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Feeding All My Aquariums

By King of DIY on

Joey Mullen:
Been a while since we've been live. I thought we do a live video. In today's video, I hope to feed the fish. Give you guys some updates. Show you guys what I'm been up to, a sneak peek at a few things and some future plans as well.

Of course, this is a live video so production isn't going to be that great. Audio, as well as video, may not be perfect. It is on a cell phone, and we are mobile, and we are live, so we'll be able to share this moment together which I'm looking forward to.

With that said, there's quite a bit of things that I'd like to update you guys on today. Mostly, we're going to be feeding all of the fish, of course. Going over what I'm feeding them, why I'm feeding them, and how I feed them. Then, of course, some generalized updates. It's been a while since we've been live, though and I've been itching to do one for quite some time. I had a different video lined up for today, but I couldn't get to it in time. With that said, I will show you something I've been working on. We're going to take a look at the Angelfish tank. See where that escaped at. See how far along we are, and hopefully, you guys enjoy it.

I'm just going to get started. Wait for a few of you guys to get here. A couple of thousand people watching, awesome. Make sure you hit the thumbs up button. I do appreciate that type of support as always. I'm just letting everybody know where I'm at. Tuesday afternoon, I've never done a live stream on a Tuesday but looking forward to. We're going to take a look at the African Cichlids, of course, the Malawi. We will come down to the Tropheus. We will go up to Frank. Of course, got to show Frank. Take a look at the South American tank that's going to be low. Of course, get over to that plankton aquarium. No fish in that yet but soon.

Really, I just need to finish planting it, move some things around. I had some big problems with it. Of course, we'll take a look at the Discus, the 375-gallon tank, and, of course, the Stingray tank, as well as feeding everybody. I'm definitely really looking forward to that with you guys today. Thank you for joining me on a Tuesday afternoon. Let's get moving here.

How is everybody doing? Good? Good. All right. The light shut off. All right. A lot of you guys know that I've been working on lighting. That's been a big thing for me. I'm really excited about it. You know what? Let's do a basic overview of the lights because I've been talking about it so much. You guys need to see this thing. Lighting is installed now. You'll notice that the center shadow is long gone which is beneficial, clearly.

I know a lot of you guys we're saying, "The shadow is bothering me." If you haven't figured it out yet, a lot of the times I just get things up and running to the point where the fish can live in it. Then we can make it pretty and make adjustments. I'm not now worried about making it perfect right out the bat. I have nobody to impress and, on average, nobody sets everything up perfectly upfront. Look at this. These are Tropheus Ikola. A little bit of flashing, that's fine. Some of them are already showing adult coloration. Here's a juvenile, some black striping. These guys go through such a metamorphosis. Absolutely awesome.

light off Lake Malawi up top. This only got 50% of the lighting on. When I was programming it, I ran out of time today, and this side of the lighting simply got programmed the opposite. In the middle of the night, that's going to turn on. [laughs] The fish will get a surprise. I got to remember to fix that. Ultimately, check out this lighting. It's absolutely incredible. Believe it or not, it's the same lighting on every aquarium. We're going to talk more about it in a minute. These guys are looking absolutely stunning. We're going to feed them here in a second as well.

I'm not sure if this camera's really going to pick up what they look like. A few of them are nipping at each other but nothing incredibly damaging. I do see a few of them have some wounds healing and what not. Actually, just seen it on the other side of this guy. Nothing to worry about though. We'll keep the water clean. We'll keep them well-fed. Keep them happy. This guy's got a little bit of torn fins. Let them establish each other, establish in the aquarium. A lot of the times everybody wants everything to be perfect right off the bat, "The fish aren't eating. They're not acting properly," or "They're hiding," so they turn to medications. I never understood that. Just let the fish settle and they'll get going.

Frank, do a barrel roll. You're on camera. You always do this. You always let me down. Go down. Do your barrel roll, come on. There you go. Do another one. There you go. [laughs] He's like a dolphin, isn't he? Look at him though. Frank's lighting is specific to him. I'm trying to bring out his reds and blues. This cellphone video is not going to capture it quite well, but, if I take a picture, you guys have seen it on Instagram if you followed me there, he looks absolutely stunning. That's one of the big benefits of this types of lighting which we're going to talk about in a second.

