Speaker 1:
We are live. Today's video I decided to go live, simply because I have a few things I want to talk about. I'm going to introduce you to a new tank I'm working on, of course. I'd also like to feed all the fish, give you an update on what's going on there. I want to do a little bit of the giveaway. This is not a huge giveaway but it's an important one to me because I just clued into something I could do for you guys. Because it happens to me a lot and this stuff ends up in the garbage. I don't want to do that anymore, I'm going to start just giving them away, it's really easy for me to do so.
This isn't a giveaway to attract people who like free stuff, this is like merch from me that's damaged and I throw it. It's very minorly damaged. I might as well give it away to you guys. More on that in a minute here. I hope everybody had a great weekend, of course. I know I certainly did. Just want to make sure that we are live. If you're watching this video right now and it has a little live icon, we are live if you are watching it at any other time and it says streamed several hours ago, we're no longer live. I get that question a lot like, "Is this live right now?"
I thought it was prepared, I'm not. For those just coming in here, I need some advice I need some help. I'm taking my time with this tank that's pulled out right there. See how I pulled it out? It's sitting on stools. Always thinking. I want to share with my idea, is what's going in the tank in terms of a theme and then of course, get your guys' feedback on it and whatnot. Of course, I also want to do an update on the fish in general, especially the African sicklets. Oh the wonderful world of African sicklets, right? No.
Let me switch you guys around, here you guys see what I'm talking about here. We're going to have to turn off some lights. Being live, the quality, etcetera is not going to be the same. I know that. I hear those comments every once in a while. Look at these guys, remember when I got them how beautiful they are. A lot of people were saying, "Those guys look juiced. They're identical fish. These guys are stunning." There are some dominant males in the tank. This little peacock for example, this little bugger here, but he's so pretty, I can't move them out.
I was never into these African sicklets, and especially Malawi, until I got them. It just opened my eyes to stop being so stuck up about them. With me it was always like, when it comes to salt water fish, you've seen one saltwater tank, you've seen them all type of deal. Which isn't entirely true, some people have some exotic fish and whatnot. For the most part a lot-- I don't know what happened there. Maybe I can't go too high in the air. Over 2000 watching. Can we get some likes? I haven't gone live for so long, I'm so new to this now, I'm so embarrassed. I'm just going to feed every tank here, flip it around so you don't have to look at my mug, a second here.
Still feeding a mixture of pellets, African sicklets pellets, really based on their diet requirements and whatnot. Got a little bit of my hand there. What the heck is this? Something's in the way. Okay, lens covered. These guys are doing great. I don't know what's up with him. I don't like him so much anymore. A couple of them are getting dark at their sub--dominant, clearly little bit smaller, a little bit more bullied. You can see these guys. This isn't live video, no color correction or white balance, nothing like that. I usually try to do that as much as I can and they definitely look a lot better.
I love the rustic look on these guys here, especially that one. Jordan Cross, thanks for that Super Chat my man. What is on the lens that's blocking this? There you go. These guys are doing good, but not really what I wanted to talk about today in terms of African sicklets though. What I want to show you guys and talk about is the trophiest tank. Now, the trophiest tank is a whole different story. The Malawi's, add water right and hope you got a nice mix. Get along you might have to remove one ultimately. This camera's going to make this look way worse that it is. It looks awesome in person.
Ultimately with these guys, just hope they don't fight. Get all males, hope they don't fight. You get some tattered fins, don't have too many hiding places so they can't create territories. Ultimately they're going to eat whatever you offer them. It's these damn trophies here. Hey Joey, I love your videos and I love your tanks, every single one of them. Great job. Keep it up. Survival 4200, thank you my man. That's super chat.
I really got to talk about these trophies. Look at them. See this one here, sexy. You guys will remember what they look like as fry tiny, tiny little things like this. James, because I couldn't buy you a pint when you were in the UK, James, I drank more than my share. Trust me. I'm a glutton. Look at these guys, these are the trophiest I cola. Now, they're going through their color metamorphosis. Their patterns are changing, etcetera. However, when it comes to trophiest in general, they've got such a bad rep for being a difficult fish to keep, and that's for a couple of reasons.
