Speaker: In today's update of the aquarium gallery, there is a lot to cover. We're going to talk about the 2,000-gallon aquarium, the inhabitants, as well as the filtration system that I've completed. We'll also talk about the 375-gallon aquarium and where that's it, I also want to talk about the saltwater aquarium and where that's going and also clearly, the racking system that is now here as well the aquariums that showed up. Again, a whole lot to talk about in today's video, so let's just get started.
First and foremost, the 2000-gallon aquarium. Everybody in the tank is doing fine.
I've been asked a few times about the plants and lighting and that's going to happen or at least should happen this week or late in the week or first of next week. We'll be planting in the tank, which means I will have to get in the aquarium. I have been considering changing a few things about the tank and that is the rock.
When I feed the tank, I notice that a lot of the frozen shrimp, scallops or whatever I'm feeding, sometimes gets into the large crevices of the rocks and can't be accessed from the fish. Long term, that's going to be a bit of a problem. To avoid that in the long run, I think what I might do is when I plant the tank, I might end up removing the rocks, but we'll see what happens. Once this entire wood structure is planted and the plants are really grown in, the rocks really won't be adding a whole lot to it. The main concern is making sure water quality stays pristine at any given point.
All the rays, the flower or the Arowana is always out swimming. The rays are always constantly active at this point, swimming around the tank, exploring it, but the flower horn itself as well as the Arowana, they got into a bit of a fight one night. I woke up the next morning and Frank was beat up a little bit. There's a bit of a worry with adding a flower horn which is a cichlid to a tank like this. He could attack the stingrays, he could attack the Asian Arowana or vice versa. The Arowana could attack Frank.
You might be wondering what's the better scenario. Really, it's if the Arowana attacks Frank. Reason being is, the Arowana is an open water swimmer, they don't hide, they don't need caves. In fact, they don't really need anything in their tanks at all. If Frank were to continuously attack the Arowana, he's got nowhere to go. He's just going to continuously get beat up, stressed out, stop eating and probably eventually die.
However, if the Arowana lays it down on Frank, the flower horn, it's the opposite. Frank will learn his lesson, he's got a little place he likes to hang out in and he shares it with one of the rays that the two of them are in there together all the time, but Frank will come out and greet me. The lights just came on in here right now, so everybody is just getting used to the lights being on.
Ultimately, he got a little beat up, it was just the one time that the Arowana put him in his place and that was it. I knew that this was going to happen. It was just a matter of time, but I'm glad they got it out of the way. Frank can heal a bit, a couple of torn fins and mark on him here and there. Nothing serious, nothing life-threatening, the water quality in here is pristine, so he's going to heal naturally, no problem.
Frank always hides back in behind this rock throughout the day until I tell him to come here. Come here Frank. Come here. Come here and see me. Come here. He sees the Arowana, he's like, "No, I'm not ready to come out," but he'll come out. If it was that bad, he definitely wouldn't come out to see me, but everybody loves Frank. As you can see, the Arowana is just still taking a little swipe at him here and there, but it's not going at him hard. Frank is fast enough and is small enough to hide wherever he wants. This will pass.
Let's get and look at the rays are in there with them. There's actually two rays in there. The reason being that some of the foods sometimes blows back in behind there, so they're expecting food to be there, but the other rays are swimming around. It's just an interesting thing to watch. Frank is fine. He's coming out, he's responsive and in time, these guys are all going to settle in nicely, especially once we add the plants into the tank and the wood becomes consumed with these plants, it'll be far more lush and be more of a visual block for these animals.
It's exciting to see, but nothing was going to be perfectly fine through here. I knew that there was going to be some problems, and again, it was just a matter of time before something happens, but I'm glad they got it over with and got it out of their system.
I also considered a lot of the names you guys thought about for the Arowana and I think I picked one. I just need a few days to make sure I want to call him that because as soon as I start calling him that, thousands of you guys are going to start calling him that. I'm just going to let it simmer off the top of my head while we decide if that's the name I want to go for, but it's definitely a popular name. A lot of you guys have suggested it.