Actually, we'll talk about it right now. Get it over with. I mentioned that lighting was going to be a big deal out here. Clearly, it's a gallery. I want everything to look good. Not much of a gallery right now because everything's destroyed, but lighting is going to be absolutely instrumental. We want to display the tanks and the fishes' coloration as best as we possibly can. Lighting has to play a huge role there, but I don't want the same lighting on every tank. Why? Because they'll all start looking the same. Whether you believe it or not. Go to your pet store. They have all the same lighting. All the tanks look the same for the most part.

The light came back on. I was playing around with programming. I can make them do whatever I want. Here's the thing. I'm speaking with the company and all the details are going to come up soon. Nobody knows about this. I've got the first ones in the world. I spoke with this company and I said, "What do the fresh water hobby need? What does it need? What does it really need?" You know what we need? We need technology, affordable technology, and we want it in the lighting spectrum. We've got tons of different options for filtration and other gadgets. We can make almost everything we can, but it's becoming expensive to even build your own lighting that has true technology behind it.

What would I want a light to do? I wanted to allow me to control whatever light spectrum I want to create. I wanted to put it on schedules. I wanted a built-in Wi-Fi. I wanted to also grow plants. Who doesn't want a light that can also grow plants? I don't need to in most of these tanks, but I want the option. I also wanted to be for less than 200 bucks. Let's be honest, in the freshwater hobby, we don't put as much money into our tanks as in the saltwater hobby. We all have a budget, maxes out at about $200. They said, "Sure," and they did it.

I'm really excited simply because it's very lighting. I have two on these tanks, but I had one originally, totally enough but because I don't have a lot of space to put the lights, to mount them-- I've got 6 inches on this tank. It means it's close to the water surface, and I've got-- Which shut off again. I've really messed around with that schedule. I'm really into gadgets though. I like to play around and see what's possible. I had these going through storms.

I had clouds going over them. It was insane but because I have such low clearance level, I had the braces in the middle, put the tank right over the top, that brace was in there. Perfect lighting. However, if I was able to put it up above higher, it would have lit the whole tank. To be honest with you, I put two on the 2,000 gallon aquarium, and it looked the same as what I have on it now.

I think you guys would be pretty excited, especially given the price point. At the end of the day, I couldn't build this for less than $400 type of deal. You want to turn it and flip it however you'd like, or it's not do-it-yourself, etcetera, etcetera. At the end of the day, do-it-yourself isn't all about pricing, but when things start to couple and cost you double and triple the amount it would have to buy it, let's get practical.

We've got to stop talking about that though because I do get excited. I'm running out of breath talking about it. There's so much I want to tell you about it, but it's the 9 out of 10 reasons why I dealt with this company in the first. If you don't know who it is, it's EcoTech Marine who has multiple companies underneath of them. A high-quality light for less than $200 is absolutely insane. I'm loving them. I'm loving them. You can see every tank has its own color positioned and lit for the exact fish that are in the tank.

I don't think you guys want to talk about that anymore because I don't. Unless I can show you, and I'm not ready to show you because they're not mounted properly. Everything's messy. Look at my cords over here, cords everywhere. The chords are 15, 20 feet long or something like that, which is awesome. So many lights have these tiny little cords on them, and I hate them. You've got to have extension cords. Not with these.

All right. Let's feed the Tropheus. Tropheus are going to get a herbivorous diet. The big thing with Tropheus: clean water, lots of water change, and give them a herbivorous diet. Lots of plant matter. Some foods will have spirulina in it and whatnot. That's good enough, but, as for-- How am I going to change this, now? Tropheus, if you don't give them what exactly-- That is not going to work. Technical difficulties when you're live. With Tropeus, if you don't give them what they need, their specific diet, they're going to develop bloat.

Bloat's what's called an internal swelling. What are you guys doing? Stop looking down there, bunch of perverts dammit. All right. It's an internal swelling. It's going to eventually kill them, summarize it. You guys can google that. [coughs] Still a little sick but we're going to live. Can't see nothing can you? You looking at my lights? I actually feed these guys a variety of sizes of pellets. There's a variety sizes of Tropheus in here.

They're not all growing at the same pace. We got some and some Juveniles but this is a one millimeter pellet. Now, as a rule of thumb, I feed as much food as they'll consume. I don't go by time. I go by the fact that if it touches the ground. These guys are not fast enough at this size. The pellets are relatively big. They hard, they going to let them soften up a bit, they'll hit the ground and then they'll come up and feed off them. I am running these lights at about 12 to 14 hours a day which is absolutely horrible. I don't get green water at that rate but I will get a lot of algae growing on the rocks.