Not the reasons you would think. It's not like they're sensitive to water quality and water parameters etcetera, etcetera, maybe to an extent some would argue that they are--I just fed them by the way, that's not just random stuff falling. At the end of the day, every fish is going to be sensitive to water quality and ammonia for example. You can't just have ammonia floating in the tank unless you have a labor and fish that can go ahead and gasp air from the top of the water. Or you have like ancient fish like that have the ability to do that as well.
These guys are not difficult to keep because of their requirements and water quality. It's more so their diet, which isn't even number one. Of course they need a vegetable matter diet. What the number one thing is, and these guys are going to look stunning once they're older, especially that big I look at them there. He's going to double in size, he's going to be jet black with a bright yellow bar going on him. What the problem with these guys is, is when you're trying to establish a colony, all hell can break loose once some dominant male show their faces.
If you're not fast enough to sex them and make sure that you have more females than males, and I'm talking to ratio of at least one to five type of deal. If you're not fast enough, you're going to end up with a lot of dead fish. What I've done here, is you'll notice that it's mostly big fish in here. Well, mostly, there's some little ones in there as well that I'm trying. I had to take out about 30 of them because I was getting to that point where some males were starting to show their faces and wanted to be the bosses of their tank.
They're not sexually mature yet though, they were very difficult to vent. I couldn't get it on camera. I tried to film it for you guys. I'll show you how to do that. Most of you will never have to sex your fish, but it certainly is an interesting process that I'll show you. Anyways, there's about 25 in there now. Looks very empty, but trust me, once these guys grow to three, four inches long, and they're an inch and a half, the big guys maybe two inches maybe. Once they double in size type of thing, this tank is definitely going to fill out. I have the right number now, around 25 of them, which is going to look good.
Notice that there's no real algae on the rocks or anything like that. These guys eat it, they graze off of it . You want to age your tank for these guys. You want real success, you have to have an aged aquarium. Unfortunately, one of the best ways to do that is to grow some algae. I'm having trouble because they eat it so quickly. There's a little bit on this rock but it does look natural once we come back like this. That's the Aqua decor background.
I was actually going to make a video on that today. I thought, "Nah, it's not worth a video." There's so much stuff that goes on in here that I want to make videos about but then I think, "No, it's not video worthy. These guys just need a quick update. Let me show them." If you guys want me to dive in depth about any of these topics, of course let me know in the comments. I can't see the chat, it's going by way too fast. Once this video goes out, leave some comments. Let me know what you want to see. I do see them. I do read them. It's not possible for me to reply them all.
My favorite tank is still the war room tank. Can we have a look at that please? This is the worst position out of all the aquarium's to get a good shot because we've got the reflection of the 2000. We'll take a look at these guys in a minute. Something big is happening here soon. The wall room, definitely my favorite tank, for a couple of reasons. One, I love the Tetris in there. They're absolutely stunning. Maybe we can get some of their color here when they flicker in the light and whatnot. I don't care if these guys breed. I don't care what ratio of males to females I have, they look stunning regardless.
Now look at the substrate. You can't get much more natural than this. Again, this is a mixture of sand and fine grade gravel. The gravel alone looks bad, and the sand alone looks okay, but combined with a little bit of detritus build up on it, which isn't really detritus, it's just some of the wood falling off of it. It just makes it look so much more natural. Look at that. So if you don't like the substrate, go ahead and make your own, look at the wall rue. If I didn't have a lot of decorations in here, or if well, you know what, I contribute it mainly to detritus. If I didn't have detritus in here, there's no way these little guys would be out like this.
Now, these are getting a vegetable based diet. They're always nice and fat, this guy, big fat gut on, this one's not so big, but he'll come around. What's going to happen with these guys is they're going to get huge like almost like the size of a saucer but more elongated, but they will be tall and skinny.
We're going to get to Frank in a minute there one, but what's beautiful about these guys is there contrast in color, they're going to grow extremely tall, the most of their body will be a light olive color if I keep diet vegetable based. If I have too much protein, they will remain dark like this. They look like this by the way, they look like leaves. It's their camouflage, which is super cool. They also look like pellets with those tall dorsal fins. When they get older. It gets way bigger.
