Transcript
Intro and Tank
Hey, guys. Simply Betta here. It's time for part one of My Lord of the Rings Fangorn Forest aquascape. I am loving the vibe in here. I've been daydreaming about a massive Lord of the Rings themed aqua scape for a while now, but it's not my first. Have you seen my Bag End planted tank? This was my first aquascape I ever did. I thought that Bilbo's house was the absolute perfect subject for a themed tank. This would make the grandest fish tank. Don't you think so, Gandalf? So I handmade all the decorations in there. I sculpted that wall, that fence, the parts of the building, the sign, everything. I love how that tank turned out, and I treasured it for years. Now I need to become that obsessive again. But in a massively larger and more beautiful and more upgraded tank with a different subject, this time this tank is going to be modeled after Fangorn Forest. I have had this thing that I've been wanting to do for so long. It's like a year overdue. Thanks to my move. This beautiful thing right here is my tank from custom aquariums. It's crystal clear glass and the rimless design and the depth to it. This way from the wall. It's just perfect. It has been desperately needing some kind of nerdy tribute, and the stand is so pretty and solid. I love how it looks in my room and it just brightens up this space so much. This is my first, like big serious mode tank. You could say that this tank is a bit of a dream come true for me. Like I have this crazy cool sump system down here in the bottom I've been dying to set up because I've never had a sample before. Why is that so exciting? This tank is really long. It's 48 inches long or four feet. This was a really great size in my previous house, but since then I have moved to a much smaller house and I'm glad I didn't go any bigger than this when I was ordering it, because this currently takes up about half of my living room. The depth of it coming out from the wall is 22 inches. I wanted that depth to work with because now I can fit so many orc battalions in here. Now it is fairly tall. It's 20 inches high, tall enough to be big, but not tall enough to wear. I'll have trouble lighting it. So funny story when I got this tank, when it actually arrived on my doorstep. Was so well packed in with two by fours and plywood. I'm just really, really glad I had power tools and also a small platoon of men folk. At the ready to help bring it in. And then they almost dropped it for you. Oh, my God.
What is Fangorn Forest?
I am just in love with my custom aquariums tank, and I'm rambling about it. I've just been staring at this beautiful, empty tank for way too long. Being patient, having to buy my lights and my heart's just waiting for the right time to start my Fangorn Forest aquascape. And I think it's actually time starting my project. You could say that I've been a Lord of the Rings fan for a very, very long time. You want to know what's above my mantle? It's not pictures of my family. It's a beautiful map of middle earth. Do you have any idea how many Lord of the Rings fan fics I read in high school. A lot. I will not disclose if I wrote any or not before getting started on a massive project like this. I think it'd be a good idea to just sit down and review. What is Fangorn Forest? It is a dim, ancient and perilous forest that's protected by the ents. This forest looks incredibly dark and brooding. I am loving the vibe in here. super spooky. The Hobbits, Merry and Pippin find themselves in a situation where they must flee into this stuffy, oppressive and perilous forest where they meet these ents. My favorite description in the book is Merry describing this place as "dim and frightfully treeish". Fangorn Forest is a dim, ancient place. It feels ominous. It feels alive, just so dark. And obviously I can't do that. I won't be able to make an aquascape if I had to make it that dark
The WOOD
just for any, like, super mega rabid detail nitpickers. I can't make it that dark. I need to have some brightness to it. Remember, this is my interpretation of Fangorn Forest as an aquascape. But I want to capture some of that moody, darker feeling. Like, even, like, even in the book, there's descriptions of, like, grass. So obviously some light needs to hit in some places, right? A lot of inspiration is probably going to come from New Zealand rainforests because I went there and it was gorgeous and I want to capture some of that feeling. I am getting such great, aquascape inspiration in here. Anyone else? Seriously? I'm going to scape this. It's time. It's time to actually move on to making this tank. Now that I've talked a lot. Let me go get my wood. Part one. And let me show you what I got. This is the kind of wood I'll be using. I've never used it before. This will be a brand new experience with this particular type. This is called Ghost Wood. Ghost wood is a very pretty kind of driftwood, and I feel like it has some feeling to it that will lend itself towards Fangorn Forest. And what do I mean by that? Well, look at the texture in this wood. It's so like an old tree. This looks old, and this looks like a massive tree that could be found in an ancient forest. Just look at that kind of gnarled, twisting feeling to it. That's just so nice. I got these at a convention last year. I shoved them all in my suitcase. I brought them home. I was very happy. And they've just been sitting in my garage waiting for me to use it. I went to another convention just a little while ago and I came home with more ghost wood. So problem. I got this. I got this. Oh. What am I doing? You haven't seen my previous video about Aquashella and how I made a huge problem for myself by buying wood that was too big. I can go check that out. I'll have the link down below. Does this look familiar? This box gave me so many headaches, guys, and it's all my fault for being a big dummy. Now I'm finally going to open it. Oh, but I have a bunch more smaller pieces of ghost wood. This custom aquariums tank is pretty big. The downside of having a big tank is the now you have to fill it up with hardscape. Look how old that looks. It's so nice. Isn't it beautiful? Totally worth the lengths I went through to bring it home. I got it with the knowledge that I would probably have to trim it down a little bit. But regardless, I'm going to make this work because that is really pretty. Getting the materials is the easy part. It's putting it together and making it how you want it in your brain.
