and as you can see it’s light green this

Is supposed to be yellow right now we have an ammonia level of 1 milligram per liter which is quite a lot considering that I only filled this tank up yesterday late at night and it’s now like

Quite early in the morning so just imagine if you don’t do water changes for a couple of days you know so yeah water changes once per day for the first week every other day for the second

Week every second day for the third week and so on and so on uh next up let’s replant those floating bunches okay plants are replanted now while the thing is still draining we can also start working on the CO2 system on the big shello I was using a inline

CO2 reactor but I think in this tank I’m just going to go for a simple CO2 [Music] diffuser [Music] here we go see2 is working bubble counter installed I love those shiny things you know look just looks really cool so the tubing goes in the cabinet from the back

Side and then over here we have the CO2 bottle with a CO2 regulator just behind the filter okay so that’s done I’m also filling the tank back up again and that was a little bit more than a 50%

Body change but doesn’t matter just if you just do big water changes then you’re fine I’m also just using tap water by the way I’m not using RO water actually most of my tanks have t water

Just a few of them have Ro but if I would have to use Ro in this tank that would be an insane amount so no just tap order and this whole return pump situation uh this thing right here is just

An old filter Inlet from a JBL filter attached that I have a long garden hose this hose goes to the kitchen and in the kitchen I have a a pump in my sink that’s just pumping the water

Right in straight from the to um I don’t have to decorate the water I’m just trying to sort of match the temperatures to what the temperatures in the tank I’m using a heater already the heater

Heater is set to 20 23° C so yeah I think that’s it let’s move on to the next step so now that we’ve installed the CO2 system it’s also very important to add a CO2 drop Checker just so we

Know if we’re we’re injecting the correct amount of CO2 so I’m going to add this on the opposite side of the CO2 diffuser so I’m just going to add it here here next to the CO2 or next to the

Filter outflow just like so and hopefully within a few hours this will turn nice and green okay water change is done we’ve added the plants we’ve added the CO2 I mentioned earlier that I want to

Add something that I’ve never done before that’s actually to add an air pump I want to run an air pump on this tank at night and basically I want to increase the oxygen levels at night so what

Happens during the day is we inject a lot of CO2 and that helps to helps the plants to grow and the plants will produce oxygen but at night the plants actually take in oxygen so at night the

Oxygen levels kind of drop a little bit and that’s not really good for the beneficial bacteria in this thing because they need a lot of oxygen as well and of course the fish later on we’re going

To add fish you want to make sure they get a lot of oxygen so yeah I want to run an airom at night and the idea for this basically came from the ada8 gallery in Japan because over there what

Happens at night once once the lights once the lights turn off they actually raise the Lily pipe outflow so then they get more surface agitation and then they bring in more oxygen in the cam

But I don’t want to be like moving the Lily pipe up and down every single day so I’m going to try an air pump okay so we got an air pump this one is supposed to be super silent and I just tested

And it really is uh we got some tubing we got an AirStone and we’ve got a check valve now I’m not going to be using this AirStone I’m actually going to use something else I got myself an air

Diffuser also from aaro very similar to the CO2 diffuser and this one is supposed to make the air bubbles very fine as well because with the normal AirStone once the bubbles rise up to the surface

They kind of Splash a lot of water that’s what I want to avoid so hopefully with this air diffuser we’re not going to have that issue not sponsored or anything I just bought this with my own money

So yeah let’s just test it out so the air diffuser actually has a green ceramic disc very interesting I’m going to place it in the back left corner because I don’t really want to see it too much

But I’m thinking we just do a little test run first where we can see it properly so let’s just add it here connect it to the pump and then see how it works here we go definitely is very small

Bubbles quite impressed with that over here have the Pump and Well I can’t hear it I only hear the filter humming so yeah I’ll leave a link for this in the video description as well if you want to

Pick one up yes I’m going to place it here in the back left corner and then I’m going to put the pump on a timer I’m thinking to just have it come on as soon as the light turns off and

Then stop as soon as the You2 turns on basically so yeah quite quite long but it doesn’t really consume a lot of electricity so that’s fine if you are going to be doing the same thing make

Sure that you do add that check valve because if once it turns off water can start flowing back into this system and it can actually drain your tank quite a bit so you want to make sure

You avoid that so I think we’re basically almost done and now we just need to wait for this tank to get cycled so we can add in the fish super excited about that to make sure that we can add

In the fish rather quickly I’m going to add some beneficial bacteria so here I have see stability these are just beneficial bacteria in a bottle and we can just add a little bit to the water column we don’t need much and hopefully then they will start colonizing in the softwate

And in the filter and yeah just help speed up the cycling process of course we need to make sure the plants start growing as well and for that I’m going to add some fertilizer now we already have quite a lot of nutrients in the substrate so we don’t really need a lot

Of fertilizer so I’m going to start dosing the ap0 and this is basically just micronutrients and potassium because the subsrate will mostly release some nitrate and some phosphate but not really like potassium and micronutrients and iron stuff like that so I’m going to

Start dosing this the recommended dosage is 3 MERS per 100 lit daily this tank is 180 L but I mean it’s still yeah I mean the T the the plants still need to establish and start

Growing so we don’t need a full dose yet I’m I’m thinking so I’ll probably just start with half a those A [Music] 2:22:20.520,1193:02:47.295 [Music] so it’s now been more or less 1 month since the started this aquarium starting to look pretty good uh plants still need to grow in a little bit more but kind of past the ugly face now I’ve also added

In some more fish and I’m really really excited about these new additions so I’ve added in six of these little guys they’re called the African Butterfly cichet and I think these fish are like the perfect dwarf cichet for plant tank because they don’t really dig into the substrate they’re

Very tolerant of different water parameters they’re not super aggressive either they don’t grow too big and they should be very easy to breed as well so super excited about them they’re not really they already have quite some color but they should definitely color up a lot more they’ve only

Been in here for like 3 days now so yeah really very excited about these fish now after about 3 weeks something interesting happened with thisam as well I basically got a huge yeah explosion or infestation with these really tiny bugs you kind of see them on the Rock there and these are called

Seed shrimp and I’ve had a few of them here and there some other things as well like I’ve seen them before but the amount that I currently have in thisam is pretty insane I was kind of hoping

That the African Butterfly C cichet would eat them but it seems like they haven’t really yeah done that at all so these she shrimp apparently they feed off waste Organics and the tritis so kind

Of makes sense like around 3 weeks I had a huge yeah thick slime layer on the wood so of course those sheet shrimp were like feasting on that and just multiplying like crazy so I’m hoping that now

That the Slime is gone and I’m just not feeding too much so not really much food left for them I’m hoping that their numbers will slowly start to decline because well they’re not really annoying

Or anything but it’s just kind of kind of weird to see all these tiny bucks crawling around into the [Music] substrate and there we have it the new Skylight hyperspot FM really happy with that like that it’s the smaller

Unit so we don’t have this light spill on the edges just looks better you know this a little bit thicker though but um I don’t mind that and I’m really happy they they still kept the

Uh the mirror it’s bit hard to see can see it over here just a cool little detail you [Music] know okay back to the present time the last slip that you saw was from end of April when

The T was just 1 month old so let’s see how it looks now roughly 3 months [Music] later [Music] so I’m really happy with how this tank is looking right now I don’t think it’s as Peak yet I think

There’s still things that we can improve but in general I think it looks really good now it definitely hasn’t been a smooth journey I think in around 2 months this thing was actually starting to get a lot of black brush algae I think there was a multiple yeah multiple causes for that first

Of all we had a very early summer So at around May beginning of June we had like a really warm temperature so was very hot in the house and warm water always leads to more allergy issues another

Thing was the the sickness they were actually breeding a lot so because of that was kind of feeding them more to kind of compensate for the loss of energy so I was actually adding a lot of frozen food into this tank which probably caused a bit of a nutrient imbalance I guess

Another thing was the light I think it was kind of underestimating how powerful this light is so was just running it yeah too strong too and two high percentage and I should have dimmed it down

A bit more and also the CO2 so you saw in this video that I used a CO2 diffuser on this side of the tank and I think that wasn’t the CO2 distribution just wasn’t optimal and because there some plants in the in the background was not really growing properly so after I switched