We want that with these guys. These guys are going to constantly feed off it. Once I get a nice coat of algae on this, we'll tone it down a bit. Get you guys closer. How do you do this? All right. Where's the food guys? If you see that guy on the rock over there, he's eating the pellets off it. A lot of them once the algae starts growing, you can imagine. They just pick off the algae like that. If you look these guys up and try to see them in the wild, that's exactly what they're doing all the time.

They're always around a lot of rocks with a lot of algae on them. George Forearm is in the house. George? I got to look at you for this. My man, I've been preparing for you and I'm coming. I'm going to win. George is going to destroy me. Hands down if I keep this fair. It's a straight up scaping contest. Nobody wants to see that. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, I'm coming to the London UK on October 14 for a scape off with George. I'm also going to give a presentation, we do several raffles and giveaways, meet and greet. A ton of fun stuff.

When it came to this scape off, I wanted it to be fun. I wanted it to be exciting. I wanted to create basically something that people that can get actually excited about. It's not that exciting meeting me. Let's be honest. Okay, you can meet me but at the end of the day, it's not that exciting but if I'm going heads-up with somebody you guys know I'm not that good at, I could potentially get humiliated. Over 500 thousand people following me, this could ruin me.

It's all for fun. I don't care if I win or lose. I want to bring some attention to George and what he does. I also want to bring attention to Aquascaping in general and show what it can be fun. Use our powers for the better I guess. With that said, I'm cheating. [chuckle] I'm literally cheating. I call them challenges. Let's call it cheating. Lots of different little rules. I won't explain it. We already did a video on this.

I'm just really looking forward to it and having fun and laughing and being with a lot of like-minded hobbyists. At the end of the day, that's what truly matters to me. Just really looking forward to it. Really, I'm going to be over in the UK probably doing some tours, fish store tours, check out come hobbyist tanks and what-not. I hope to be able to showcase the United Kingdom hobby worldwide as well, bring some focus to those guys.

Overall, I'm just looking forward to squashing George. We could just be me and him there. I just want to beat him. Here's what I'm going to do. How do you win? This is hilarious. This is going to be crowd vote, cheers. Whoever cheers the loudest for whoever wins. I don't know if George has agreed to that yet. We're going to talk later on this week. If that's the case, I'll win. Although you guys can be jerks to me sometimes. You'll probably troll me and not let me win. Cheer for George.

Which is probably appropriate but ultimately, who cares? The hobby is the winner. Is that what we say? All right, I'm going to feed these guys. Holding the food and the camera and getting up on this ladder, I don't touch the ceiling though, getting close. Good thing I'm only four foot nine. I'm not four foot nine but you guys don't know any better. All right, I'm going to shut this light off. I'm such an amateur. I like this camera angle.

You guys are part of the food. All right, here we go. Get in there. Always wondered if fish could talk, what would they be saying when they're eating? Some fish are just simply not intelligent and you got to give them a little bit more. Tip trader, from the saltwater tank, you should do stock predator, tank, microalgae for nutrients. Make it like a plant attack, that's what you said. Good idea man, we'll see what happens.

We're going to actually look at the saltwater tank here in a minute and feed that. That's been going through some problems. My fault. My bad. I wish I would have program that light properly. I just ran out of time. There you got it. Malawi, Tanganyika. There's a tremendous amount of Tanganyika Cichlids and fish out there that you guys can keep. I've done Tropheus, Frontosa, Calvus, of course, the Shell-Dwellers.

A lot of people asking about the Shell-dwellers, they're not coming out here at all. There's nowhere to put them. I can put them in here and they'll be killed. Not right now but eventually these Tropheus are going to be pretty mean little things and they'll kill them. They're going to stay in a little office tank or something like that. I don't know. Which one do you guys like better? Tropheus or the Malawi.

Malawi is easy to like right now because the fish are quite large. It's an unfair contest. All right, let's move along. I got to show you guys this back ground. This looks way better in person. We've got reflections and stuff on it right now, maybe we can dim the lights or something. Now, it's still getting the reflection of the 2000 which well take a look at in a sec. I'm really loving this background.

This tank's filled with water but look at that, by the way, this is fake, Aquatarra background. Isn't that amazing? I've been playing around with some Malaysian driftwood to put in here. This will be I would like to also maybe to do some flag Cichlids or some Keyholes or some other smaller size Cichlid. I also maybe even do some pistomes. I don't know what we'll do and then some Tetras and whatnot. We'll see what happens. Frank, you hungry? "Yes, man, I'm always hungry" All right, let's feed Frank.