With that said, let's move on to the filtration room and show you guys what's set up there. Downside is, there's not a tremendous amount of room to work right now, so again, this is all temporary. We're going to cover what's going on here in a second. Again, filtration is finished. This is an absolute final. What this is is everything's up and working. I will say that I want to rebuild a new sump. I don't mind it, but I plumbed it not the optimal way. As you can see right here, I've got a little standpipe plumbed into the tank and that's going to take the majority of the flow and that taller standpipe in the corner up top is going to take the rest. That just makes sure it stays quiet.
There's about 100 liters or so of fluid ice media in the tank which is biological media. Then we've got a lot of cycled media down here. It's actually packed from this side to the other. That's from my other filters keeping that cycled for when I set up the 120s and then just some generics. We've got some filter flush, some sponge, some activated carbon and some pure gem, just to make that any impurities in the aquarium are taken out. Eventually, I'm just going to go to the mechanical as well as biological. I rarely use chemical filtration in my aquariums, unless of course there's a reason to like a brand new tank that might have some impurities in it as well as a tank that has massive pieces of wood and I want to remove those tannins.
Drip system is up and running pretty strong now as you can see the water just pouring out. I'll just move it around there. Water is just pouring out and this gives me a continuous little water change diluting the water, making sure that it stays the same quality at all times. I still haven't had the opportunity to clean up any of my wires or whatnot and make this actually pretty and more functional for me, but it's just been such an amazingly busy week, one of the busiest of my hobbies so far and next week it's just going to be even more insane. We can come back and make things pretty when we have time, but for now, it's all about making sure it's up and running, nothing's leaking and it's simply just functioning properly.
A video series I used to do a few years ago was something called How It Works and I'm going to come back and do a lot of those types of videos on the 2,000 like how it works, how it all functions, et cetera. This is just a generic update. I wanted to do it in this video, but there's just too much to update you guys on today. I figured, let's dedicate certain videos to certain aspects of the gallery and keep the updates as general updates.
The racking systems are here now. I know that I said that I wouldn't be unboxing those until maybe next week, but next week on Monday or Tuesday, there's two more crates of aquariums and racks coming. Right now I only have three and a half setup that's all I had and six aquariums stacked out there. I'm going to have to figure out a way to balance all these and make sure I could put everything together properly, but I'm not putting tanks on the racks until the last one is set up and I can evenly space them and make sure everything is where I want it to be.
That's going to be next to impossible with tanks on it, so once everything, all the racks are set up, I'll slide the tanks into it. Potentially, I'll have to install their backgrounds first. You guys remember those backgrounds over here? I have no room in here. All the backgrounds are piled up in here. All those rocks and fake ornaments are in there.
Then, of course, I still have a lot of real wood outside as well as on the way for scaping materials and then of course plants. I'll be ordering plants when needed. I don't have anywhere to store them right now, so I just order them as needed. The 2000-gallon plants, for example, should be here late this week.
I do have a video coming out this Sunday on unboxing all this stuff and showing you how it was set up, installed and how it all works, but for the most part, everything is ready to go and ready for an aquarium. These racks do have holes drilled into the back so I can install all the plumbing. Again, we'll take a closer look on Tuesday where you guys will see how all of this went down, but it's really exciting to see this finally in the gallery when we walk in the front doors here and you're starting to get a general idea of what all this is going to look like.
This is about head height. This is my eye level. A lot of people thought these were pretty high. They are pretty high, but the reason being is, the bottoms, I need the proper sumps in there. This is about two feet off the ground, then we have two feet of space. A lot of people also said what about room for scaping? This is plenty. That's about 10 inches of space right there. Worst-case scenario, if I want to remove these panels, man, do they ever come off easily. Awesome. Go back on easily.
Custom Aquarium did all this. This is all made possible by them. I'll leave a link in the description to their website, so you guys can check it out. I've slowly been unboxing some of the things they've sent including their siphon stopper. This is a return. Then their overflow. This is is their H2O overflow. Really cool concept. Some of their hosing, which they actually make all of these in the United States, including this hose. I find that really interesting and I know a lot of you people like to buy locally and support manufacturers within your own country, so those all came from the United States. Then, of course, the returns also a drain hose down here. There's still so much more. The lids to the aquariums, the aquariums themselves are out here. All the base packs are painted blue. That was a request of mine. They're all drilled. I have all the plumbing supplies. Again, everything's just kind of stacked in here for now, but with another two crates coming, I've got to get moving on these and get a lot done.