To an inline diffuser yeah things just really uh cleared up basically so in terms of the the setup and the equipment things haven’t really changed that much um I have removed that air pump I mean

The idea was was nice but it just wasn’t really working properly I was still getting quite a bit of a an oil film on top of the the water surface so instead I’ve just uh switch to a uh intake with

A scheming portion and now the surface is always nice and clean the oxygen exchange is good and yeah I think that was just uh the idea with the air pump was nice but I think the schemmer just

Works better yeah like I said I’ve now switched to an inline CO2 diffuser this one is from CO2 art so it goes directly from the regulator to the uh to the outlow now that’s been working very

Well really happy with the OA biomaster as well I cleaned the pre- filter maybe once a month or so yeah I think I’ve done it like three or four times now so it’s very easy to maintain I don’t

Actually use the heater at the moment just because we’re in summer and it’s still about 23° C in the house then this side of the cabinet has turned into a bit of a mess I really need to sort this

Out I am planning to add a dosing pump I got this one from EOTech Marine got it from B Reef Supply and plan to add this one because we’re going on holidays soon and I just want to keep adding

Liquid fertilizer even when we’re gone for almost two weeks I am still dozing the ap0 so this is a very lean fertilizer and sometimes I’m also adding a little bit of this the Dena Liquid Plus is like a complete liquid fertilizer also has nitrate and phosphate then I’ve also made a few changes

Inside the tank I mean of course The Hardscape is still exactly the same I’ve just added a few plants the most obvious one is of course the vi neara the reddish brownish bronze leaves I think

That looks really good really happy with that I’ve also added a little bit more Trident java fern you can see a new Bunch over here in the corner yeah the Trident F on this side is just not doing very

Well you can see this one over here has like some brown spots on it it’s just not growing it’s actually melting so not sure what’s going on over there and then one more plant is the uh this

Water lily over here this one is called hedro clay nidus I think it’s like a South American water lily and this one is about to uh about to flower so that’s really cool fish have actually all stayed the same the only thing I’ve done is I’ve removed the female honey Grammy So currently

We only have the male in here I just don’t see him at the moment yeah I’ve removed the female because um I think they were kind of fighting the female was a little bit roughed up so I’ve just removed

Her moved her to a different tank and then I’ve added um four Siamese LG eaters just to kind of help with the BBA a little bit and of course the stars of the show the African Butterfly cets these

Guys are doing really good still have all sex of them and they’ve laid X they have had babies a couple of times it’s always like the same pair I think it’s this male and then the female that’s

Behind there yeah it’s always the same pair and then they have babies and they last for a couple of weeks but then eventually they uh they just get eaten you know but yeah this is just a really cool

Dwarf cichet and yeah I’ve had them for three months now I don’t think they’ve really grown much actually so yeah they kind of stay this this size I guess they just really cool D CET very easy

To keep eats everything is not fussy about water parameters so yeah highly recommend to uh to give these guys to try if you can get them in your area yeah so as I mentioned I don’t think this

Tank is at its peak yet I think there’s still a few things that we can improve mainly plant density so for example the Trident ferns i’ love to have them a little bit more dense also the the

Stem plants and the hyro in the back left corner they could get a little bit more dense but besides that I’m I’m really happy with that we do also still have a little bit of algae in here so it’s

A bit hard to see but um along the the front glass here in the hlass carpet there’s some blue green algae and that’s the only location where it is it doesn’t appear anywhere else inside the tank but

It just keeps coming back here so I’m thinking of taking a syringe with a needle and actually filling it with some liquid carbon and basically just injecting that all along the foreground I haven’t done that yet because it’s probably going to give us some die off on the uh on the hair

Glass carpet which of course I didn’t want to have before I make this video so I’ll probably do that right after and then there’s still a little bit of black bu LGA here and there as

Well and of course we can’t have a completely alga free requ but it could be a little bit [Music] less okay guys time for the top three on number three we have the mini desk aquarium this is probably

My most viewed build video on my channel not sure why but I guess you guys really liked it a lot it has over a half a million views which is insane yeah here it is again enjoy

So my idea for this layout is to basically copy or replicate one of my older layouts I used to have a 20 L cube with a lot of fist in most some of my long-term subscribers might still

Remember the layout and I really enjoyed it I kept it for a long time as well make quite a lot of videos about it and I kind of want to bring it back so The Hardscape from that

Tank U consisted of like two pieces of wood some lava rocks it was actually quite simple but all the hardcap was covered in F moss and I’ve kept the two pieces of wood I actually

Made a different layer with them as well and I still have them and I want to see if they fit in this uh in this little Cube please excuse the do the aquir I’m going to take this tank down

Very soon but in here we have the two piece of wood and some of the plants that I want to use for this layout but as you can see the two piece of wood still have a lot of theant attached to

It it doesn’t really look like much right now but that’s because these two pieces have been in storage for a while they haven’t really seen much light and but I think once we give it some proper lights and proper fertilizer we should be able to get them nice and vibrant green Again okay let’s give this a try this one is slightly bigger so let’s put this one in the left corner and this one in the right corner that actually looks pretty good already I really like

That one on the left kind of fits perfectly there this one is a bit too small however so I think we need to raise it a little bit maybe with some rocks I basically want to create a nice V between

The two pieces you know just like we have right now so let me grab a couple of rocks here we go got some nice black lava rocks I’m a big fan of black lava rocks and especially because it’s

Going to be a no filter G this will provide a good house for beneficial bacteria as well so let’s see if we can make a nice composition let’s put in this lava rock this one is going to prop up that

Smaller piece of wood so just like just like so and then that second piece of wood has got like a little curve here and this rock kind of fits perfectly in that you know so we’re going to put

That in it’s a little tricky working in this tight space but it’s a fun little challenge as well and then we just fill it in with more lava rocks this piece right here has some nice texture so we can

Put it next to that one here we go so it’s always a bit tricky to show the entire process on camera because you’re constantly making these small adjustments but I think this is good I like it

We have that V we have a nice little barrier in front with the lava rocks not sure if I’m going to go cosmetic sand or like a carpet in front yeah I’m liking where is it going I think next

Step will be to glue everything together because it’s all a little bit wobbly so I’m just going to glue the piece of wood to the lava rocks glue all the lav Rocks together as well so it’s just

One solid structure and of course as always I’m going to use my cotton pad method so I just have a little cotton pad I take tiny pieces off it squish it together and then with the tweezers

I’m going to wet it in between the points I want to connect then I take the liquid super glue so this Yano accolate super glue I’ll saturate the cotton path completely completely and then if necessary I will also sprinkle on a little bit of the baking soda so super glue cotton pad baking

Soda and then this going to be one solid [Music] structure okay that’s all the hardc glue together so of course we now have some of these ugly white spots um but I can easily cover that up later with

More Moss or different plants if it really bothers you you can always take a little bit of aquasol crust it into powder and use that to cover up these white spots I’m not bothered by it so

I think we should move on to the substrate next first up we have wio Wetland eonian black sounds very fancy but it’s basically just crushed black lava rock and I’m going to add this in the back

Of the aquarium behind a piece of wood just just a small layer yeah again it’s lav rock so it’s very porous good home for beneficial bacteria and there should be a little bit Nutri in here as well

But I’m going to cover this with aqua soil and they the aquasoil will provide a majority of the [Music] nutrients Okay so we’ve got a nice layer of crushed black lava rock on the bottom now we can cover that with some soil I’ve got some leftover tropical powder so so I’ll use [Music]

That here we go that’s our subrate layer done it’s looking good I’m definitely going to use some Cosmetics end in the foreground here but I’ll probably save that until the very last until we’re done with planting as well because you can see right now we

Already have some uh oh hello there so right now we already have a littleit little bit of so lying here and after planting that’s only going to get it worse are you going to help me prepare these plants as always I’ve got a really nice selection of plants from Dena so

We’ve got the elaris I’ve got my favorite grip the legoy this one is really small but really beautiful got two pots of theala atra I’ve got a tissue culture pot of Monte Carlo as well as

A pot of BU Ser Brown so I think that’s it should be a nice uh ni nice mix of [Music] plants okay plants all prepared unfortunately the mon Carlo is not in a very good condition I opened the pot and I immediately smelled it it’s my own fault I I received that pot

