Mike: What's up YouTube. Mike from MASS here, MASS Aquariums bringing you another video tonight. This video is an all tank update plus a fish keeper screw-up. This is number 14, there was two in between as you can remember that we're crazy in this basement, for me anyway. This is another rookie mistake, fish keeper screw-ups with this tank.
Let's get it started. We'll start with the 135 and I'll go through all my tanks and enjoy the show. Let's start off with the fish keeper screw-up itself, the big tank. We'll do an all tank update, but as well, we'll start off with the big 135.
Big, big mistake, rookie mistake this evening, well, not this evening, this afternoon trying to do too much at once. Forgot one simple thing that fish like warm water, especially tropical fish. I am so happy that this guy right here is alive and well. This guy was all right. The two GOs, there's one doing great. The other guy over here. This is a few hours after. Hello, Blanco. Of course, the school of Romeos is doing okay. This was a few hours after, folks. I did a big water change, huge water change like 50%, 60%, cleaned out the sump. I had a few hours to get shit done and when I refilled the tank, I filled it with cold water.
It's February in Massachusetts, so the temperature got really, really low. The school of Buenos Aires were not affected. The platinum angel was not affected, but the two GOs and this guy right here who's chasing his little mate, I thought that I was going to lose them. They were swimming upside down, they were frantic and then dormant just almost upside down in a corner. I would stick my hand in there and hold them upright, get them moving around, and I was like, "All right, you dink, you just completely killed these fish. You're stupid, what are you thinking?"
Then I took some water out and slowly put a five-gallon bucket of heated water to try to get the tank stabled and it worked. Sorry about that rant, but that's my fish keeper screw-up of the day. I added some seriously cold water to a tropical tank and could have wiped it out, but everything turned out okay. Still dum-dum. Okay, let's get to this update, rambled long enough. 135 with the sump, 165, 160. I trimmed all the pothos roots, every one of them down to just enough for survivable and remake roots, but they were so big. They were everywhere all over the tank. I'm so happy they're gone. They were holding so much detritus and just all sorts of gunk.
I don't have any big shrimp in this tank to take care of any of that crap. It's usually just manual and let the filter take care of it. The tank looks really, really good. The roots will grow again, it's healthy, it's alright to cut back the roots. They'll grow again, I'll cut them again. I also changed out the two air stones for two sponge filters for some nice filtration as well as, I don't know if you guys all my other update, do you see how clear this water is on top? The air stones were producing so many bubbles, the whole top was just covered in bubbles.
I could not stand it, so I got rid of those. Two air stones gone. Got the nice clear water now. That's some nice surface agitation, but no bubbles, which I'm loving and everybody's good. Tank's doing awesome. Haven't really done much to it. Haven't decided what type of Amazon swords I'm going to plant, but it'll get there. Let's hit up the rock flower on anemone tank. Look at how gorgeous this is looking. They're everywhere now. Walking around all over the place. Eating good. Tank is crystal. Back new love for this little 13.5 gallon Evo. All the rock flowers are so gorgeous. I've gotten them from a couple different places just to see.
They do move a little, so I won't say that they don't move because I have noticed them walking around. There was one right in here this morning and I have no clue where he's gone. Watch this, all these were face front, but they're happy. 13.5-gallon doing mint. I spent a lot of time on 135, so I'll get over quick. 40 breeder saltwater still in cruise control. However, it's got a cloudy mist to it like it's just had a water change, but it didn't just have a water change. I've water changed, I've changed my filter floss, my carbon, everything in the filter. It does look a little bit better today, I will say, but still, does not crystal like it usually looks and it's frustrating.
This hammers down here, these hammers are not coming out like normal. My dunkin is completely closed for a week now, won't come out. Salinity is on point. Temp is fine, scheduling. I have not changed a single thing with this tank for years. It's not like something just out of the blue. The only thing I did do is remove the mangoes. Mangroves, I always say mango. Mangroves because that's the only thing I can think of that may have been the start of something, but since I removed them, it is a little bit clearer but just not like it used to be. We'll see, we'll give it another week, but all the fish are healthy as usual.
Besides the dunkin and the bottom part of this big branching hammer, everything else is good. All right, so let's take you up to the two planted tanks. We'll start way, way upstairs in the bedroom betta tank, mister seed. This tank is just growing out of control. It was stabilizing, but then nothing really was going on, and then I did start to dose this Florin Multi from Brightwell Aquatics. As you can see, I've done it fairly well here. They seemed to be responding especially this pennywort here, which is growing out of the tank, super-healthy. Java fern has seen better days. The batch I got in over here, look at all this brown that's on these leaves, not happy with it.
The guy in the left is doing good. Everything else is doing good since the initial planting. Shrimp are going to town on the rock and betta is very, very happy. This is quick, two and a half gallon water change once a week. Water in, water out, water out, water in. Rinse the sponge every month, every three weeks to a month. The plants are doing great, anubias.
All the plants are thriving, there's crib back here even though I didn't even put it in the substrate. Just feeding roots. I do have some more shrimp coming in for this tank as well, but USPS screwed me again on livestock. Look, the betta is doing good. A beautiful, gorgeous beta. How's that crazy guy?
It's been almost six weeks now. It's like glaucoma, but this thing's doing good. I'll take you downstairs to the planted 40. Here is the 40-gallon breeder planted tank with the out-of-control tiger lotus, which I don't know what I'm going to do with this thing. I can't decide whether to just remove it. There's so much space back here. It does look cool for the fish, not for my eyes. I would prefer that be completely gone for like a scaping point of view. This piece of driftwood right here is going to go back there because I took all this moss out. There was a whole heaping pile of moss that took up the whole tank.
Took that all out, left the woss. The woss, man, what am I up to? Left the moss wall. You have a moss wall sticking to the glass, anubias island, with the job of ferning everything. Then you got the dwarf sage and just going crazy always. I'm always plucking that out. All the fish in this tank are super healthy, pretty much running on autopilot. Water changed once a month maybe now, especially because it just grows so quick. Now I'm doing more frequent water changes just to thin it out. Big time jungle and the dwarf hair grass is still in the little aqua cup here.
Betta is doing great, loves this tank. Super cool to have- I have a betta only tank, but then I have community tank almost here and the betta has just completely settled themselves right in. You'd think, "Why don't you put more rhamnus and cardinals in here?" This is like one-eighth of what's in here. They just always hide all behind this little anubias mound, java fern mound. There's a betta, it's getting blown by the current. I know they don't like that, but all he's got to do is hang out on the left side of the tank, on the left top and he's good.
I have 20 cherry shrimp coming in like I said, and I'm going to put probably about 15 to 16, 17 in here, just leave a couple for the upstairs betta tank. I can just feature them on this back moss wall. They'll just be going to town on this thing all day. It'll be really cool to watch, but United States Postal Service has screwed us again. More and more packages that just sit around and have no clue in transit. Driving me crazy. Anyway, that is the all tank update along with my fish keeper screw-up of adding super freezing cold water into a tropical South American tank and expecting, I don't know, everybody to be okay, which they did make it, but it was pretty stressful for an hour or so.
I hope you enjoyed this tank update and listen to me ramble as usual. Old school rambling. This is Mike from Mass and I'm out.