Frank's getting this and he has been. I don't know what it's called. It's like this Japanese food. Come on, Frank. I'm just opening it now. Frank gets this Japanese food. It's a mixture of four different types. I didn't know what to give him so I just mixed it up. Oddly, he'll eat anything I give him so nothing to worry about. I shouldn't even say oddly. He's a disgusting animal. He needs to lose some weight and he's got a double chin. He's sensitive about it. I can't talk about it too much.

Frank, you want some food? I really should've organized this better. You guys see him from above. Say hi, Frank. Something to eat? Here we can get a close up of him though. You can see the reds coming out and the blues. I can put him in a light with, say, 5,000 kelvins, that's great before I clean up the tank which this is close too. You can see the color difference. He's not going to look good over there. He's going to look good over here in the better lighting, in the lighting specific for him.

It's pretty important to have good lighting, especially with only fish, of course. When I clean up the tank, we settle for this but I'd hope the fish look good in it, although those platinum angels are going to look amazing in there. You done eating their guts? You want some more? Whose big fat gut. If you look at his white band on his belly here, you can see it here, that's just part of his coloration.

It looks like he's constipated or bloated that's just a side effect to hybridization. Some fish just get compressed bodies. He's in between a short body and a long body like a regular Flowerhorn. He's not a short body but when you get in to short bodies, they still have the same size lungs and heart and digestive system it's just compressed. If you are going to do a short body fish, you typically want to get a bigger fish like this that handle that compression.

A lot of the times, her heart's up here anyway, barely any internal organs down past the midway point, actually, past where he pose, there's nothing back there, just meat. What's wrong, Frank? Such a stud. Frank's not the best flower horn. If you've never seen Flower horn, although he might look pretty good. In terms of quality and whatnot, it's pretty low grade but I like him, and he likes me. I hate that he's so popular with you guys though, I despise that. It pisses me off.

All right, Discus, these guys' lighting-- I can't go close to them because they're delicate little princesses. That's the worst part about small Discus. They will get used to me being down here but-- I'm not down here. I'm not at my basement anymore. We upgraded. They'll get used to being out here eventually, but right now, of course, they're going to need more time. They're all doing fine. They're eating and doing good. Feeding, let me get some food. I have to come out and see you guys. I know that you like your privacy, bunch of divas but the lighting on this tank is, since we don't have any plants in here, actually, there is a little bit of java moss attached to the wood here and there.

I'm just as curious to see what happen. I'm talking a couple of strands here and there, nothing incredible, a couple of the nooks and crannies. I just want to see if the lights can grow them at the spectrum I've put them at. It's a heavy emphasis on the super reds and some blues, a little bit of cool white, warm white, and, of course, some greens. We're talking 20% to 120% ratio type of deal.

These guys look great. As adults, they're going to look absolutely stunning. They're settling well but a few of them are peppering, I don't like that. I hate it. That's why I would have kept these guys in a white tank, bare bottom, grow them out but this is pretty much the same thing. They're not creating a ton of waste on the bottom so pretty much no real water changes are needed.

If you notice the flicker from the LED, that's what we're using. It's because we don't have a lot of surface moving up there, but I'm going to substantially increase that so we get the shimmer across the whole tank like this one that we're going to take a look at in a minute. I'll just go ahead and feed these guys. What I do with these guys is, I'm going to dump the food into the wave maker. Right now, they're just getting frozen foods. This is just a spirulina branch root mix, just a nice little combination, easy to feed and they will eat it. I don't care what I feed them right now, I just want them to eat it. The downside to Discus, a lot of the times though is they won't eat in front of you.

That will float around the tank but I put it in front of the wave maker and look at the distribution. That's proper circulation. It's barely in the water two seconds and the branch have filled the tank, it's everywhere, look. That's what you're looking for with circulation. It's not blowing all over the place. It's not going nuts. We have even distribution of the water. I can't talk loud. You see that? They scattered. All right, once we move on, they'll eat. This is the difference between circulation and water flow.

When I mention circulation, this is it. I just want the water to be moving around constantly, allows for even distribution of the filtered water. Also, heat distribution. I don't have a single heater on in here by the way, and it's about 26 degrees in here but I've got a large fan blowing so blowing so it doesn't really feel like that. If it gets too hot in here I might start wearing tank tops which is-- They make me look silly but this is too hot.