Like well over 3 weeks ago already so should have known that it might not be in the best condition I think I’m going to replace it with some Moss actually see in this little Nano tank

Over here in the front corner I have some moss and it looks a little bit like Mont Cara right it’s it’s also creeping it’s also growing a carpet so I think I’m going to use that [Music]

Instead yeah so we can use a little bit of this and kind of wedge it in between here in these cracks that will also kind of stop the soil from Rolling forward so that’s perfect we can also use it to cover up these white patches okay that’s the M done so

Let’s move on to the next Plant this is the Crypt legoy so there going to be a nice transition from the Moss and then behind the Crypt I’m going to put some of the dwarf Hairgrass starting to look really good we have the mossin we have the bu l in and the Crypt as well next I want to move on to the uh the hair grass and I’m going to use this in each Corner basically so on the left side and on the right side as [Music]

[Music] well and then of course in the background the rotala atra so this one is already quite long so I’m just going to snip off a few of those really long stems you can actually replant those as well but otherwise it’s just going to look a little bit silly so that’s good so

Now it’s a bit shorter so we can actually split them up into nice portions and plant Them [Music] okay I think we’re done with the planting it’s looking good of course we still have a little bit of soil visible but that’s totally fine once all the plants start growing especially once the fys in starts taking off they will be uh they’ll be invisible later

Next up is to fill up with water and then I’m going to siphon out all these um soil particles here and then we can fill in the decorative sand and then we’re really [Music] finished [Music]

So it’s now been exactly 1 month since I scaped this little Cube and I’m really pleased with the end result I’ve added five of these beautiful Neo karadin shrimp and they’ve been in here for about

A week now I’ve also added a few Rams on snails before before we wrap this video I just want to share a few tips on how to set up a successful no filter aquarium because two weeks ago I posted a

Build video of my XXL no filter phase and I got quite a lot of questions from you guys I think the most asked question was how do I cycle an aquarium without a filter and to be honest with you this

Is just the same as all my other tanks I wait around 3 weeks do regular water changes in between and that’s it lately I’ve also been adding some seeum stability but this isn’t necessary at all another question was if I use heaters well I currently only have three tanks with a heater

My Beta tank the big shallow and the 70 L scapers tank so all the small tanks I just keep at room temperature which is roughly 21° C during the [Music] day then there were a few people saying

That they tried a no filter gam as well but it had issues where the water started to smell after a few days or weeks so to keep the water clean and clear I think there’s three things that are

Important the first one is regular water changes especially in the first few weeks the second one is a good substate layer because we need loads of beneficial bacteria and they love living in the substrate but only if there’s plenty of oxygen so you want a poor a substrate the last one is

Lots and lots of plants the plants are the only filter that you have so you want lots of them and want them to be healthy the last question was where is the oxygen coming from again the answer

Is the plants during the day when the light is on the plants will produce oxygen but at night the plants will actually take in oxygen as well so the levels are constantly fluctuating but I think that as long as you don’t Overstock a no filter aquarium you will never have issues with low

Oxygen levels so that’s it guys hope you enjoyed this one thanks for watching and I’ll see you next [Music] time [Music] on number two we have a video that didn’t really get a lot of views but I think that’s mainly because I uploaded a long time ago I

Think when I published it I probably didn’t even have 10,000 subscribers yet but this one is one of my alltime favorites honestly and I think at some point I would like to do it Again Yeah N He A [Music] 2:49:18.720,1193:02:47.295 [Music] he [Music] yeah [Music] o [Music] 2:50:48.640,1193:02:47.295 [Music] n [Music] oh A [Music] [Music] he [Music] he Right here we go on number one we have the Amazon inspired big shallow this is my alltime favorite and with 300,000 views I guess it’s one of your you guys’ favorites as well so I don’t usually miss a crems after I dismantle them but the Amazon

Inspired big shello I definitely miss a little bit if that if I would ever have a chance to have a big shello again I would definitely recreate that [Music] layout yes so the thing is that this piece of the wood right here this side is in my opinion the

Most beautiful it has the most character it has the most uh branches sort of on this side we just have a very long straight stump so of course it looks very Archy to have it coming out the water

Looks very cool but I think it would be a shame not to have that side inside the tank [Music] actually yeah so basically more like this I think this looks really cool I think we have a very nice

Flow from right to left and we still have wood coming out over there we have wood coming out over there so we can use some immerse plants on that as well the thing is that over here we

Have this shelf and this is where I spend most of my time sitting so it looks actually really cool from this side as well you know so if you’re sitting here on a chair yeah I would really enjoy

The view so I I basically have two types of rocks that I can choose from in this layout uh first one is this rock right here so this stuff right here is I think called Eclipse Stone it’s basically

Like a huge River Boulder that they literally just s in half so we can definitely place this on the bottom just lay flat on the bottom like this that would look very cool really has that

River style layout I quite like that but they also sent me another type of rock which is this stuff right here they call this um Darwin black lava so it’s just like regular black lava rock but it’s a

Bit more detailed has a lot more character to it quite like this I think I’m leaning more towards this right [Music] now I don’t really feel comfortable placing these rocks directly on the glass so I just placed a few of these um yeah small foam leveling Ms underneath just to kind of

Protect a little bit it’s actually the foam M that came originally with this tank it’s white and I didn’t really like it so I plac it with a black one so this is just a a bit of a [Music]

Protection okay this is still far from how I wanted but this is just a general idea just to basically make like a wall with lava rocks actually a little bit further from the from the back glass and then this area here we can fill with substrate and then we

Can have plants in there growing out of the water that’s basically the the idea and then those plants will be taking up this space right here we can have like plants on the wood as well bit lower and then the front area we will have mostly aquatic

Plants of course but now we just need to make a nice composition with the rocks and the wood hold mixed in together that’s probably going to take a while and a lot of heavy [Music]

Lifting H I don’t know about you guys but I kind of like where this is going so all the way on the right side I basically used the in my opinion the best looking rock with the most

Det detail going to use that one to close the line and I think the piece of wood kind of fits perfectly in there as well then there’s another rock on the Neath there to kind of just support

It and to close the gap and two more big rocks on this side just to make a bit of a wall so we can fill this area up with substrate and another very big and beautiful rock on this

Side kind of just close the line here and then we can have it go down and have a nice cosmetic sand in the foreground here so right now I only used about five very large lava rocks

So we need more smaller lav rocks in front as well of course and I actually have a bit more wood as well and I think I have the perfect piece to kind of go on top here just add another

Layer o wow I think uh I think I’m starting to like this just imagine a lot of this wood covered it with moss I think some ferns as well actually I really don’t know much about terrestrial plants so

That’s going to be interesting to find those as well but yeah I think if we have some nice moss on here some ferns stuff like that I think that’s going to look amazing more moss on this lav rock

Here this one will also be just just above the water line so that’s pretty cool yeah so far it’s uh I really like what this is going okay I made a few more changes kind of off camera not

Kind of off camera basically uh I raised this rock right here this was actually a suggestion from my girlfriend she said this needs to be higher and I think she has a very good point so now we have

Have a little bit of rock coming out of the water as well super nice we can put some moss on there as well of course this is going to be replaced with a lava rock this just temporarily and I’ve

Added another piece of wood so now we have yeah three pieces of wood in there in total I thought just felt like it was something missing here in this front area so I think it’s getting better

And better with time I think the next step is to go in with some smaller rcks right now we only use very large lava rocks and over here I have a few more smaller rocks it’s actually a different

Type of rock not sure what this is called it’s also lava but yeah it has a slightly different color so right now these are very gray but once they get wet they will be black as Well so I’m really pleased with the layout so far I don’t think I want to make any more like big changes to the layout I’m quite happy with how it is um but this was very much a trial

Run so I think the next step is to actually take everything out again and then kind of go for the real deal also pour in a substrate start closing the gaps um start gluing things together stuff like that yeah I think we’re I think we’re doing good am I sweating it’s

Like 26° in the house [Music] here okay so you guys know that I usually always use aquasol as a substrate this time I’m actually going to try something different this is a new product from Rio it’s called vland eonian and this basically has the same benefits as aquasol so this also

Has nutrients it also uh lowers the pH a little bit this is much more tough so this doesn’t break down as easily as aquasol aquasol can really turn into powder quite quickly I think this is more like uh basally small volcanic rock so I’m very curious to test this [Music] out [Music]