Now, don't be confused about a herbivore. These guys have a mean set of teeth on them. Believe it or not. I got a picture one time of them yawning. I think it's on my Instagram page, but it's absolutely awesome. Reminds you not to mess with some big fish. Here's a blue up there. See it's just the odd shimmer that catches your eye. Otherwise, they're almost boring, right? Yes, as they get older, they're going to get quite large, and this black as you can see here, they're also called the triangle sicklets.
This is going to turn into almost a triangle on their body, but it's extremely dark black high contrast, a lot of the times will have bright yellow or bright red eyes and a little bit of blue on their fins trailing off of it depending on male or female. I'll show you guys at some point. I had some wall rue that were fed a protein rich diet. I bought them off somebody that never had wall rue before. They were just giving them whatever they would eat, and wall rue will eat whatever you offer them, but because they were given such a protein rich diet all their lives, they were very dark the contrast wasn't really there.
However, mine put in the same tank with that beautiful light olive color. I know it sounds so boring, but once you've run through so many fish, you've kept so many fish, these brown and black and olive fish are also attractive. Nobody's here to see me, none of you want to talk to me. I know who you want to see, this guy. Before we take a look at Frank it just got-- guys, he's a little self-conscious. Stop it. As soon as the the camera points on look like a do so little, little, few little things about Frank, he's a little self-conscious lady lately, he's putting on a lot of weight. He's got a triple chin here, big fat gut. But he does want you to know that he's got a big brain in there. Actually, that's just the buildup of-- it's like an energy resource for them, right? It's just a bunch of fat in there.
You can Google that these big flower one sicklets that passed away and some people cut them open to see what's in its just fat deposits. However, a lot of people say it's largely contributed to their testosterone levels type of thing. Fish don't have testosterone, but you get the idea. Frank's doing well the Bicester isn't here, eats like a beast but what it does is it doesn't come out until we get do Grammys on one of the 120s. We're going to be getting to that in a second but what it does here is it hides all day. I'm sorry for the reflections guys. It hides all day and at night it comes out. That's not unrealistic of a Baicher, Bashir, a biker whatever you want to pronounce it however, that is how they naturally will be unless you remove a lot of the decoration.
This is literally just a lot of fake wood like I put it through there and dropped it in and so it's no pattern, nothing like that. I wanted to get it in there. I kept the lights on long enough to grow a nice thick Kota algae. Now everything's going back to natural but if you look at the sides here, you can see the algae growing in right, now if we look at the wall rue tank, we don't, we have reflections that doesn't look all that natural. Kind of looks cool, because it's continuation but I think this looks way better.
Some people say, "Oh, it's ugly, gross." Go for a dip in in a river in the Amazon and tell me how clean that is. Now the water parameters here are pristine nitrates are typically undetectable, so it's difficult for me to even grow algae at time. I've had to lower water changes to stir up the, the nitrate levels to up the algae catching hold, but ammonia levels are zero. Nitrite of course, is zero, and then nitrate is typically undetectable.
Should we feed Frank? We've fed everybody except Frank and Frank's the gutsiest one in here and that's what he knows he's going to eat. That's his problem. Frank's just going to get his flower horn pellets. You're ridiculous, Frank. I want Frank in his own tank. I want a Frank tank. I've stopped cracking jokes about Frank about not liking him. People took that the wrong way. I love this fish. I wouldn't take care of a fish and dedicate 120 gallon aquarium to him if I didn't like him. I'd sell them or give them away type of thing. He's with me for life. He'll grow nice and old in here and live a good life.
Ready to eat Frank? Yes, I’m ready to eat anything you give me. You see that? To below note. We switch camera around for his maybe, that's usually a better camera here. He creates such a gulping bite when he bites that he gets all these air bubbles in the tank and for that Frank barely see you buddy. My friend.
