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Adding The Fish We Forgot About

By King of DIY on

Speaker 1:
In my last video we did an update on how all my fish did while I was away for eight days. Now, I don't want to point fingers at anybody, but I don't think I read a single comment on how about the fishing quarantine? How are they making it? My fault, I forgot about them too, but they've been in quarantine for about a month now and I need those quarantine systems back as I got a bunch of new fish coming in next week to continuously stock these tanks. Let's go check out how the quarantine fish are doing. Scoop them all up, start adding them to these aquariums.

Okay, this tank looks pretty barren right now, but I promise there's fish in here. You guys remember we have some Corydoras down here. These are just peppered Corydoras. These guys are going to be great little bottom dwellers and scavengers in some of the aquarium's down there. If you look at all of this here, look at a bunch of snails too these guys are going to be amazing to add to the tanks as well and these are Nerite snails.

Obviously they're pretty a really good-looking snail, but they also do a great job at cleaning algae off the glass. Plus, they're not going to dupe replicate or spawn, or lay eggs. Well, they'll definitely lay legs but the eggs won't hatch in my aquariums because they need brackish water to do so. That means I'm not going to end up with a bunch of unwanted snails and be run over them.

Run over by them eventually. We also have a pretty unhappy peacock bass over there right now. He's doing fine. He just ate, they're not being moved, peacock bass got to stay out here too big. One thing that I noticed in here though is that we didn't get all of the clown loaches. They're in here somewhere. Oh, look, there's one right there. See in the crevice right in there. You can adjust this so you guys can see them.

I don't know if you can see the stripes there. There's about three or four clown loaches still in there. I'll try to get them as well, but it's going to be difficult to get them out of these crevasses. I'll do my best. Let me see what I can get in the bucket. Okay, I didn't get all the snails and all the loaches, some of them are lodged in there pretty good, but I did get one of the loaches. I'm just going to wait for them to naturally come off that wood and it'd be less stressful on them.

I'm in no rush and they shouldn't be either. Here's what I did get. We do have one loach over here, I don't know maybe 10 Corydoras and all the gang of those Nerite snails. All right, we got our little bucket of fish. Now, let's discuss where they're going to go. I'm really happy we're doing this now because like I said next week, we have a bunch of fish coming in. I freed up about 200 gallons worth of quarantine systems. Trust me we're going to need it.

Now, these guys sat in quarantine for about four weeks and four to six weeks is what you want to quarantine new fish for regardless of the source, especially if you're adding them to established aquariums. It's better to treat these fish then infect and in whole aquarium, if you ever have a problem. I've never had any problems where I get my fish from one fish, two fish, but that doesn't mean something might never happen and we don't want to get too excited and run into some big problems in the future.

Let's talk about first where the snails go the Corydoras, the loach, clearly that's going into the Asian aquarium with the other loaches. I am going to be adding another mid-water fish to that aquarium soon. That's going to add a lot of life to the tank. Right now the loaches are still hiding. I got to feed them to bring them out. No problem. Let them relax. It's not unlike a new fish added to an aquarium to take two to three weeks to get comfortable in the tank and start acting natural.

A lot of people panic when they get a new fish and say, “Why isn't my fish eating? Why isn't it doing this and why isn’t it doing that?” I ask one question, “When did you get it?” They're always like, “Well, I just got it yesterday or two days ago.” Of course, give it some time to acclimate to its surroundings and the aquarium itself. It's not going to happen overnight, give it time, patience. As long as the fish is eating, there’s nothing to worry about. Just give it time.

I want to show you what I did with discus aquarium. When we're setting up that Asian aquarium, we had those kattappa leaves or Indian almond leaves and I have two different sizes, one little one and a big one. I got them on Amazon, you can pick them up wherever you like. With the big ones I thought one thing that's missing in the discus aquarium is some ground cover or something more. I like the open space that the logs offer and once the discus are five, six inches big, it's going to look amazing with 16 of them swimming through them. I don't want to crowd it too much, but I thought, what if I add some Indian almond leaves to the bottom?

Use the bigger sizes, make it look like those tree branches that are coming up from the sand actually drop these leaves. I buried a few, just made it look a little bit more natural. It looks pretty good, discus like it, the tetras like it, downside is that it will make cleaning the substrate a little bit more difficult, but it's worth it. It looks good. Let me know what you guys think. None of these fish are going into that tank. That tank is complete. I just really want those discus to get nice and big and become like show sighs discus. It's going to look amazing. I'm just excited about that tank in general to be honest with you.

Angelfish tank. That's a South American Aquarium as well. I'm not going to add the Corydoras to those, but I will add in some snails. I'm actually going to add snails to all of these aquariums, besides the African cichlids because they're just going to eat them. I'm not going to add any snails to the loach tank because the loaches will just eat them.

Every other tank will get some. I can't add it to Frank's tank because Frank is just going to eat them or terrorize them or pick them up and spit them out. Just can't put them in there. As for the wall rue tank, that is where these Corydoras are going. That's technically a South American tank in these Corydoras are as well. These are going to fit in nicely, and the only thing that's missing from that tank in my opinion is some more activity on the ground. We have so many mid water swimmers, the water swim throat the entire column of the water and the king tetras or the emperor tetras or incisive, whatever we're going to call them go by so many different common names.

