Welcome back, everyone. Here's my tank setup in Corpus, little fishes, little buddy doing fine. Everything's here, chilling. Got some drawer setup and this is just what I do. Typically, I have things separated for testing and maintenance, not maintenance but testing and aquascaping. Then here is filtration, maintenance, whatever I need to do. Yes, everybody's moved and set up in Corpus with me now.
What I'm going to roll next is the footage of the crate, what's in it, and how I set it up and moved it here to Corpus. See you guys there. This is what the crate looks like when you get it. I took the front off just so I can make sure everything is in there.
What I ordered, this is the whole packaging on the inside. Right here is the chiller that I ordered with everything. This didn't come with the whole crate, I just put it there because it was convenient along with that tubing I bought separately, but everything else came as you see. Packaging, I have to say is the best packaging I've ever had on anything, especially this size. They they really went the extra mile. I don't even know what is that for, but they did it, so cool.
This is the sump system that I've got going for the tank upgrade. They gave me filter socks and there's five extra ones in there, so it'll flow in through here, then it'll go through about four or five media trays right here. Here the media trays. These are the siphon stoppers, water goes out the bottom of the lock line right here, and if anything you have a back siphon, the water will come out of these. This is the HD overflow, it's a really nice overflow. Just like five of these, you can see like a stack, one, two, three, four, five, yes, and these media trays.
Over here there's going to be just the return area when I put all my pumps here. I'm doing two pumps, one for each output, just so I can have redundancy. Then this is the intake tube, the HD overflow comes with this. There's a sponge kind of mat at the bottom, and then right here there's just a big bucket of just media to give you, it's really useful. This right here, this entire thing is the stand and that's the canopy that's going to be going on. In the back, here, you have the sliding doors and back there as well. You can't see it, or I guess you can, right here.
Those are going to be black doors, they're just going to slide either way on the top or on the bottom. The tank I got separately but they made everything else custom, and this is all their creation. I'm just excited for all of this. I'll show the whole building process of putting it all together, and something I'm doing with these because I have a more shallow tank. So even if I make this-- only one handed here, sorry.
Even if I push this as far up as it'll go, it's not that bent, you know? Hint, hint, Custom Aquariums, you should make a 90-degree, but I got you because I'm going to do a little experiment that I actually talked with the guys at Custom Aquariums, Ted and Bob, on how I'm going to do what I want to do, because the idea is to have the outputs on each end of the tank and the overflow in the center. I want to have the outputs pointing up like that on each end towards the overflow because I just want to make, as far as the tank goes, the bottom half of the tank, I want to have low to no flow and I want to have a strong kind of current with the outputs just straight to the overflow, so we're just having water circulation and a nice turnover rate.
I'm creating a strong current kind of environment for the white cloud mountain minnows, but only in the top ranges. It's not going to be cycling, they're going to be pointed both up at the overflow but also in the same angle so they cancel each other out right around here. I can keep that low flow to no flow zone for the axolotl to have his comfort and not be stressed, but I can also give the minnows the environment in which they most desire.
Ideally, I'm taking two two animals that have different flow requirements. Even though the minnows can be in the same kind of flow situation as axolotl, they do prefer to have high flow that they can hop into. They don't need to be hammered with high flow the entire time but giving them the option of a strong current to fight against and then mild range or a mild current water to enjoy most the time. That's the idea, we'll see how that goes.
The chiller is just going to be hooked up right here. I got black tubing for the chiller just so there's no growth inside. It's going to eliminate any kind of light getting inside the tubes and making me a situation. I'm just taking water from the last tub and chilling it there before it goes into the inputs or outputs and goes into the tank and cycles everything.
This sump system is overkill, to be honest, for what I'm doing but it's not. Although the tank I have four this is only like 40 gallons and it's acrylic, it's a long tank, this is adding half the water volume or whatever of just filtration. I really wanted this because I wanted a sump system, especially their sump system because of how the material is made. There's no growth in the sidewalls that I have to worry about, I can still see through the glass tops, there's cord, cable management and everything.