Okay, moving along. What's next discuss or angels get my little stand here no ladder, John K. Thanks for the $5 Super Chat. If I missing any super chats or anything like that, my apologies. I certainly appreciate it. I really appreciate it for strangers to give me money is has always been a surreal feeling. With that said it goes to good use, I spend all my money out here.
Angel tank, another tank that I forced to become aged this is interesting. A lot of the times you guys have seen my channel and it's always been sterile environments, big fish, big bear bottom tanks, and so so forth. Not even a trace of algae. Lately, I've been trying to age them a little bit more, let them become a little bit more natural and just go with the flow. Because I think that clearly looks a little bit better to some to some, they don't like it.
At the end of the day, I didn't do water changes on any of this before I went live. I should have cleaned up some tanks or whatever, but at the end of the day, it's more important for me to show you guys that, "Hey, I got some algae to and I've got some problems, and I've got a little bit of things I need to work on." Because we all do. A lot of the times I know a lot of YouTubers jump on YouTube, and we all act like experts. You know what that does is for new hobbyist is makes them chase perfection. You're never going to get it, you're going to be constantly wondering about your water quality and parameters and dumping chemicals to change your Ph, and just chasing all of this silly-silly stuff.
You know what, I'll take one on the chin when people call my tanks dirty all you want. Bottom line is you're going to keep watching because you know that I'm going to bring you guys some good information from time to time, mostly. I just want to hear myself talk. We should just talk about the angels. Yes, so this tank is a mess. Let's take a closer look at it. By mess, I mean it is a mess. I mean, I should be clean up some of the algae on the ball. This is what I was trying to do. Like, that looks disgusting, right?
If we will take a step back and kind of get a whole open looking view on it, I think it looks awesome, and the angels love it. Well, they don't know, but they can't see their reflections. I find without reflections, they spend more time throughout the rest of the aquarium. Let's go ahead and feed these guys. What are you guys getting? You guys are getting some frozen foods. They're getting some krill? No, they're not getting krill. They're getting some shrimps. Different types of shrimp. There's some brine shrimp and meiosis in there. This is a big treat for these guys, and it's a lot, like a lot. Gobble that down. Well, at least one of them is going to eat it. No, they'll eat it, and it'll float through the tank.
Since I have circulation, good circulation in the tank, nothing overwhelming. These are big angels with lots of fins. If I had too much circulation, I'd be blowing them all over the place. And they wouldn't be able to swim everywhere. If you look at the brine shrimp, this is the balance you're looking for. You have good even modern circulation, but the fish are not being blown all over the place. Makes sense. That's what you want to look for.
See, filtration and water circulation are not the same thing and shouldn't be treated the same. However, on a smaller tank like a 10 gallon tanks, 20 gallon tank type deal, a lot of the times your filtration can also serve as circulation. In most cases, a lot of people try to go for gallons per hour or how many times are turning over their tank in an hour like and that's what they focus on, and that's good. That's great for filtration, but what about circulation of the tank? Is it enough? How do you know if you don't have enough?
You look at this tank. Look at it. That's what you're looking for. You look at the bottoms of my tank. Nothing's collecting on them. Maybe in the odd one in water that tank, it is to an extent but that's because I got the circulation turned down for the little wall rue but you get the idea. Maybe I should do a video on water circulation versus filtration. I've seen a few videos where people reiterate things I've said in my live videos and pretend it's their information. We know where it came from.
Now, discus, I'm a little upset right now because of the past week these guys have been all throughout the tank. I'm not a little bit upset, I'm really upset. [laughs] I'm going to go get some food. I forgot to bring it out here so you guys can look at this 2000 for a second. It's too bright or something. Give me two minutes. Honey, I'm home. I know in the last video we did on the food. I dropped them a lot. There's 16 discus in there. They ate all of it. Plus there's 40 tetras they ate all of it. Typically speaking though I could feed about this much, twice a day and they'll do okay. With that said, I got some fun news. I'm going to make some homemade dry foods. It's not a flake and not a pellet, but more of a crumble.