Angelfish tank, look at me, don't look at that tank you look it over of my shoulder. Quick story about this tank, see the lights, don't look there. Look here or look here. With the Angelfish tank, when scaping aquariums, in my opinion, I'm not a great aqua scaper but I understand the fish and what they need. When scaping a tank, I always keep the fish in mind, for example, discus, with decorations should have decorations that stand straight up for the most part.

That's why we use cones and whatnot for breeding or sticks that are standing straight up or almost vertical, nothing jutting out. If you've ever see beautifully planted discus tanks, usually the plants are all on the back and the large open space the discus will have that open space. When it comes to Angelfish, it's a big difference story, not a big different story, just a different story where you have to focus on two things which is water flow, they have such large flowing fins, as well as open space.

They do appreciate a ton of open space but it doesn't have to be like this. It has to be more so, just got the-- I'm may have to climb up there. You don't want a lot of flow but you need a lot of circulation and that's the same with any aquarium. Proper circulation can solve so many problems. Switch you guys back. This is where I'm at with it. The problem here is all of these wood was floating and it's brand new. Look at this, that's just a little bit of decomposition, no big deal. It's going to fall off in a little bit.

It's like a mold, not really a mold, but some of the plants, I drained half the tank and forgot to fill it one day and all the plants up top dried out. Look at this nubias over here, dead. I've got to add in about 20 more plants but there's something you need to know, this is a darker tank, almost gloomy that's what I'm looking for. I want the Angels to be a high contrast.

Look at the entire bottom, wide open, and the angels are going to spend a ton of time under here and up through all of the branches. It's okay to have the branches jading out wherever you want as long as there's actual swimming space. If we look at it from multiple angles, you'll see a lot of people will try to create depth in an aquarium, push a lot of the big decorations to the back and have taper out. I don't care about that.

I just want it to look good and the fish to actually enjoy and inhabit the entire aquarium. This is three pieces. We've got one here that's like a branchy type. If you look it almost looks like these two pieces are together. This one's a longer branch. This is all manzanita. It comes out, ends here, another branch here. You've got a reflection here in my tank, sorry. I can't adjust too much while I'm doing this. I'm very basic. I want to add in some rocks on the bottom. I want to add in more plants, and maybe probably not one more piece of wood.

When I get this on a proper camera, with a wide angle lens, this will look a lot better. I think what I'm going to do now over the next couple of days is some big water changes and I'll add in some more plants, probably some rocks. I don't know yet, because I do like the way this looks anyways, looks like rocks are in there anyways. What's you say? 4,400 plus watching and only 1,000 likes. What is that? What's that, guys?

See how tough it is to make these videos with thousands of people watching, the pressure I'm under, I need to see the love. Hit the like button, please. I'll be begging for likes over here. I was just about to feed that tank, there's nothing in it. I'll love to know what you guys think of that tank maybe we can adjust the lighting so you can see it now, it's not like that. Look at the contrast, that's the word I'm looking for, Discus, Angels. Down low is probably running a color spectrum if you want to call it kelvins.

It's customized but it's probably around 15,000 to 18, 000 Kelvins, while this one's at 65,000 I think. Frank is closer to the higher range just because when you start adding in reds and blues it just keeps going higher and higher. I'm not going to withdraw this lighting here. That's perfect, great for the plants and low maintenance. Here's something we need to remember, what do we have options here? Don't watch background there's a lot of things going on here.

I'll watch what you guys can and can't see. We have to remember something here, at the end of the day, when everything is done, everything is start and everything is set up, guess who have to take care of all of these? Moi. What do we need to do? We need to create some presentable looking aquariums that look good. More Frank, Jesus Skywalker, great name. We have to create some tanks that are not only presentable and look good, but also inhabitable and appropriate for the fish that are in them, but also maintenance friendly.

I don't want to be out here everyday all day from morning till night doing water changes, trimming plants, taking care of them, and, of course, if you see an amazingly scaped tank, they take a lot of work a lot of the time. I want to be able to do water changes once a week. I want to be able to siphon the substrate every two weeks maybe, and then, of course, if I need to do any plant trimmings maybe once a month. I want this to be minimalistic. I want the workload out here to be down to about two hours a day.

Probably going to be seven days a week. Each raft will get a 50% water change once a day, I'll do any other maintenance and that sort of thing. I've already practiced 50% water changes. They take about an hour anyway. Then, the 2,000 will get its own day, and the 375 will get its own day and I know a lot of you guys and girls are thinking that, "That's a ton of work, seven days a week."