Those are mid-water shoaling fish as well. Again, the only thing that I feel that tank is missing is something on the bottom little bit more activity. All the Corydoras are going in that aquarium and we're going to call that stalking completed. Actually, let's go ahead and get the loach into the Asian aquarium and then we'll move on to the Corydoras and we'll sprinkle a little bit of snails in all of these tanks.

The best thing for me to do here is try to grab the loach by my hands, watch out for its along the side there, was added in just too many fish in here too many snails, they try to use a net. You're going to like it in here little one, go over and hide like the rest. You'll fit right in. Okay. Now, the Corydoras in the wall route tank. We got to do this quickly because we've got snails grabbing onto the Corydoras here.

The water temperature in this aquarium compared to the quarantine turret aquarium match. There's no worries in needed to acclimate there. Also, since I never really worried about parameters of the water like pH, hardness, or anything like that, all of my tanks match as well. The discus tank is the same as the wall rue tank. The wall rue tank’s the same as the African cichlid tanks and you're going to have all these people that are new to the hobby that doesn't understand that consistency is far more important than fluctuating parameters and constantly chasing those numbers. I focus on water quality and consistency, consistent water temperatures, consistent parameters, consistent water changes.

Of course, I basically just match the parameters that come out of my tap is what these tanks are. Any time I do a water change, the fish aren't getting shocked or anything like that. The Corydoras will probably hide -- oh do they ever look pretty cool in there, take a look at this.

These guys are going to love this substrate simply because it's almost like they blend in. If I try to focus on them, if I don't point them out it's almost like you almost can't see them, but they're going to love this tank. Some more over here. It's going to look awesome while we think they're being fed.

Okay, now we're left with snails. I'll add, I don't know how many we have here. One, two, we must have 30 snails in here. I'm going to plan to add them to one, two, three tanks. I learned my lesson in adding them to the rainbow tank. Each tank will get about 10 of these snails.

Luckily snails don't bite or anything. I can just pick them up with my hand, looks like a bunch of marbles. Look how beautiful Nerite snails are though. If you can have a peek. Look at their beautiful coloration in their stripes, such a simple design on these snails, shells they're all going to look insistently the same as well. No mysteries, they're not going to be able to overpopulate in your tanks and turn your tanks into a snail aquarium instead. Whatever you add in there is going to be just fine.

We'll add 10 to each tank. I don't want them to, you picked that too much. Throw them in there. Of course some in the Angel tank as well. These guys will definitely flip themselves over. I had a 12 or so in there. These fish don't eat snails either. Snails will flip themselves over in no time.

Then of course a few for the discus tank, these snails are going to love this tank. It’s not a whole lot of algae growing but they'll like munching on these leaves as well as cleaning any back algae that does build up in the tank. These guys are fantastic algae eaters, just takes them a while to clean. Once I get the tank clean though, they'll keep it clean. That is that. Our last little forgotten fish. I'm going to say that the stocking on the Tropius tank is pretty much done. Up here, I think I want to remove some of the less dominant males, add in some different varieties. This tank here, Frank's tank. Frank's not going anywhere so probably, I'll build him a tank in here somewhere. That tank is being turned into a Central American tank. Fish that are coming are going up in there.

For example, the angelfish tank I'm going to say that's finished with stocking, water tank is done, discus tank pretty much done, loach tank adding more fish into there. We still have three more 120-gallon tanks on the end of this racking system. The 375 is getting a makeover. The 2,000-gallon aquarium is getting a makeover. All the fish are staying, I'm just changing some things around.

Anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed today's video. You should run out and get yourself some Nerite snails. These are definitely a really good snail especially if you don't want to be overrun with them and you want a nice looking snail that kind of eats algae and what not especially Corydoras. Corydoras are staple in the hobby. There's all different types of varieties almost as one of the most variable fish in the hobby are catfish especially Corydoras, tons of different types. They do a miraculous job of keeping the tank somewhat clean. They are a scavenger fish, however, they just add a little bit more activity to the bottom and something to consider.

Anyways. I hope you enjoyed today's video. I'd also like to thank you for watching. I got to get back to preparing my quarantine tanks because I got a lot of fish coming in tomorrow.

About King of DIY

Joey is THE King of DIY, and when he built his gallery of aquariums he chose the Custom Aquariums rack system with 120-gallon tanks...a lot of them!

Joey Mullen is also known as the king of DIY, uarujoey or the DIY fishkeeper on social media. Providing education and inspiration for aquarium enthusiasts on YouTube, he is also the author of The Ultimate DIY Handbook; for the DIY Aquarist. His channel is about educating all levels of fish tank hobbyists who are passionate about caring for fish and keeping an aquarium of their own. Joey's aquarium rack systems were custom made by our professional fish tank engineers, here at Custom Aquariums.

Please watch the King of DIY's videos for some helpful information and great tips on diy aquarium keeping.

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