Okay so this process was a little bit tedious and boring so I didn’t really use the camera much but we basically closed all the Gap there with small lava rocks little bit of filter floss underneath over there as well in between the Rocks here let me

Show you from the side as well yeah so basically all the gaps are closed with other small lava rocks or filter floss just to make sure we don’t have any soil rolling forward actually I’m really happy with this part right here looks really cool the black

Dond lav yeah it’s really beautiful lots of texture going on and I can already see this like being planted with small nubias mosses other terrestrial plants coming out as [Music] [Music] well okay I think that’s a good layer here actually this stuff is really good for what I’m trying to achieve here because it’s a little bit bigger than aquasol it’s not so round so it doesn’t really like fall into these small gaps

It doesn’t really roll forward it really just kind of just stays in [Music] place okay guys it’s now the next day I woke up this morning and I walk past the tank and I immediately

Got a big smile on my face I’m really happy with how this turned out but today we’re going to make it even better I was pretty tired yesterday so the only thing I ended up doing was basically

Gluing everything together just to make sure that this big piece of wood is not going to float and to make sure that our dam with lav rocks is not going to shift or collapse and our substrate is

Going to pour out so of of course I use my favorite technique with the uh liquid super glue and cotton pads so everything is pretty much secure right now so that’s good plan for

Today is to uh work on some small details and I also want to add in the sand and I want to fill it up with water and get the filter running so about the details I have a few more products

From r that we can kind of use for that uh first one is this stuff right here this is called elder Roots so these are basically just small Twix that we can yeah just kind of use I

Think for the lav rock for example so we can use mg and kind of guide it all the way down just B basically make it look like Roots uh same thing over here same thing on the left side as well I

Think that will look pretty cool maybe have some on the uh the lower section as well under waterer just to make it look more natural and here’s an example I add this small piece right here so basically just have this coming down here like that you know I think that would look

Pretty cool and then I also have this stuff right here this is uh Druid gravel and I’m not sure but I think is like small lava rocks it’s a little bit dirty so actually let me wash it a little

Bit here we go so it’s not exactly the same but it still has a bit of that gray and bluish tint so I think it would be nice if we just kind of like spread this around the base over here for

Example and then have the lava rocks then the uh gravels and then our cosmetic [Music] sand [Music] all right it’s now like 2 hours later I’ve been busy making ESS mess in here I basically just had to prepare the filter and I also have to swap the filter over to the other side

Because it used to be on the left side with the outlow on the left side as well but now I’m going to have to off on the right side I’ve also just washed the sand it was a little bit

Dirty so I had to wash it so unfortunately we don’t have the satisfaction of pouring in dry sand it’s okay and after the sand is in we can start filling it up with water sand is

Always a bit tricky in my opinion I mean it can I really either make it can really make or break an Aquos scape you know so I just have to see how it looks once it’s filled

In with water and then if I don’t like it I’ll just siphon it out and replace with something else so I basically had two types of sand left over and I kind of just mixed them together one

Was very light the other one was a little bit more yeah orangey I guess so let’s see how this looks So today has been exactly one weeks since we first filled up the big shell with water and we have a small problem with this tank Yeah so basically the main problem is the water clarity as you can see the water is not clear at all it’s very milky it’s very cloudy it’s actually

Been like that since day one it’s now day seven I’ve done two large water changes already I did one yesterday to kind of clean up the wood because we have a lot of fungus growing on the wood yeah I

Mean the fungus on the wood that’s something I’m used to and that will go away by itself I hope at least but the cloudy water for 7 days straight that’s something I haven’t experienced yet myself

I’m about 99% sure that this cloudiness is caused by the wood I’ve never used this wood before so I knew that it was a bit of a risk using it but I’m sure this is something that will solve itself out

In the next couple of weeks once we have a decent amount of beneficial bacteria in here and once we get rid of that slime on the wood I’m sure it will be much better now another thing that’s

Really going to help clear up this water is of course the plants I don’t have plans yet I’m actually going to order them tonight and then they will arrive within a few days you guys are going

To see that in few minutes anyway um there’s a few things that I want to do before we get to plants yeah so I would really love to have some plants and some mosses on these two pieces of

Wood right here but as you can see they’re super dry so we need to have some moisture here somehow I’m thinking to make a bit of a water dripping system whatever you want to call it yeah so a

Few weeks ago I was binge watching some videos on the UNS YouTube channel and the guys there they were making a paludarium and they also made this water dripping system from a UNS Delta filter I have this filter right here which has the same sort of outflow attachment as this Delta

Filter so this filter outflow has this spray bar with these attachments on it and to that we can attach some tubing like so and then this tubing we can basically direct anywhere we want some extra moisture so this should be pretty easy right this filter has like nine of those attachments so

We could use nine pieces of silicon tuming if we wanted I think if we would just have one sort of trick down over there maybe you can have another one somewhere trickling down here maybe one here

And another one sort of here inside this piece of wood I think four is more than enough so I was first thinking to basically cut this pipe in half so we only have like four of those attachment

Left but then there’s no going back and if you want more then yeah I have to buy a new one so I’m just going to plug these holes with a little um how do you call the sticks here we go and if

You want more of those attachments we can always remove these sticks so it be a little bit flexible you know here we go that works so now we just need some silicon tubing yeah so I can place a

Filter in this corner here and then we can put a little piece of filter foam underneath it just to make sure it’s fish safe and then we can direct these silicon tubes somewhere along the wood

Here I think that should work all right I think we’re getting somewhere here so we now have four in total so there’s one over here going all the way down this side basically another one going

Going down there down that side so we can have m going here and then I have one all the way on top here and the last one is basically in this piece of wood right there dripping down so I’m

Just going to play around with this a little bit more until I’m completely happy with it and I’ll show you guys the end result yeah so you guys are going to see this thing getting planted in like

A few minutes from now but the thing is I still have to wait a few days for this big plant order to come in and I want some green in here now so I already added this plant here this is the uh yeah

I think it’s a South American Lily I’m not going to pronounce the name I’ll put the name on the screen super cool has these really tiny lily pads and I’m going to order a few more of that one as

Well but I have some extra plants that I can use right now so I just set up this mini guppy pond on my balcony like a week ago and we have some really cool porn plants in here and I actually saved a

Few that we can use in the big shellow and see if you didn’t see the video from this build I’ll leave a link over there or is over there somewhere so these things I want to add right now so this

Stuff right here kind of looks like mini bamboo to me I think that will look cool somewhere in the back sort of coming out I think it will grow a little bit taller as well we got this big one

With this beautiful purple flowers let’s see if I can do this big one first I’m thinking to have it here instantly add some nice color to the whole setup and I think this small one we can put in

Front here so this is going to grow like I saw in the pictures it’s going to look super cute with those mini cigars look at here we go that’s those three Pawn plants in not sure if it’s going

To work I mean this is all very much an experiment for me this one is not even in the substrate but I thought it looked good there so we’ll see if it grows well it’s now been exactly 7 days since

I filmed that last clip and today is the day guys today’s the day we’re finally going to finish the big shallow and I can’t wait to see the end result so I’m just waiting for the plants to come in uh

They can be any minute of course coming directly from DL plants they’ve been a channel sponsor for quite a while now so yeah I feel like the water has definitely cleared up a bit more since last

Week it’s still not 100% clear but we’re making progress and today we’re going to do another big water change so should be good I’ve also made some nice progress with the drip system this is

The first time I kept it running overnight I’m still have to get used to the uh the noise yeah you can hear it trickling down so we have a tube going on here we have a tube here then there’s a

Very long one all the way down and this one I’ve basically punctured some holes so kind of there’s some water dripping out everywhere and the last one is coming out here going down all the way

Here so we can definitely put some moss on that I decided not to do anything over here I think it’s nice to also have some wood dry and exposed but we can always still make changes later so while

We’re waiting for the plants to arrive I’m going to do one big water change now and at the same time scrub all the wood because I still a lot of fungus on there so we can get rid of that and then

It should look Super Fresh [Music] all right quick cleaning session done filling back up with super clear fresh water so here you can see how clear the water is here you can see that cloudy old