I've been doing this 10 years, seven days a week. The one thing that I am worried about is how much of a shock this gallery will be in comparison to what I'm used to. Going from maintaining a few tanks that were pretty much self-maintenance, I didn't have to do anything to having thousands of gallons of water. I think it's about 5,000 gallons of water that I have to keep looking good at all times and I'm worried it'll be a bit of a shock, it'll be a bit of a transition period.

If things aren't moving fast enough for you guys, that's why I'm just taking it slow, making sure it's done properly. Get what I'm saying? All right. Who's left for food. You guys want to do the 2,000 or the 375? Give me a second. I like these live videos, they go a little bit longer but I can't remember things I need to tell you about. With my regular videos, I just say whatever that is on my mind at that given time. If I forget, well, I forget. I got to move on I got stuff to do.

Thank you for all the likes guys and everybody hitting the thumbs up. We're going to feed the rays. All right, switch it, no more looking at me. I got to show you something first. This tank isn't cleaned at all, look at the glass over here. The back, growing algae nicely, I'm leaving it. I think it's going to look cool but I've got to scrub this. "Can I design a tank for you, Joey?" Easy river. No, thanks bro, I got it. Asian Arowana, that's what I want to talk about.

Again, I've got to clean this tank, do a little bit of maintenance. One of the thing about Asian Arowana and even stingray, some of the more exotic fish is feeding them. It can be difficult to get them on a varied diet. Let me show you something about this guy. I always open the lid in a random spot while I just smash that nice. Here, [chuckles] she's hilarious. Watch. This is pellets, tiny little pellets. Arowana don't eat this. Come and get it.

Are you kidding me? I was going to say, you little jerk, don't do this live. Mr. Bubbly, "Hi, from England. Just wondering, because you're trying to show all aspects of the hobby you're going to do such and such?" Good question. I'll answer that for you. I'd love to. How many tanks I've got though, a rock of 10. There's always so much we can do. With that said, I've already talked about things where we'll be transitioning and switching tanks, re-aquascaping, switching the fish out over time.

Will it be tomorrow? No. Will it be in a year? Probably. Could it be in six months? Likely. Yes, we only have so much to do. I don't have a hundred tanks to showcase. I absolutely have every aspect in a hobby but what I can do is, for example, I just covered an entire continent with two types of tanks. Tanika as well as Malawi. Does that cover every fish in every lake there? No, I guarantee you, a lot of people looked up to those lakes and looked up to fish, were inspired or simply want to keep them.

I wanted to so I started to when I moved to South America, Central America. I don't know what I'm going to do up here. Frankly, I can't say. We've got angels versus discus. Then we have four left on the end. We got to do some salt water in here. We got to do a lot of things but we need time, we need patience and I need to complete these tanks. These tanks aren't even close to being done. The discus tank isn't done, this tank isn't even close to being done. There's so much left to do.

I just got to have some patience and I'm going to do my best. I will be responsible with it and ensure that when I do showcase fish, it will be fish that are commonly available or at least relatively easier to find that are somewhat affordable to an extent. I'm buying 40 angelfish type deal. No, that's not affordable to everybody. No, that's not going to be practical but what, three or four angelfish, absolutely possible.

People do that all the time. Do you have to keep platinums? No. You can't keep any type but I just wanted to bring some attention, bring some focus to them and go from there. With that said, that angelfish tank is just going to get a lot of other fish. This 2000's going to get a lot of other fish. We got to feed them up. Keep it moving, keep it moving. These are actually just some shrimp that's just chopped up.

This is just your regular market shrimp. I took the shells off, devein them, chopped them up into mouth sizes, mouth bite sizes. Now, when I feed the rays, I dropped the food in, of course, the guys will eat it. If I dropped it all in there, it's all going to drop right there. It'll blow around a little bit but one of the rays is going to get it and the rest won't get much. Now, I am experimenting with the temperature out in this 2000. I've shut it off, there is no heat on this tank, I'm just heating it with the temperature of the room. I might have to start heating it again simply because the rays have become a lot more inactive.

It's not that bad but the tank itself might be around 25 degrees. A little chilly for smaller rays, I'd like to keep it around 26, 27. Everybody knows that the temperature of an aquarium will impact the metabolism of the fish and that's basically what's happening here. I've got some good news. I don't talk about speaking events or where I'm going to be or what I'm going to do because I hate constantly answering the same questions but not having all details but the Pearl's back there.