If you guys want to see that let me know. I'm going to show it to you anyways you still have a choice. It's a video a lot of people might want to see. As soon as I drop it in it doesn't sink right away but within seconds it starts to. If I didn't have the lights on the room here, let's just shut them off. Which you didn't even notice that the lights go off because the tanks light up the whole spot. I don't have the patience to wait here all day. These guys have been out all week. [laughs] There's nothing you could do about that when your fish are darting around their house. You just get away. You can't stop them. Can't put your hand in there and say, "Stop guys. Don't do that." Discus do that sometimes. All week they've been quite fine, doing really well. Unless they put on some more size and whatnot they continue to do even better.
I'm just going to feed the rainbows here. Wait a second. You guys go up there for a minute? Sorry. I'm trying to get this thing out of the tank. I dropped my tube in there earlier. This tank it shouldn't be in there. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and feed these little guys here. We're also going to feed the regs and we'll go from there. You should probably won't feed the regs I need two hands. Have you guys seen that before? Oops, sorry. Just look at that, they go nuts. That's just a tiny little pellet there. I fed this thing right this morning. We're going to move along. It's been 25 minutes I still got to show the big tank. I still have to show you the new tank and I still got to give away that stuff.
My apologies for not spending enough time on each tank. I'm starting to panic. The rays, the pearl look how beautiful she or he is actually. We got a male pearl, female black diamond, that's a male black diamond back there. Another one down here, we're going to have to go to the other side here to find the other one. I don't know where it went. It's there somewhere it's got to be. There's no one else for it to go. There are all three of them right here. Four rays, we got two female black diamonds, this is the male right there. He's doing well look at the plants doing really good too. Everything's doing well and the.
Look at the algae. We took this off before. I don't care about this. I'm not cleaning it up because this whole tank is getting ripped apart. Everything's taken out. I'm draining it. Taking the fish out and so forth because it's getting an overhaul that I'm really excited about. It's going to be absolutely stunning. It's going to be the best 2,000-gallon aquarium in this whole gallery believe it or not. I want to show you a top-down. Where'd she go? Hey, little lady, here you are. Look at her pacing. Now, I'm going to drop just a few little pieces of food in there for her. It's fresh food. Let's see what happens. Ready? [laughs] She's crazy. Here you go. She ate it all. Let's feed the rest. This is just a light feeding for this video.
These guys will eat as many times a day as I feed them. I like to feed them one big meal a day as opposed to several small feedings just to get them conditioned for when I'm not around. Unfortunately, I do have to travel a lot. A lot of the times you guys don't even know about it. Ultimately, these guys are doing really well. Carefree as long as the parameters in the tank remain the same or at least as close to this. There she goes can't get enough. Do you guys want to see the new tank?
The new tank that I'm working on. I get to do this everyday. Once the gallery has been filled or completed I actually have a lot of winter preparation I have to do. Things I didn't do yet to the plumbing and whatnot. The water supply to winterize it. Once we're really settled in here I hope to be able to do live videos a couple of times a week. Possibly do questions or something like that at the time. For now, just got to focus on different things. This is the tank that I want to do next. This is a background that's in it. I've got a big piece of Malaysian woodstuck in there right now. I need to cut it for it to fit so it's taking away from the detail of this background. This is another of those aqua decor backgrounds. Look how realistic that is. That's insane.
This is going to be an Asian aquarium so there's going to be a lot of Asian fish in it. I'll even tell you what they're going to be. For example, I'm not positive Gourami, Rasboras, fish like that. Also, I want to put in more Corydora, placos, everything throughout these aquariums. Fish aren't always available all of the time. I can't add every fish into each tank. One of the things I have to do watch list and watch for when things are available. If I can get them at the time, etcetera.
A lot of people are saying, "Why don't you do this? Why don't you add this?" I've got to be patient, I've got to wait. It'd be like me asking you, "Why you don't have this fish or that fish?" Maybe you don't have a room. Maybe you can't find it, etcetera. I'm the same. I got to be wait patiently and find them. I'm adding a tremendous amount more fish to these tanks. I might even dwindle stalking on some of the species so I can add in additional others because a lot of these are already stalked pretty high.