Water BAS going to start a filter in a second I just want to show you guys the uh the stuff that I use to drain and filter tank basically I think I know a lot of people are interested

In that so this is just an Old Inlet from an old filter from the JBL filter actually then I have a very very long guarden hose goes all the way down all the way down all the way down and in the

Kitchen I have a super cheap Amazon return pump that’s just filling the tank back up I’ll put a link to the pump in the video description in the meantime the plant have arrived as well perfect

Timing so just going to wait for the tank to fill up all the way then we can take a look at the plants all right let’s just see what we got in here shall we straight away we got some beautiful

Echinodorus again this is uh this Aquascape is going to be a little bit different from my usual style so we have different types of plants as well we got some sagittaria ludia reapin rubben I ordered a lot of ludia more sagittaria okay so I think I kind of underestimated the amount

Of plants that I need for this build I don’t think I’ve ordered enough but it’s okay we can always buy some more so what do we have we have a couple of really nice echinodorus I have a few

Initro pots with um helanthium that we can use for The Aquatic section I ordered this hro XXL for the transition from aquatic to immersed lots of portions of Taiwan MOS some floating plants lots of ludia and lots of sagittaria so might not be enough but we’ll see let’s just

Get started all right I think we’re ready uh plants are all prepared and I take back what I said I do think we have enough plants once you start opening those spots there’s actually a lot more than you think also in the in the back there’s really not that much space to

Put Plants anyway and in the Aquatic section I wanted to keep it very minimal as well there’s only going to be like two or three types of plants in the Aquatic section and it’s also more fun to see the development you know like we can really stuff it with a lot more plants

Of course but then as soon as it starts growing you have to trim it already and then you don’t see the development from freshly planted to fully grown in obviously we’re going to start with the

Eors these are the stars of the show really here I have three types this is the biggest one and I think somewhere behind here would look good then we have another one this one is slightly smaller

But it’s the same type this is the echinodorus oot I think it’s called okay so that’s the first eono do in three pieces in total they’re very still very small right now of course but but

They should grow up to 40 50 cm so I think they will just raise just above this piece of wood next up we have this one this is ecodor cordifolius red something like that uh should

Grow roughly the same size I think one on the left side one on the right side yeah should look [Music] good then I have one more type of EOD do this one super tiny this is the 4

Folus mini this one should grow up to 25 cm so not too big so I’m thinking maybe a little bit more in front there also on this side we still have some empty space there yeah should

Work okay so that’s all three types of ecodor in now in between there still quite a lot of space and I’m fin to fill that up with this PL right here this is the ludia reapin ruin it’s

Quite green now but it should grow nice and red and the idea that I have for this plant is to sort of act as a almost like a floating plant so I want it to grow upwards and then

Basically start laying on the water surface so it’s going to provide a nice color it’s going to provide a sort of a transition to the eodoras I think it’s going to look [Music] cool [Music] okay next up we’re going for this plant this is

Hedril something I’ll put the name on the screen I forgot plant does not have to be in in the substrate so we can just place it anywhere we like something in between there maybe something here in between the rocks and the wood uh maybe somewhere in

This little Gap over here as well yeah we’ll see we’ll just Place Little Bits everywhere [Music] so that basically wraps up all the plants that are going to grow immersed out of the water doesn’t really look like much right now but in a few weeks it’s going to look super cool especially this need it’s going to form like like a cushion you know like a basally a carpet

With this plant going to cover everything I think it’s going to look great also put some of that luigia in this corner over here uh yeah I think next up we need Moss we need a lot of moss and we did Cloud the water with all that rumbling around in the substate with

All the EO doors but we’re going to do another water chain soon so I was testing this sort of drip system here but I only had some fidence moss and some ricardia but this does this stuff

Just doesn’t really work properly immersed so I got five cups of this um Taiwan Moss I think this will look much better so I’m wondering if you can just lay it on there without tying it

Without gluing it and just kind of pressing it on the wood that would make it really easy for Us okay that’s the M done of course the majority is on this piece of wood right here we have some more on the Rock on the right side and also a little bit on this piece of wood kind of going

Into the water like that uh next up let’s do a let’s just drain the tank start planting the aquatic plants fill the tank back up and then I have a few more things to [Music] add

Okay so this is going to be a challenge first of all we have to hurry up because all the plants are now starting to dry out Second Challenge is the fact that we only have a thin layer of

Sand in front so there’s not it’s very going to be very difficult to plant in there so I think I’m just going to plant in between the the the gravel basically the small Pebbles all right here we go so I want to keep this very very minimal so I’m only going to use

Two types of grasses this is the first one this is the helium telum red from Dena I don’t think it will grow red in this cape cuz we we’re not going to have very bright light but yeah we’ll

See if it’s how it’s going to look just trying to find spots where it’s deep enough to plant [Music] in [Music] yeah I think that’s it very minimal just a few plugs here and there just add a little Touch

Of Green to the Aquatic section and of course it’s going to grow bigger it’s going to start spreading it’s going to look very natural I think let’s fill the tank back up and we still have a

Few more things to [Music] do shall we all just take a moment to appreciate how clear the water is I mean it’s still not 100% clear but this is the clearest it’s been since the day I filled

It [Music] up that looks really good so we could call a day I mean I’m quite happy with how it’s looking so far but I want to like spice it up a little bit more so for the top section

The immersed section I have two house PLS that I want to try out and for The Aquatic section I’m thinking to add some Botanical Botanical some Leaf litter some twig just to make it a

Bit more natural right now we have a very very white sand it’s very in yourf face I think we have to like make it a bit more natural so I bought some house plants like a few days ago

And I first bought these two but I think they’re quite big and they will not really they would just look out of place there you know but then I also found this one this is like a really cute small

Fern I think ferns do really well in this kind of setup you know and I was also I was looking for Fus Puma I think it’s called the creeping fig couldn’t find it and this sort of looks

Similar so yeah I don’t know no idea if this will work but I think we should just try it [Music] Out I feel like that was exactly what we needed here on the immersed section so this this little little Fern and that other plant just really made it look more natural just took it to another level you know especially this small leaf plant mixed in with the Moss just looks very very

Natural in my opinion also added a little bit on this side yeah I like it it looks cool okay so since this Aquascape is all about trying new things and experimenting I want to try one more

Thing with the substrate cuz right now we have very clean white sand in a way it looks really good I quite like it but it’s not necessarily very natural you know so we can make it a bit more natural with this new product from R this is called bioto beds mulch bed it’s

Basically just mulch in the bag now mulch is just small leaves small Twigs small pieces of bark so we can yeah scatter this around the sand and see if it looks good I’m not sure but

I think we should just give it a try and if it doesn’t work out we can just remove it you know [Music] yeah [Music] so the last thing I did yesterday was adding that mulch of the Twigs I’ve also shredded some katapa leaves added a few more of those tiny rocks and also two types of floating plants so the Redwood floaters the filant flant and also the Amazon frog [Music] bit

You know what I think is actually my favorite thing about this whole Cape is this little passage that we’ve created between this big rock and behind the wood this little passage that the fish can like swim through and around yeah actually there’s a lot of like different

Layers that you might not really be able to see on camera because we have so much Shadow cuz it looks like there’s only a little bit of swimming space in the front but behind it has actually a

Lot of space left still but yeah it’s hard to see they can also still go all the way in the back you know like they still have access to this area here as well so they can basically swim this

Way this way all the way here all the way around and also still in the back you know like they can literally swim here as well and that’s yeah something you don’t really see with traditional

Um Aquos Scapes I guess but with the shellow tank with this style of layout you can so that’s pretty cool I think I think it’s been almost 3 weeks since we first filled up with water and I’ve also been doing beneficial bacteria every single day so technically I think the aquarium is cycled

And ready for fish but we’re still dealing with a little bit of this cloudiness in the water so the big shell is definitely testing my patients and your patient as well because we all want to see fishing here but I think it’s was the right move to just wait a little bit longer

Because it would be a shame to go to the shop now buy the fish add them in here and just not really being being able to see them properly because of the cloudy water you know because we’ve been so busy focused on The Hardscape on the planting we haven’t really spent any time

Or any attention on the equipment and what it takes to run this beautiful aquarium I want to do a quick rundown of the equipment it’s actually not that much it’s quite simple I want to take a look inside the cabinet and we’re also going to upgrade the cabinet with some new equipment and