Putting together
That's the really hard part. I'm going to sit around for a while and stare at this and just think. Sometimes it's nice to sit and think for a while to come up with a game plan for how your composition will look and how you tackle it. Some people sketch it out That's the method that I like best. I'm a scribbler. All of my best ideas have started with scribbles and sketches on spare scraps of paper and napkins with a vague idea in my head. I started placing some wood around the tank to get a feel for it. It's not exactly scientific. I'm just testing out how the wood looks at various angles and placements and deciding what will be in the foreground and what will be in the background. I put towels and blankets in there so the wood stops flipping around and waiting on my substrate in the mail and the towels worked. Okay. In the meantime, the results make a big old pile of me. This was proving to be difficult, especially having to reach into this tank to move things around. It's hard. I got a wild idea that I've seen on Instagram making a practice box.
Practice box doujo!
Some people make boxes out of wood or cardboard in order to practice their hardscape in a way that's easier than reaching into a tank constantly to fiddle around. I used scrap plywood from my shed and about $10 worth of brackets, and I was able to make a perfect dimension sized practice box. I finished, Here's my practice box. This is way overbuilt, by the way. You don't need to make a practice box out of plywood. This is basically the coolest thing ever. Now I have a practice box that I can work in. Outside, make a big mess and and change things around. And, like, lean in. I can lean in like this. That's a big deal. I'm going to seal the edges now. So that way when I put in my kids sandbox and into this to kind of be my mock substrate, it's not going to fall through and make a big mess. I want my forest to have rocks and boulders, but I spent all my money on wood. I won't be doing any of the fancy exotic rocks for hardscape. Instead, I went to a nearby river to scour around for rocks that had a cool feel to them. Ones with a little bit of texture to them. So they look like a big boulder in my forest. And I found some cool ones. Look at. I brought all of my hardscape from the inside
Finalizing the hardscape
tank to the outside tank and just plopped it in and it already makes such a big difference. Having this practice box reaching in and working like this, it's just so much better. Now it's a matter of figuring out my escape. I'm going to get my rocks over here and start slowly arranging things to make it look like a real forest. I'm going to use rocks to help. Prop up these trees. There's definitely a storm coming in, but I think the most logical response is to just keep working on my aquascape. I can't ignore this storm anymore. I think I have to cover it up. I just don't want my plywood getting wet. I wish I had a tarp. A few hours later, after plenty of moving sticks and rocks around, I ended up with this and I'm starting to like it. But there's something important missing. Big old trees have visible root systems, at least in my imagination, and it will help turn this tank from looking like sticks shoved in dirt to a lifelike forest. I took some smaller pieces of ghost wood and marked them where I wanted to cut them. Then, using a clamp and a handsaw, I cut them up to more usable sizes. FangornForest is developing really, really nicely and I'm pretty happy with how it's looking. I wanted this video to also have me taking this and moving it to the inside tank and going through that process. But I'm still waiting on my order of brightwell planted tank substrate to get to me. So, I mean, I might as well just wait around and get this video out. It's okay, though. It just gives me some more time to think. Like I said earlier, don't underestimate the power of sitting around and thinking, but also don't let it paralyze you into inaction. Thank you to my handful of really lovely patrons. You guys really do help me buy supplies for my projects. Even if you're just throwing a dollar at me every month, you still rock. Thanks for watching. I would like to know what you think in the comments below. So drop a comment. Share this video with your fellow nerdy Lord of the Rings fan friends. Maybe subscribe if you haven't already, because this project is going to be pretty cool and I'd love for you to stick around and watch. Have a great day and I'll see you next time.