Let's look at this tank. This is going to be an Asian tank. That's not the way this wood is going to go in. I wanted to know how it's going to fit in there and what am I going to have to cut. I'm going to have to cut a big chunk of this wood off right here. Maybe a little bit there. If you could see, it's like a stump. Isn't that awesome? What I wanted to do is go in the corner and have its branches come out. I'm going to add more branches to it. I've got other pieces that I can cut up and whatnot. I'd like it to come across the bottom of the tank like its roots. It'll complement this.
The downside is, once it's wet it's very dark. This isn't going to change color. It ruins it for me and with the contrast and whatnot. We'll see what happens. I'd love to get you guys' ideas on my thoughts. Should I go with manzanita? I have a tremendous amount of manzanita wood left. That is what is this wood. Of course the wood over in this tank. That's all manzanita as well. Manzanita comes in a bunch of different shapes, sizes, and colors. Ultimately, I could do whatever I needed with it. However, I don't have anything that looks like this.
I like the look of that. It stands about 16 inches tall. Again, it's going to lay down. It's going to be pushed into the corners. It's going to be cut off slightly. I'd like to put more roots that are coming that are coming out from here maybe. I'd like to plants in close to the wood. I'd like to have a really big open swimming space. Really simple escape and then the fish again very accessible fish. Putting them into an environment that you might want to create yourself as well. I don't know.
I'd love to know your thoughts though. Let me know what do there. I'm just kind of messing around and toying with it very early stages. If you have ideas on stocking and what not, wait till this video uploads. The chat moves too fast. I'll never be able to read them all and consume them or memorize what you guys said, but chat I can search it and what not, as well. Put those in the chat, for sure.
Find an angle so that you're not glaring. Okay. Sometimes I damage these books, You guys know my book. The ultimate do it yourself handbook for the do it yourself quest. I damage these all the time. By damage, I mean, if you can see it the corner here is a little bit bent. If you're anything like me, if I'm buying something brand new, I want it to be brand new. I'm not going to sell that. Then this one had a crease. This one is actually really bad.
Technically, I'll throw these out and I've thrown a lot out. My apologies for anybody that gets upset about that, but I'm going to make it up and give these away. How do you win? Tell me why you want one of these books in the comment section below once this video uploads. Not in the chat section, the chat I don't see. I will never see. I'll pick one of you guys in the next day or two, and I'll post screenshots of who won on Facebook and Instagram to show you I'm actually giving these away. I know a couple of channels that are doing giveaways but never actually give things away. Dirty.
I'll message these accounts on YouTube directly. It is those accounts that are actually winning. I'll ship these anywhere in the world. I don't care where they go. Shipping even to Thailand is going to cost about 60 bucks. It's better than throwing them out. I don't plan to do giveaways all the time. If you're subscribing to this channel because you think I'm doing giveaways all the time, don't bother. However. I don't mind giving away my stuff because people that actually want this should be a fan of the channel because this is something that I wrote. It's a massive book if you're not familiar with it. 554 pages of some of my best work.
Some people say what's the difference between your videos and your book? Videos are the trailer, the book is the movie. Find more details later properly. I even still read it. You see my book highlights everything.
We done? I think we done. I think we had a good time. I had a good time. Thank you, everybody, for the support watching. The super chats I appreciate that as well. My apologies for not being able to see all of the comments. Again, just moves too quickly. I don't have moderators or anything like that. I'm sure there's people cursing and spamming et cetera. I hope them the best in their life and they'll become less miserable or whatever is causing them to act out like that. Maybe they need a hug. If you ever see me at a live event, come and get one. I don't want you guys to leave.
That's it, guys. I appreciate the support. Again. if you want to win the books, leave a comment. I don't want you spam it again and again and again. Leave one comment just saying why you need the book. If you haven't like this video, there's like three thousand of you watching. Please leave a like, it really helps this channel out, it really helps me out. I love reaching more hobbies just like this and even new hobbies that are in the hobby where I have the opportunity to show some of the cool stuff we do and potentially gets them into the aquarium hobby. Your support goes way further than you might think. Anyways guys, thanks for watching. What's today, Tuesday. I'll have a video for you guys out on Thursday. I don't know what it will be, but I know it would be something I'm excited to show you.