I’ve ordered something online that’s going to upgrade the whole immerse section and take it to the next level as well anyway there were a few people in the comment section saying that should buy this gadget and I’m super hyped about this um we have ourselves a Mist maker so I already saw

These previously under the Ada brand name daa daa but they were quite expensive like €60 so then of course I went to Amazon Amazon always has things very cheap so I found this one for

Like 20 or 25 I’ll put a I’ll put a link in the video description so I never Ed a mmaker before but I think that’s really going to take the whole imer section to another level so let’s just stop

Talking let’s get this thing installed see what it looks like so I just read the instructions and ideally this thing should be like 5 cm below the water level or something so I want to hide

It somewhere in this Gap over here so I think we can put it there and just put it on like a little platform so it’s just below the water surface okay I think we’re good you can just see it just behind

These leaves doesn’t want to focus doesn’t matter let’s just switch it on see if it works okay that is sick look at this guys we have have some proper Mist that really reminds me of those

Like early mornings when you walk past the lake and there’s this Mist on top of the water I don’t think this is something that I’ll keep on keep running 24/7 maybe only when the lights are on I

Think if even that maybe just something you when you have some guests over and you really want to impress them with your layout or if you want to make some really cool Boll like this for [Music] you

I love it thanks to everybody who suggested in the comments that I should buy it really happy with that so next up let’s do a quick rundown of the equipment let’s start with the lights this

Is the Skylight hypers spot L I think it comes in three different sizes so you have one with like four spots you have one with six spots and this is the biggest one with eight spots this is

By far my favorite light for these big open top tanks especially if you want to hang the lights from the ceiling they just look really really good really slick it’s very powerful so I think I

Currently only have it on like 30 and 50% there’s two channels like warm white and cold white it is an RGB light but there’s only two channels so I think one channel is on 30% the other channel is

On 50% okay then in terms of equipment inside the aquarium we just saw the Mis maker on that side on this side I have a small skimmer so this right here is the oazi a crystal skim 350 I think it’s

A new product from aaza hasn’t been released that long ago yeah quite a nice surface skimmer uh what I like about it is that it has two separate modes so if you remove the skimming portion you can see

Um there’s a plus and a minus on there so if you put it back on and then you twist it this way it’s plus if you twist it that way is minus so let’s open it all the way up so this is is the strongest

Setting and if you push it back down again twist it to minus this is the lowest setting if you remove this floating portion there’s a little Grill and inside the grill that’s just a small sponge that’s it super simple but it works quite well I don’t have any Livestock in here just yet

Um but this doesn’t suck up any fish but it might suck up some shrimp that is a bit of a downside well besides that is a pretty good skimmer then on this side we have the filter inflow and outflow

These are the plastic pipes from aario I think it’s called the Neo flow really like this set basically because you can cut it to size and this is a shallow tank it’s only 30 cm high so

If you want a glass skimmer it doesn’t really fit here it’s basally it’s either too big or it’s too small so with these pipes you can just cut it to size and I can cut the intake to yeah basically

Just exactly where I want so that’s nice I like the small skimmer on the outlow just helps with the surface scum ideally once this gr is recycled and we don’t have so much service come anymore I

Would like to remove that skimmer over there and just rely on this small skimmer here that would be nice but of course the infl outflow is attached to a filter which we have inside the cabinet this

Is the oaza biomaster 850 Thermo if you go back on my YouTube channel to some older videos from like maybe half a year to a year ago I have some videos about this filter basically where I was not

Really happy with it was making a lot of noise it was blowing a lot of air into the aquarium and I was also using CO2 at the time so was really not really helping me um that’s also why we have

These Pham pads because we’re very noisy but right now it’s actually super quiet I barely hear it so I don’t really need this anymore to be honest yeah we have the filter we have some products

From secm and then behind that we have the power supply with the power strip and all these sockets then moving on to the middle compartment this one is basically just storage on the bottom we have

My bucket my mayonnaise bucket with hoses sponges all the kind of things that I use for cleaning my water test kit some formats and then this device right here is quite interesting this is the inaco controller this is a very smart device that I’m not really using properly but today I want to

Change that we’re going to bring it back use it properly right now it’s only controlling my lights but with this you can also attach two fertilizers it has two pumps you can also check CO2 levels

I’m not using CO2 at the moment but you can check it and you can also check the temperature inside the aquarium so super handy device today we’re going to bring it back and then on this side

More storage uh we have some boxes yeah with a lot of stuff behind the boxes we also have my CO2 set that I used to run on this aquarium yeah right now we’re not using CO2 anymore and also behind

This we still have the CO2 reactor that I’m also not using anymore so we can remove this place it somewhere in storage where I’m not going to be able to see it anymore it’s not going to be in

The way so we can just proper properly pimp this cabinet because we need space for something else and that’s something else is this box right here this is the Fone Auto top off and I think this is

Going to make my life a lot easier so basically the story here is that with the big shellow I get a lot of evaporation it was already pretty bad with the first version the iwagumi but now

With the second this new layout we also have this water dripping system and I think the evaporation got even worse so that was really starting to bug me and then literally like a few days ago

Fone reached out to me and said hey Mark would you like would you like to try out our new auto topof system I was like yes that’s what I need so they send this over of course sponsor I didn’t pay

For this product and today we’re going to install it test it out super curious yeah so we’re going to install that auto top off system later in this video but to be able to do that I think I

Have to apply a little bit of DIY to this cabinet just to make sure it works and I want to do a few more diy things uh first thing being with this filter the oaza filter I know if you guys have

Seen the uh oaza scaper line cabinets where they they have this pullout drawer where the filter actually stands on so it’s much easier to do the maintenance I want to see if I can build something

Like that myself in this cabinet I think I have a pretty good idea for it and another thing I want to do is for the inaco controller if you want to use it properly and also use the filter pumps I

Need to be able to raise it so I think I want to have it some here so in order to do that we have to uh yeah do a little bit of DIY so let’s go to the local hardware store and see if we can find

Everything we need for this DIY project so just to heads up my DIY skills are not very good so don’t expect anything fancy in this video my idea was to get these drawer sliding type of things and

Simply attach them to the bottom of the cabinet and attach the other side to a platform made from wood sounds easy and should work right so I bought that and I also found these wooden holders that I

Thought would work well for the inaco controller first thing I did when I came home was cut that piece of wood in half because I want to make two of those slide out platforms one for the filter

And one for the reservoir of the outut of top of pump next I went ahead and attached those sliders to the floor of the cabinet and to the platform but then I found out that my idea wasn’t going

To work with these particular sliders so I had to go back to the hardware store and buy some new ones I found these gray ones and they work much better the sliders were 850 per set and

That piece of wood was €10 so total cost for just one of these slide out platforms is less than €15 for the water reservoir I’m using a UNS 30 cm Cube but you can use anything that holds water for this purpose of course next step is to prepare those holders for the controller

So I bought two of them and I just took a little bit of black spray paint and gave them a few layers with that just so it matches nicely with the cabinet after the paint was dry I just mounted them to the side of the cabinet and place the controller on top of

It and now we have more than enough space for these big bottles of fertilizers so I’m going to add the mine mpk and the micro and with the controller we can make a schedule for when and how much fertilizer we want to add now we just need to get the fertilizer

In the aquarium and for that I’m using these acrylic pipes from Aquario with a little bit of heat you can bend these in any shape you like so I went for a simple 90° Bend then it was just a matter of attaching them to some silicon tubing

And connecting everything to the controller and that was that part of the automation done then all us have to do is set up the auto top off this was surprisingly simple the system comes with a magnetic sensor that you can place anywhere you like and for now I’m

Going to place it right where it’s perfectly visible just so I can keep an eye on it same goes for the host for the pump and then the pump goes in the reservoir and that’s

It so that was just a quick recap of this dii project I wish it was that quick and life as well cuz it took me a lot longer than I anticipated but it’s done and I’m really happy with the end result

You can actually see a little bit of smoke behind the aquarium there coming from the Mis maker so Thea filters now on this slide out platform when I disconnect the hoses there I can actually pull it

Out push it back in for easy maintenance another thing I did is I mounted the power supply for the controller to the side of the wall just to make it a bit more organized bit more safe and then