Here's the bracing system that I absolutely love. When I install these three backgrounds before I fill up the aquarium, all I have to do is take off these two bolts here, the whole brace comes off. Then when I replace it, fill the tank up, and I really really love that about it. They're actually using ultra clear glass as well, so it's low iron.
Very clear, love that these tanks are absolutely perfect. All of them came in mint condition. They're all doing really well. I've literally just stacked them up in here for now. Again, you guys will see on Tuesday how we did all this but absolutely insane. Just getting them out of the crates took me about four hours, five hours with a friend. Setting the racks up themselves, I'm not lying here, it takes me about five minutes to set up a rack. It's that simple. It's basically just stack them on top of each other, make sure the metal dows are in their proper places and that's it.
You've seen how easy it was to do the covers here. All very simple. I'm trying to create some walking space in here so all of the eco-tech equipment is stored in here. More over there. Let's move on to the planted aquarium. Planted aquarium has been an absolute challenge, and you'll see why when we go downstairs and take a look at that, but you guys remember the sump system. I've ripped open the stand. This is the stand I built. I ripped it open so that we could expose this at any given point. It's always open. Now, it used to have a brace here.
I'm going to beef up the stand here so that on the top so that there's no sag. It definitely needs to be beefed up I just haven't had a chance to do it and really. It's just taking a two by six and putting it in place, but we'll see more on that later. The sump here, oh, and another thing I wanted to do. I installed light strips underneath of it. These are just LED light strips. I've got two of them here. I just don't have that one turned on right now, but that means we'll be able to in the evening this is all going to be lit up. This was a huge request from all of you guys.
You were like you guys have to just- you have to display the bashi Sump that they created. It's a work of art in itself and in a gallery like this definitely deserves to be displayed. Every time I look at it, I always whisper to myself "Damn, that thing's sexy." 375 we're going to come back to in a second. I got to talk about the saltwater tank here.
You guys will remember, this was the tank that I built for the planted tank and the flower horn was in it. All I did was I painted the back and the bottom with some paint I've shown you guys how to do that before. This is the stand that was always on. I also painted that. I'm going to drill the back of the tank. I'm going to build a sump for underneath of it. I have no room to move around here right now though. That sump system is going to serve like a temporary home for my saltwater aquarium. Everything's going to come out here. Again, I got to get all of my fish in aquariums shut down and all the fish out here. No more tanks in the house at all. I didn't build this building to fill it with fish and then still have fish in the house. I think this is going to be a really cool little cube tank to have until we have time.
Until we get to a 120 which is probably going on the end where the saltwater tanks will go right by the window. So that sometimes if I want I can have some natural sunlight on that tank which I think will look pretty cool with the coral. I plan to do a reef tank as well as a predator tank. I've always wanted to keep saltwater predators, and we're going to do it. The saltwater tank though just keeps getting better and better every day especially with that light that aqua illumination Prime I believe it's called HD. Absolutely love the flexibility of it. I don't even really clean this tank much.
I guess it's because I'm moving in here soon, but this is what the coral all look like with- they're all opened up, the fish are doing great. Again, I do need to clean this tank up but I'll shut this tank down and I'll store it for future use. However, for now, these guys will all go into the cube tank until we figure out something else. Now, back to the 375-gallon planted tank. Welcome to the room that was once my office and now is filled with destroyed aquariums and as an absolute mess. I don't even like coming down here because there's so much work to do.
You guys have to remember that not only am I trying to do the gallery, but I have to change this room into a bedroom. That's what it's being converted into, all tanks have to go. I have to rip this wall down, remove the tank. I'm putting that in storage as well and move the Arowana out to the planted tank which isn't going to be set up in time, so I'm going to move this out. Maybe into the utility room there because my utility room is actually going to become a quarantine and hospital area. Originally, I wanted the hospital and quarantine area out in the gallery but I thought the best thing to do to avoid cross-contamination is separate buildings.
I don't plan to have a big elaborate quarantine or hospital system. Maybe one or two tanks, probably this tank with maybe a tank underneath of it, and that will be more than enough. I'll have a saltwater area and a freshwater area and that'll be fine, but this tank is now drained. It's kind of ripped apart ready to go. You guys will remember my shell dwellers They're all still down there doing fine. They're itching to get into a proper tank probably can't see them right now. We'll do a proper update on it when the time comes. The 375, however, is ripped apart it's drained. All plumbing is removed sump is drained. The stand is not going in the gallery because it won't fit out of this room. I have to take it apart in here, and essentially throw it out.
