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All My New Fish

By King of DIY on

Speaker 1: The other day we went shopping for new fish for my aquariums and in today's video, I want to talk about the fish that we actually got, but let's start from the beginning and talk about why I went there in the first place. Over the last few months, you guys know that we've been setting all of these fish tanks up in the aquarium racking system, and each one of these aquariums represents a different area in the world. Now, I'm not looking to create biotopes or biotypes otherwise, none of these aquariums would really make sense. For example, on the angelfish aquarium, if this was a biotope aquarium, for one, platinum angels do not exist in the wild.

Most of these plants are not going to be endemic to the area that angels are found either. Plus, the fact of this wood, that's Manzanita wood, just like this type. That's not found in South America, that's found in California, or at least Western North America, but you get the point. Really, not a single aquarium in here is a biotope, and I've heard people say like, "He's creating biotypes or biotopes," however you want to pronounce it and say it. No I'm not. What I'm doing is creating aquariums with fish from certain areas of the world and giving them decors, or aquascapes that I think look good and mesh well with these fish, and I think that they'll enjoy it, and the same thing is going to happen here. More on the aquascape later, but the point of this video is, I went to the pet store to buy fish for this aquarium. Now, originally I was thinking simple fish like gourami and whatnot, but they didn't have any, or enough of the types that I would've preferred for this tank, but that doesn't mean that some of the fish that I did buy didn't end up making sense for going in this aquarium. Let me explain.

Before I show you, I just got to say, Asia is a massive area. It incorporates a ton of islands and land masses that-- A lot of people don't even realize, when I say an Asia aquarium, that truly opens up a lot of doors and options for me. Let's reminiscent the store first. I'm going to get some clown loaches too. Nice size, nice and active, nice dark coloration. These guys would look a lot better on a lighter substrate though. Okay. The clown loaches were so cute, I couldn't resist. In fact, I couldn't resist all of them so I bought all of them. I got about 25 in the tank right now, and I wanted to show you guys these first because they're simply going to ruin the shot for all the other fish I want to show you. They're just dashing around all of the time. Now, the interesting thing about these guys is they too are from Indonesia, Borneo as well as Sumatra, which is in South East Asia. Asia is a massive landmass which opens up a massive amount of doors for me.

When I talk about getting fish from Asia, this incorporates a massive amount of fish. You wouldn't believe the amount of fish from there, it's almost like the Amazon so to speak. Now, I'll admit, when I bought them, I bought them for a couple of reasons. One, they're absolutely adorable and I'd love to keep them again. Second is I thought maybe I could put them in the 375 gallon. Of course the ray would have to come out, because he'd make a meal of them, but he's getting out-- Or she is getting out of there eventually, but wouldn't they look amazing in here. Perhaps one day, when they outgrow the 120, that's possibly something I could do because, believe it or not, clown loaches get remarkably robust and big, some of them getting to seven, eight, almost a foot long. Some of them are even bigger. I've seen them absolutely massive, but it takes many years to get that size. In the meantime I thought, "Wouldn't they look awesome in the 120 and call it an Asian tank still?" That was an impulse buy so to speak, I had to have to have them, but there was one more impulse buy that kind of makes sense still that's going in that tank. Let me show you. Look at this clown knife.

That's right, I got that clown knife. Absolutely amazing little fish, had to have it. Now, of course, some of you were saying, "Get the black ghost knife, get the black ghost knife." Those are really cool fish, they look awesome in black and white. However, those types of knives tend to hide a lot, whereas the ghost knife-- I'm sorry, the clown knife spends a lot of it's time out in the open. I almost wanted to have a nice carpet of clown loaches, and then have a beautiful big feature fish. Now this is going to work long term. Why? Well, you guys know that I do a lot of tours of public aquariums, and on my travels to them, I see these aquarium fish in full grown monster size, including the clown loach, if you guys can see it here. You can see that this fish gets to almost four feet long, absolutely massive.

Now, you might be asking yourself, "That's not going to last long in a 120," of course not, but guess who's got a 2,000 gallon aquarium begging for a fish like that. So yes, I think it'd be just a fun aquarium to have a bunch of clown loaches on the bottom, nice aquascape, and that clown knife swimming in the top column of the water, or the top portion, just swimming throughout it, and over time that clown knife is going to grow quickly and as soon as it outgrows the tank, or as soon as it starts to pester the loaches, we'll go ahead and take the clown knife, toss it into the 2,000 gallon aquarium, which will have gotten the makeover by then, and I think eventually we'll also take the clown loaches and transfer them to the 375 and give that something on the bottom. That leaves us with this tank wide open once again, but in the mean time, we're going to toss clown loaches and clown knives in this aquarium, just have a bunch of clowns. [chuckles] There's a dad joke for you. On the topic of the 2,000 gallon aquarium though, let me make a lot of you happy. Ooh, he's got some peacock bass in here, he's got three, four of them. I wonder.

Yes, I had to go ahead and grab those little peacock bass, they were so cute and adorable. Little thin, but I think I can plump them up and grow them out quite quickly, and when they do get the size, we'll toss them in the 2,000 gallon aquarium, but with that said, these regular oscillaris peacock bass are not my favorite type however, I feel like I've caught the bug now, and I finally pulled the trigger on getting some peacock bass. Maybe we should buy some more that are a lot larger, that we can add to the 2,000 immediately. Now, if you think, we're going to have five freshwater stingrays in there, and Asian, peacock bass, and that huge clown knife eventually. Do we need something else? Well, perhaps, but that's it for the 2,000 gallon aquarium for now. Now I want to talk about some other fish that I got for the racking system that I didn't plan on getting but I knew I was going to get them anyways. Now, as many of you guys know, the stocking in these aquariums is not final. Like for example, we've got 25 or 30 platinum angels up here, we've got about 16 discus and a bunch of cardinals. We've got Frank, which we'll talk about Frank in a minute, the water root tank.

Now, this tank is almost completed, and then of course the African tanks. We're not going to go over everything. What I want to get to though is that, I still kind of want some other fish in here. This tank isn't always going to have 30 angels in it. In fact, we talked about having only 10 or 12. I do want some other fish in there. Maybe we'll add in some tetras, maybe we'll add in some bottom dwellers for this tank as well as the tank like these guys here. Some corydora here, over here. That's right. Those little corydora, and I had to get them. Classic bottom dwellers for any aquarium, a fantastic scavenger crew per se, where they'll clean and almost turn up the gravel a little bit. I plan on putting some of those in the angel fish tank as well as the tank. I got all because those are some of my favorites however, there's tons of corydora out there, and it's one of the most diverse types of catfish that you can get and explore, and I invite you to do so, there's tons out there that you might find a little more appealing than the peppered.

I think I like the peppered just because it's bloaches, and the spotting, that sort of thing, breaks it up a little bit. You guys remember the nerite snails that I added to this aquarium a little while back. Of course I picked up a few more of those as well, and we're going to add them in probably to the angel fish tank, the discus tank, the tank, but I like these guys because they got great designs, they're great algae eaters, and they're not going to breed and turn my aquariums into snail aquariums over time because while they will lay a ton of eggs, which they did in the 375, those eggs aren't going to hatch unless it's in brackish water. If you're looking for a snail that's going to do the job, but you're not going to end up with a snail that's going to reproduce in your tank and you get nothing but thousands of snails in your tank ruining the overall look, look into nerite snails. I think Frank heard me say his name earlier. I think Frank also watches my videos, I think Frank also noticed that I said this the other day. I need it. I need you. It's beautiful. Now I'm sorry my friend, but I had to.

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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