On this side we have the controller with the two fertilizers so they now CBR it and every day 2 p.m. um the controller will pump a little bit of fertilizer in the aquarium and then we have

The water res for the auto top of super Sleek I’m very curious how long it’s going to take to yeah to drain this 30 cm Cube how much how much water will evaporate in like a week time let’s keep an

Eye on that then we have the auto top off so we have the sensor so there’s like a high and a low on the sensor and the water level sits exactly in the middle and once it drops to the low the

Sensor will activate the pump push the water back in from now on the water should always be at this level so I’m really curious how that’s going to go in the next few days weeks I have to say

I was a little bit nervous because yeah what if the sensor fails and all of a sudden it’s like overflowing the aquarium but I don’t think that’s going to happen and then lastly on this side we have the uh the acrylic pipes for the fertilizers this is the micro fertilizer this

Is the mpk fertilizer I’ve just attached them to the side with some uh some suction cups and then they go all the way down inside the cabinet and the last thing I also did is I added the temperature sensor for the inaco controller so this one is now checking the temperature and I

Can see what the actual temperature is inside the aquarium with the inaco app to be honest with you guys I’m actually really happy that I managed to do all this diying before the fish got here

Cuz if I had to do all that while the fish were already in the aquarum you know the drilling the making noise the banging against the walls like the fish would be super stressed as well you know

So I think it was a good call to wait with buying the fish but um I think we’re really getting there I did a large water change yesterday and the water is still quite clear right now so next week we’re

Adding the fish for sure let’s not wait any longer let’s just do it no more delays next week fish in here [Music] promise so plan for today is to go to my local fishop hes and Hope hopefully they will

Have a nice selection that will suit this Amazon inspired Aquascape um I already have some ideas in mind and I got some really good suggestions from you guys as well um but I’m not really trying to

Just focus on one particular fish I’m trying to keep an open mind because I don’t know what the fish jop is going to have in stock maybe we’ll see something that we haven’t thought of that’s going

To be amazing in here basically the main plan is to go for some dwarf cichet some tetras and some cories I think those three types is like the perfect combination for an Amazon inspired Aquascape right now before we leave to the shop I just want to do a quick cleaning session we still

Have some white slime on the wood we also have a little bit of diom algae so just a quick cleaning session big water change as well and then the acquirement looking Super Fresh for the new

Fish right so nice big water change that’s about 80% I think I just remember that I want to do one more thing which is the inflow and outflow this is the Aquario Neo flow and this one is really

Quite old it’s more than a year old so it’s not as translucent anymore so I just want to quickly swap it for a new one just to make sure that it looks nice and fresh I just want to do this

Before we get the fish so after the fish are in here I don’t have to touch this reir anymore you Know so this is it at the end of this video we’re going to have fish in this aquarium I cannot wait I’m super excited so let’s go to the fish shop see you guys when we get [Music] There okay okay we’re here it’s actually very hot today so they open up all the lids from the tanks just to get some of that hot air out so it might be a little bit extra noisy but I’ll keep the microphone close to make sure the audio is good so we’re looking for

Some Amazon South American fish we need some dwarf cichlids we need some tetras maybe some more cories as well so let’s see what they have of course the easiest choice for dwarf cichlid is the epama so I think here we are spoiled for choice we have aizi kides

Magmi more aaziz vieta then we have some albino or yellow golden Rams see super red the blue Rams and the traditional German blue Rams and then we have some aiso Grandma H sloy these are really

Really nice and on this side they also have the aagama B balii so a really good selection of a gramar here right now I’m leaning mostly towards the hloy I think they’re really nice but I don’t

Know I just looked inside the tank I see think I’m seeing only males I’m not sure it’s always bit hard to see let’s keep looking around let’s do a little B- roll with some tetras and some [Music] cories [Music] so I just noticed that they have a small group of the coridor hosis

I think I’m taking them home because I already have the peras I already have the AAS and now we have these ones as well it’s cool to have like a nice mix of all three pygmy Cories so that actually turned out to be quite a successful trip to the fish shop can’t remember the last time I came home with h five bags it is quite late though I have to start cooking dinner

So I’m going to add a fish to the aquarium acclimate them give you guys a sneak peek and after dinner we’ll come back and release them okay that’s bag number one this one is probably an easy

Guess I think you can see from there as well bag number two again I think it’s an easy guess bag number three not sure if you guys can see it from there bag number four this one we already talked about big Shadow is getting full I think we can fit one more B

Without any issues this one you’re not going to guess and just like that it’s 2 hours later fish have been properly acclimated I’ve had dinner everybody’s happy so let’s take a look at what we got uh let’s start on the left side bag

Number one we have five salt and pepper Cor the coridor hosis then on bag number two we have one male and two female of the apistogramma hloy super excited about this one bag number three

We have roughly 30 of the green neon tetras bag number four we again have 30 of the green tetras bag number five we have one male and two female of the apisa Borelli these do not look like much

Right now but if you know a p belli you know that these are going to be absolutely beautiful the m is going to be really nice and blue and the females will be really bright yellow super excited

About that so I wasn’t sure about the whole male female situation in the uh in the tank for the pis hloy I thought I saw only males but then I was uh I took a look together with the one

Of the owners from the shop and he basically guaranteed me that we have two females in the bag so let’s hope he’s right yeah I’ve been very unlucky when it comes to finding a nice pair of a

Dwarf cichet so that’s what we have and they’ve been here for the past 2 hours so let’s let’s not wait any longer let’s get them all released and let’s get them into the tank so let’s start

With these coras then we’ll move to both types of AOG grma and then we can save the real deal 60 neon tetras till the very last so the first fish are just five salt and pepper cories that’s

Quite a yeah didn’t really saw that coming but here we go five small cories in one big tank so it’s quite late now already so maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow I will try to catch the

Other cies from the other tank we can add them in here as well and then I think we have a nice group maybe we can still add more but let’s just see how this goes okay moving on to the real show piece

Piece of Grandma hongoy never kept him before super excited to see them U behaving in this aquarium I was doing a little reading on the way here and seems they a little bit hard to read they really like soft water which I do not have so let’s see what happens as long as

We just get some nice behavior I’m happy and I really hope that we have indeed one male and two females they’re very different from other pisr as well in my opinion like these are very brightly

Colored a little bit higher body as well I seem to be struggling with the flow a little bit so we’ll see how that goes in the next few days maybe I’ll reduce it a little bit okay let’s move on to the apistogramma Borelli now with these three I’m quite confident that we indeed

Have one male and two females it’s quite easy to spot the differences here so the first one coming out is definitely a male and the other two are females these are a little bit easier

To breed as well I think so yeah would be nice to uh to see that happen in this aquam to be honest here we go that’s our mail immediately discovering the tank and then on this side we have both of the

Females yeah they definitely seem to be uh struggling with the flow a little bit so right now I basically have the the jet portion and I just received this sort of like Lily Lily pipe attachment so we can definitely reduce the flow a little bit well let’s see how they will manage it

In in a few days I mean they’ve just been released of course it’ll take some time for them to get used to it that’s a male Hong sloy and a female Borelli curious how they’re going to get along

Together it’s plenty of space for everybody right I mean if you guys going to be fighting in this big space then I don’t know what to do all right shall we uh shall we do this shall we release the

Neons so I’m going to try to turn this into a thumbnail for the video so I’m going to try to release them all at the same time do it quite quickly so they all move out so let’s do this this nice is that all of them always double check them

Back yes this is so cool guys I think this is the perfect fish for a cram like this could have gone for the neon TS or the Cardinal TS as well but these guys just stay a little bit smaller you

Know and I really want small small fish in this aquarium so super happy with that of course right now they’re super cooling super tight against to flow curious if this is going to stay like this

Or after like a day it’s going to be deal swimming all over the all over the place you know I guess this is the reason right why these fish are so popular I mean besides Cardinal tatas neon tatas

And these guys there’s not many other F other fish that give you this really beautiful behavior in these beautiful bright neon colors left to right right to left and Back [Music] Again [Music] okay people it’s now the next day I just got myself a nice haircut that was definitely

Necessary lights just turned on and we have something weird going on inside the aquarium yeah so I just noticed that we literally have a mushroom going out of the Escape I’ve never seen anything like that before it’s pretty cool though not sure if if it can do any harm but definitely