There's another ray back there. I've got to scrub this glass. Anyways, I'll talk about that in a minute. Let's just finish feeding everybody. I'd like to throw it in random places in the 2000, make sure everybody gets a little something. The bichir or bichir is not in here yet. It's still in the house in quarantine. We can't go in, we'll switch internet, I haven't really figured much of it. See, by throwing it all over the place, we get some distributed everywhere. If you have competitive eaters, that's kind of what you have to do. Look who takes it. They stay behind there. Some of them, they'll stay back there until they taste food in the tank. The Pearl's going to come up in a minute.

Wait till you see the Pearl. He's a stunner. But these guys are as well. It's funny, I posted a picture some other day of one of the rays, it was this one, it just so happen to be the one out and somebody asked if that was a male or female and they knew it was a male. You can't tell if it's a male. From this size, it's not big enough, you'd have to see his underbelly. But I told you at one point, this male, if you look between his eyes, see the two dots that touched almost, and these guys don't.

When you get to know your rays, you know them by their spotting to an extent. Some people have different methods but they knew it was a male. I was pretty impressed with that that you guys remember a lot of these things. Where did the Pearl go? He's over there, underneath the.  What are you doing? Just hanging out? Have you found a piece of food or something? All right. The tank's looking good. No, it's not, I got to clean it. Rainbow tank.

Check out this moss. See how it's growing. This is a spiky moss, here's a good idea of it. If you look at this one, see how it grows out and then get the spikes on it. It's a Java Moss, it just grows in a ball. This is a variant of Java Moss. Stop following me. [chuckles] I am going to remove this stuff. I'm frustrated with it, it's upsetting me. It's causing me more problems than I'm interested in. This tank hasn't been cleaned since the day I've set it up. I've got some very minimal water changes.

I'm interested in seeing what will happen with the tank. I love doing experiments as long as you're not endangering the fish. Nobody's dying, nobody's really getting sick or anything like that, it's okay to figure out worst case scenario situations with these things. If we take a closer look at these rainbows, you'll see some of the males getting covered up and you can see clearly female to male. The females, for the first time ever, are the ugly ones. The male guys were the pretty guys.

Nice change but they're head cases though, high maintenance. [chuckles] All right, we're going to feed these guys too. Do you like being out here though? This is as much fun as you think it is. I'm going to get some food. I was giving the same food that we gave the Tropheus and the others. These guys will eat anything including my hand. Ready? Come to me, come to me, my children. That's so ridiculous.

It doesn't hurt but it's definitely a different feeling, there's so many of them. It feels like putting your hand inside a stream of air bubbles. These guys are good example of how much to feed. I don't want the pellets to hit the ground, I did feed a little bit too much but they'll get all that. When I do feed these guys, I don't let the food touch the ground. When it starts to touch the ground, I stop, I know I fed too much. They've got their fill, they'll clean it up, they'll eat it. A lot of the times, these guys just eat once a day.

This is also a pretty awesome tank. When I'm looking at the camera versus looking in person, it's so much different, everything's so much bigger in person, like the wood is so much more robust, fills it out so much more. If you look at it from this angle, you can see it's touching the sides. If we look from here, it doesn't look that big. Tank is eight feet long, three feet wide, two feet tall built from 3 quarter inches, I've got a video on building this. Shoot. I hope I don't mispronounce your name. Sorry, I've been missing your super traps guys, it's difficult to pay attention. Yuki says, "Joey, my first $5 earned as a hobby as selling on eBay,

I want to pass on the Aquarium gallery for whatever you need, keep rocking." Thanks brother, I appreciate that. I am talking to Jeff from the Pet's World the other day, and he's like, "Man, you need to get a food sponsor." I was like, "No, I really don't want to attract myself with one person. He said, "No you need one, just imagine how much food", and he knows it's going to pass through, he's feeding a lot of fish. He's like, "Just imagine how much food you're going to go through, it's going to be absolutely ridiculous. I was thinking about that,

I was like, "No, it can't be that bad", I think the monthly bill out here will be between $800 and $1,200 a month, and that should cover power, maintenance, supplies, food and everything. That sounds like a lot but we're doing a lot out here. Don't feel bad for me, don't try to raise money, I do make money from YouTube, I'm doing okay. The whole YouTube advertiser thing is over, well over a couple of months now so we're good. That boycott does it once, it's downside about doing live video, is to get some words. Got a sea salt load of tank. We're 42 minutes into this, I was supposed to do this for 20 minutes.