I do have to disconnect a little bit more plumbing in here but to move it out of the gallery is going to prove to be a challenge. Simply because there's all kinds of tanks out there. I might have to temporarily put the tanks in the racking systems, and then take them back out and scape them and do as I need. But it's just a matter of timing and me not moving fast enough.
I am only one person. There is a tremendous amount to do down here. I'm used to building one big aquarium once a year. If you guys remember, one big aquarium once a year a bunch of little projects. Once a week I only made one video a week now I'm doing three sometimes four videos a week and doing- building a building. Building a2,000-gallon tank. Saltwater tank, we're building 375 system, the racking system. It's a tremendous amount to plan and coordinate and it can't all be done overnight.
The Asian Arowana, however, is doing fine. He's probably itching to get out in the gallery and get some more attention. I'll admit I'm not down here enough. I come down here to feed him and do some water changes, but that's pretty much it. He's doing fine though, and he's looking pretty good. I think he's going to look even better once I get him in the plant at 375-gallon tank. He's also still a good size to add in some tank mates and I do have some good ideas for what I want to put in there with them. He's not going into 375 alone. He will have some tank mates, and even some plastic planted aquarium tank mates.
As long as I raise him up with them, they'll be fine in the long run. He might go after them here and there, Arowana is just a tendency to be a predator but with time they'll get along just like what's happening out in the 2,000-gallon. To summarise the office area I have to rip this wall down, take the 370-gallon Plywood aquarium out of the wall, store the tank. I'm probably going to take the stand apart and chuck that. I can't store a bunch of lumber and a bunch of timber. It's just impossible. I also have to have a properly maintained yard for my children and family to actually enjoy and not just turn it into a junkyard.
That has to be taken out. Though the Arowana in the meantime is probably going to go in here which I'll move into that room the 375 at some point. I hope maybe within a week we move that out. Timelines and things of what I'm doing keep changing because things keep arriving a little late or a little early I just have to keep going with the flow. On the topic of saving a lot of lumber, this is all of what's left from those racking systems. Took these apart yesterday. This took about four or five hours to do, something like that and even a lot of you said that plywood everything is still really good condition.
When it just comes down to storage, where am I going to put it? When will I ever use it? It is nice plywood and if I wasn't in the position of actually having a full gallery right now I would save it because I'd have a garage where I could put all this stuff and save it but I just don't have the space. I've sacrificed garage space to have an aquarium gallery. Here's those custom aquariums seamless sumps again. I don't have anywhere to put them in the gallery yet but when the time comes, everything is going to have its own place and its own spot in the gallery, it's all going to come together quite nicely.
Again, this is just a quick update of where I'm at with things. I have been tremendously busy. However, last week I did four videos. Some people are asking me when am I going to start doing two videos, some people when am I going to start doing three? I've been doing three videos a week for the past two months or so and even once in a while I'll upload a bonus video but it seems to me like I might have to jump up to four or five videos a week. I don't know when that will start but there's just so much to do and I really don't like doing everything in one video because I have to water it down so much to include it in the vlog. We'll see what happens.
The racking systems are also just tossed into place. They're not lined up properly, they might look a little off, etcetera, but they're just literally put together, pushed over into place, put together, pushed over into place and kept moving along. Again, this coming Tuesday, in two days you are going to see the full unboxing and exactly what went down and how it happened. I thought it was really interesting and really fun to do but on the mention of in two days, you only have two days left before the DIY fish keeper shirts start shipping.
I'll leave a link in the description below so you can get yours. In summary, a lot of things are happening out in the aquarium gallery all at once and I know that this was a rather fast vlog update and ultimately, there's just too much to talk about. I do plan to break down a lot of these things including this coming Tuesday when you'll see a real unboxing and a reveal of everything was in it, how I set up the racking systems and so forth so I'll hope to see you guys then. Until then, thank you for watching and if this is something you guys enjoy watching and you're not subscribed to my channel yet, make sure that you do so you do not miss any videos.