Looks cool um besides that fish are doing really good I think the Neons have definitely relaxed a bit more they’re not schooling as tightly anymore um the epas I think they’re definitely exploring the uh the region Behind The Hardscape because I haven’t seen much of them just yet and

The corridors are doing just fine as well so last night before went to bed I gave them some dry food and I just defrosted some of these mosquito larv as well let’s see if these guys are [Music] hungry

[Music] so this one just came to the front and this was supposed to be one of the hloy females and right now I’m starting to see a lot of red on the belly so I’m guessing we have another

Male so two male hlo and then let’s just hope that the third one is a female even if we have three males it’s no big deal I’m not planning to breed them in here but it would just be nice to

See some of that sort of like mating behavior you know um other than that I’m not really seeing much of the P Gras I see them once in a while there in that little opening over there so I think they’re

Definitely having fun in the back that’s okay as long as we see them once in a while uh I think now is actually a good time to uh add in the rest of the cories so we still have them in the 45p so

Let’s catch them and add them in here as [Music] well all right so here’s a little reminder don’t put fish in a densely planted tank if you only plan to keep them there for a very short time

Cuz catching these cories from that 45p was not easy still think I don’t have every single one of them but that’s okay we can catch the rest when when I take down a tank for example so

These have been acclimating for quite a while now so we can definitely release them and you’re free again no stress so what I like about the uh the tail sport C is is that they they kind of

Swim more the real pmes kind of really stick to the sand I think the H broses as well but yeah the tail sport cores they like they really swim freely it’s fun so it’ll be interesting to

See how these cors are going to behave in this shallow because ever ever since I got them they were quite sksh and the big shallow was quite a bright aquarium the 45p was quite bright as well

And here we have a lot more Shadow so they should feel more comfortable I [Music] guess [Music] so that was it guys my top 10 best setups that were created in this space hope you guys enjoy this extra long compilation also let me know if you agree with this top 10 or if

You want to make some changes for now this is it thanks for watching see you in the next one

View 36 Comments

36 Comments

@n4b40 on March 24, 2024 2:02 pm

first
@smashingamin on March 24, 2024 2:02 pm

Theyre all amazing! I will take some as inspiration.
@aqua_Laura on March 24, 2024 2:05 pm

Ohhhhh I love that colour of paint, it's beautiful, it will go so well with all the aquascapes. Can't wait to see the finished studio. Beautiful aquascapes………
@thewoodsman4157 on March 24, 2024 2:14 pm

At the airport with headphones and a delayed flight! This is the best thing ever
🙌 🙏
@JurijsJutjajevs on March 24, 2024 2:39 pm

Love that this compilation is having present MJ comments on each layout incorporated 🎉
@SarinaRai-ux7qf on March 24, 2024 2:42 pm

finally my waiting is over most awaited channel for this video
@lucktrevor8 on March 24, 2024 2:43 pm

Make Indonesian style bro,, nd step by step to set up Indonesian style
@usoshikin7552 on March 24, 2024 2:49 pm

what is the type of rock used in the aquarium he sits in front of during the transitions 1:06:13 1:27:16
@MegGreeneSmith on March 24, 2024 2:53 pm

I can only imagine how exhausted you are. Hang in there, it will be worth it! Thanks for the video in the meantime.
@bjornjarnside6358 on March 24, 2024 2:53 pm

Great video MJ by the way How do you store so many high resolution videos?
@AHGAQUATICS on March 24, 2024 4:13 pm

Perfect video for my Sunday maintenance ❤👏👏👏
@viraloptic. on March 24, 2024 4:16 pm

Question for MJ as well as every one else. I currently only have experience in nano tanks, where do you guys go to get stand for larger aquariums (60 or so gallons)? Do you order them through an online store or go to someone to build them?
@MrBarclonista on March 24, 2024 4:23 pm

yo.. those standing desk thing in the beginning of vid. u plan to use that for tank? if so can it hold filled aquascape with rock etc? planning to get one but im afraid its collapsing.
i have 6 gallon tank with seiryu
@frankvermeulen4621 on March 24, 2024 4:37 pm

Youtube ate my comment, so here goes again… 😆

Almost 4 hours of great scapes? Don't mind if I do. Going to watch this in chunks over the next few days. 👍
@OzenAqua-ok7ck on March 24, 2024 4:38 pm

Amazing !!!
@gardockis.playground on March 24, 2024 5:54 pm

4 hours 😅🍿😎
@RizeTB1 on March 24, 2024 6:17 pm

I don’t know how you feel about this. I think it’s pretty cool that you have a 4 hour best of something in your life you can share.
@lindapeppin2441 on March 24, 2024 9:20 pm

Enjoyed that, thanks.
@rjvlogs3653 on March 24, 2024 9:24 pm

ive been a watcher of your channel for about 4 years and I love watching back these videos.
@rsl2988 on March 24, 2024 9:27 pm

👍👍👍😎😎😎
@GardenEvolution on March 25, 2024 2:53 am

Big shallow is by far my favorite! I would love to see something like that again
@gluez on March 25, 2024 4:09 am

MJ getting jacked 🫡🫡🫡
@JoshUC on March 25, 2024 3:27 pm

Hello MJ, greetings mate, I love all the tanks you have created so far, but without a doubt, I gotta say my favorite one is Moss on the Rocks, I believe it is the first tank of yours I saw, and I started following you cuz of that tank, again greetings from Costa Rica, keep it up, mate!
@ralf716 on March 25, 2024 6:19 pm

Im a big fan of your videos. At 3:57 what are those small daphnia like beings jumping around over the sand?
@liljeremyshell1179 on March 25, 2024 7:43 pm

I just want to say "Thank You" by watching your videos i decided to try co2, ive always struggled to grow even the easiest of plants, untill co2 and you, now my plants grow so fast weekly im trimming, replanting and throwing away because they just grow so fast. THANK YOU FRIEND, keep up the great and helpful content
@stephenevans7884 on March 25, 2024 10:04 pm

I found the oase scaperline cabinet set up extremely pleasing
@yellbyful on March 25, 2024 11:10 pm

love the hardscape of the nano forest before filling
@2019freddie on March 26, 2024 9:49 am

Another good video buddy.
@Ankescapes on March 26, 2024 9:58 am

I really couldn't decide which one is my favourite! I tend to the forest scape, but the moss scape, the blackwater tank and the last big shallow are nearby… just keep going your great work, looking forward to the new studio 🤩
@jeffreychester8740 on March 26, 2024 4:09 pm

Could you put the name of the carpet plant in #8 on the screen in writing. I'm not catching what the name of the plants are. Thank you! I think you called it Cuba plant? Does anyone know the name?
@mohamadabdurrahim6319 on March 27, 2024 5:07 am

Pakai air apa ?
Alga hijau penyebab nya apa yah ?
Saya dari Indonesian 🇲🇨
@70373R on March 27, 2024 5:37 am

Hey MJ, Ik ben nu zelf bezig met een nieuwe bak en nu zie ik dat we bij de zelfde winkel shoppen 😉
Nu heb jij in het filmpje (1u:22) een vermelding staan naar de lijst met planten in de beschrijving. Ik kan die lijst niet vinden. Kan jij mij vertellen waar die staat?
@suvinuoska on March 27, 2024 11:34 am

I think this was a great format for a compilation video, and a great way to start my day off 🙂
@IrinaBagira on March 27, 2024 6:12 pm

Delays at the airport are never fun, but at least I've got my headphones and this compilation to keep me entertained! Love the incorporation of MJ's comments. Been following for years, and each video still brings something new. Who else is excited for more big shallow scapes? Dive into my channel for more captivating content!
@hannahvaipulu3631 on March 28, 2024 9:51 pm

This year, create an aquascape utilizing trash, a beer bottle, or a set of keys lost at a dock. Demonstrate nature's triumph over our pollution, whether through moss overtaking a beer can or an old water toy left behind from a family adventure now only a memory. Transform something ugly into something beautiful. Stray from perfection.
@Boja23 on March 30, 2024 2:42 am

Exactly what I needed as I plan my next aquascape. Well done video, I watched it start to finish. Awesome work, I love how dialed in MJ is, everything always comes out perfect!