It's just a well-designed system that as soon as I saw it, read about it, and looked at it in other videos, I knew I wanted that. Not just for the high waste output that the axolotl does and the big school of mountain minnows I'm going to be having in this tank, but just for ease of convenience, and access, and making my workload less, because I'm severely upping the filtration to a point that I'm not going to stress them out because a lot of filtration as a fine thing to have.
You don't need to worry too-- You're having too much filtration. The only concern is if the output of the filters, the water turnover rate or the fluster that it puts out for current, if that's stressing out your fish or whatever have you, then there's the problem. You can't never have too much filtration.
This is great for me because it gives me ample time. I'm in college, I work in a lab, a biology student, so I can be very busy, classes can pile up, and I have several labs to work for. This right here is my saving grace because I can have all that to do and I can have just one big filter that I don't have to worry about doing maintenance on very repetitiously or all the time, I can let this go a while. Not that I'm going to do neglect this but I can go longer periods of time before I have to service this and it's easier to service, in my opinion.
It'll do a great job taking care of the whole tank and making everything look great. With all those trays right here, I have a lot of room to play with of what I want in those baskets. Even here I had an idea of drawing some pathos just right here to further rip out nitrates, but I think it's just going to be pumps and returns right there. Yes, this is the plan, this is the packaging. Super impressed with the job Custom Aquariums did with this. I've never seen packaging so just neat, well done, orderly. I still don't know what that's for but dude, that's awesome, yes.
Here's a picture of the stand, canopy, and everything that was inside of the crate. Just all my stuff, the aquarium, and how I moved everything over to Corpus. It's about a four and a half hour drive. I just use these big blankets to just pad everything. I just wanted to make sure that the aquarium itself was more than protected on all sides if it bumped into anything along with the stand and everything in it. I just used the U-Haul to move all the stuff as my car was not fitting a quarter of it. As far as moving the fish tank in the axolotl what I do. I couldn't film this because it was only just me and one other person. We were on a time restraint. What I just do to move the axolotl is I put some of the tank water into this big tote, put him in there and put the fish in there. Then, I zip-tie the media trays inside the hang-on-back filters.
I put them in the water too making sure that they're clean. I prepare things ahead of time. I know I am going to move. That way I put that in the water, so all the bacteria, nitrosomonas and nitrobacter, the nitrifying bacteria inside of the filtration will stay alive without a big die-off and then having to recycle my aquarium. I put them in a tote. I put the tote in the car with me. I blast cold air, just so they can have the temperature appropriate while I'm driving just to make the drive as stressless as possible.
Then, for the aquarium itself, I pick it up along with all the cables and everything to it. I have a lid. I put the lid on. I put the stuff on the top of the lid. I make sure I drain the water down to an inch or just above the substrate, the sand so I can keep all the bacteria in that alive as well or as much as I can. Or at least wet. The lid lets there be humidity inside the tank to keep some bacteria alive on all the surfaces. I put that and I make sure I pad that as well and it's put up safely in the back. I just make the drive. That's the last thing that I do when I'm leaving and it's the first thing I set up when I get there.
Here's just that would it look like in the back. Here it is set up my new place in Corpus. Had to move to college. I just took everything down from the crate and moved it on over, made sure that everything was safely put up where nothing could get scratched or I wouldn't mess up the acrylic or anything. This is just what it looks like outside of the crate.
This is the toolkit that I'll be using to drill holes for the intakes and output. In the upcoming videos I'll show you how to drill holes into your aquarium if where you need be. I'll show how to put this all together, take all the wrapping off and put the doors and panels on. Then, it'll be plumbing and filtration and all that fun stuff. Here it is just in a nice location in the house where it fits and I have access to an outlet and no direct sunlight that's going to cause allergy problems. All right. I'll see you guys next time.
