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

👉🏻Cool Aquascaping T-shirts: https://mosscotton.com/ Code: mjaqua10

👉🏻15% off 2hraquarist.com with code: MJAQUA

👉🏻Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel: YouTube.com/mjaquascaping

#plantedtank #aquascape #mjaquascaping

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