All right, we're going to speed it up. Okay, don't judge me, this tank has been extremely neglected, things are dying, one thing died, and another fish disappeared. we'll just walk. All right, here's the salt water tank, It's literally just surviving here. You know what I have in here, I just seen it today before I went live, I was like, "I got to go live, there's not time to hide that.

I don't no if it's going to focus, but if you look behind that nosy clown fish, right back there on that rock, you will find something closer is some aiptasia and that sucks, whatever, it happens, probably came in with all the snail. I didn't treat them properly, quarantine them or anything. To get aiptasia will sting you, will kill other corals but right now it's under control, for the time being.

I literally have done nothing with this tank other than feed the fish, If we look at the pulsing zia, looking great. Look at it, pulsing, literally pulses. Not cool, very cheap. I think I got them for $10 or $5 and it's already doubled or tripled in size, you have duncan in the back. I got the back there. That's interesting, I've been moving those guys around.

If you look how tall there, the polyps, they're reaching out, I don't think they're getting enough light or maybe too much light, I don't know them well enough. I've been moving around to see what happens, it's probably not enough light, I haven't turned the light up in a while. is definitely a cool white. Everything else is alive. The only problem I'm having is this coral fell off while I was away and then it died.

Like I said, I really haven't taken care of anything in here, it just sat there. I feed the tank and that's it. I do water change here and there. It's such an easy tank to take care of. I saw the band guy, I have three. I don't know where they went, I feel like I was to say that. I want to say they're hiding but it's gone, it's not in the tank. This thing, but I'm leaving it, I've already wrapped it out, I'm going to try to block that up seek growing in the middle here.

I think that's an algae, like a matador algae or some sort, I don't know. I've just been letting things happen in here, it's a very fascinating tank to watch. In salt water, there's so much life and things going on. It started with a little bush, I ripped it out and it grew back in a few days and it's starting to grow under this coral here. Okay, we'll see what happens. I'm down to one band guy, I don't know where the other one went. It doesn't jump, there's no way for it to jump out.

I think it died, got killed by that other one, there's one dominant one in there and I think it killed the others and then the cleanup crew finished it off. But who knows? I don't pa attention close enough. I'm going to feed them now. This is just a little shot glass, some vodka, no there's no vodka, it's just a mixture of foods in there. Where'd you go, Nobody's hungry. Where'd they go?

We're looking at this right? maybe they're upset with me because I don't spend enough time here, near the tank so they have all become a little skidish. Yes that's all it is. I don't spend enough time near the tank. It was just odd because the clown fish used to attack it. I'll be honest, I've lost interest in that tank, the tank and the fish are healthy for the most part but I'm really focused on one of these up and running.

As I playing it out and realize how expensive that's going to be in terms of coral, I'll keep the fish but those coral will be moving over, just because there's aiptasia in that tank, I'll shut that one down completely, and we'll start completely fresh, it should probably be a better idea anyways for you guys. What else are we going to do guys? I've showed you everything, I think. We're good? Forty seven minutes, okay, that's enough.

I think guys have enough for Joey for one day. I'd love to here your guys thoughts on everything we talked about today, I do check up these comments regularly, you guys have a massive impact on this channel in terms of what we do, the things I talk about. It only takes one call for me to want to address it, I don't need 500 people saying the same thing. One person can say something interesting enough for me to talk about, I will, I think you guys know that by now.

Ultimately, I want to thank you guys for watching, I'll have a new video out in a couple of days, on Thursday, today's Tuesday. Maybe we'll do the making of the angel fish tank. I don't know, that's something exciting that I've been continuously enjoying. I don't really plan up my videos, I don't even know what I'm going to say, or what I'm going to do. It's just whatever I'm most excited about to talk about, whatever I want to do that minute.

This kind of the videos you guys have been getting on, unless I need to film in a advance ultimately. I don't think any of you guys want to hear that. Let me know in the comments section below, what you guys want to see next, coconut string bikini, that's here, just a second. I'm not putting this in front of me, somebody's going to Photoshop and take a screenshot. Somebody sent this when I did that fan mail opening. I was dying opening it. I decide to keep it in there but it was so funny.

I've already told the story behind it but they're still here. I think about putting them on but do I really want to embarrass myself that much, is the question. The answer's probably, no. You're going to get a girl in here away though. I hope that you guys enjoyed today's video, we're going to close this out. I also want to thank you guys for watching. If you're joining me this coming Thursday, I have a new video for you. You guys haven't subscribed to this channel yet and you enjoy all of the things that I'm doing, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any of these. What else do I say? That will do it.

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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