Male Speaker: Yes, it's true, my happy birthday balloon says 'princess' on it, kids. I spent a couple of days making that stand for a 360-gallon tank for when we move it down here. Then we made the decision that we're not going to move it down here. This should make for an interesting video. Here's the deal, we're working on something really big. It's something really big for us. It's not going to change the world, but it's a big deal for us, and we're doing that in the garage. We're hoping to make the official announcement about what we're doing in there within the next few weeks, hopefully, I don't know. We'll have to see, hopefully everything goes smoothly and we'll be able to do that. Since we're still using the garage for the purposes of KGTropicals, we made the decision, “You know what? Let's not risk bringing that giant tank down these stairs. Let's not risk somebody getting hurt. Let's just leave that tank where it is, and instead put something else there.” We've got something really cool in the works that we want to put there instead. It's a fish tank, surprise, but it's considerably smaller than the 360, but still big. I think we're going 180 gallons. It's going to be very nice. It's going to be much easier to get down the stairs. It basically means that I spent a couple of days making that stand that we're no longer going to use, but it's okay because I'll be able to use it in the garage for something else. Again, all of this will make more sense once we make the announcement of what's going on in there. Here's the thing, we're still moving the two 125s and the 240 down here, it's actually happening tomorrow. I got a lot to do before anybody shows up to move those. Let's go through, I'll show you what I need to do today. We'll do the things that I need to do today, and then we'll move the tanks down here. This will all be one video, it might be long, because we're going to end up getting everything ready and then moving the tanks down here, but it'll be fine. We'll have a good time with it, and hopefully enough people show up to move these tanks. The first item on the agenda, the 240 is going right here, which is going to look really nice because you'll be able to see it behind Lisa during the live streams. It's going to be very cool, but we got this giant piece of furniture. We got a big mess and we've got the non-glow Betta tank here. All of this has to be moved. It's actually going to move, right. I’m just going to drain the tank down, move the tank, slide the furniture down and then put the tank back on it. That's the first thing that has to be done today so that I can make space for the 240.
[music]
Male Speaker: I can check that off the list now. Very simple, it took me 15 minutes to do, not a big deal because it's a 10-gallon tank. I was just able to drop the water about halfway, move the tank, move the front. You saw it, simple, easy. Now, the space is clear for the 240 to go here. Very excited about that. I might need to move this beautiful Washington Nationals picture over a little bit. I don't know. My tape measure is not down here, I don't know if I have the exact amount of space. Now, first two things, don't judge me for only doing small amounts in the bucket to refill the tank. You saw, I had to hold it up to the shower. I didn't feel like setting up the python to do a five gallon water change. That was a little bit stupid of a way to do it, but don't judge me. It's tiring, holding that bucket up like that. Anyway, next thing not to judge me on, last week or a couple of weeks ago when I did the tour of this area, I said that this gate was here for the cat, and everybody laughed at me, and I get it because they were like, “You really think that's going to keep a cat in?” It's not to keep the cat in, it's to keep the dogs out. Their chihuahuas, they can't get over that thing. Anyway, let's go upstairs. I’ve got a lot to do up there.
[music]
Male Speaker: Here's the deal. The 240 is the one I've got to do the most work on. The two 125s, Lisa has been working on those the last couple of days. You see the 125 here, that is the Betta sorority has almost everything out of it. All she's got left is a couple of pieces of wood, some algae and the substrate, which she going to salvage the substrate out of that. That's very good. The discus tank is actually going to be very easy, because there's really nothing in it, except for one piece of wood. We're just going to drain that and carry it down as is. The 240 is the one that needs some work, because I'm going to make some changes to it, and obviously, we have to move the fish.
Here's the plan with this. First of all, I'm going to drain a bunch of the water, 80 or so gallons into here. This is the stock tank that we bought last week. We actually bought two of them, but the second one doesn't need to be used anymore because that was going to be for these fish. I'm going to put water into this, and I'm not doing it for recycling purposes or anything like that, it's basically going to be to keep the temperature the same. The water is already to temperature in here. I'm going to put the water in there and then move the fish in there. Perfect. Next thing I'm going to do is, while the fish are in this, which they're only going to be in it for like a day, I'm going to use the FX6 that I have on here. If you remember quite some time ago, last year, I don't know if it was last year, but it was a while ago, I installed NFX6 onto this tank, just to act like a water polisher. I'm going to use that in here, in the stock tank, just to keep the water moving, keep it circulating while the fish are in there. Again, they're only going to be in there for a day, but I want it to be as easy as possible for them. Then I'm going to try to figure out something to use to cover it up, because if I don't, that little guy is going to end up getting in the tank and messing with the fish, so I have to figure out something like that. I've got a couple of things that I'm going to do to this. The first thing's first, I got to do something that I've needed to do for quite some time in this tank, and that is glue the siphon stoppers back up to the pipes, the bulkheads. They keep coming off, it's not the pieces’ fault, it's the fish’s fault. They bang into them and they pull them off. It's a nightmare. This is critical with a setup like this, that those are in place because if the power goes out, and it happens every once in a while, what happens is the water siphons back down those tubes. Which are actually the returns, but it siphons backwards and it goes down into the sump. It overflows the sump and it floods this room. It's happened multiple times. It could be because of breaker trips or it could be because the power goes out. I definitely don't want that happening in the basement. I'm going to drain the tank, put the fish in here. I'm going to glue those pieces in place, and because Bob [unintelligible 00:08:46] has been picking on me so much no, it's just because I like black, I'm going to scrape off the paint off the back of this and I'm to repaint it black. We'll do that all today. This way the paint is dry tomorrow, we can move everything and it'll all be good. I got a lot to do. I might as well stop talking and get to it.
[music]
Male Speaker: I have about 75 gallons or so transferred over into this stock tank. I'm going to drain the tank the rest of the way down--not all the way, but most of the way, before trying to catch the fish, because catching the fish is just the worst part of this whole process. Just ask Lisa, because she spent a couple of days catching Danielles and Harlequins and betas and shrimp and snails it's been madness for her. She's been going absolutely crazy, but I want to drain the tank the rest of the way out and for that, I'm going to use this. The story behind this, I've never used this before, but my friend, Jay Wilson reached out to me a couple of months ago. He said, John, “I'm working for CJ now, you know that that's like the best company in the world for moving water, do you need to move water?” and I'm like, well, I'm going to be moving my big tanks at some point but that's not going to be for a while. He said, “No problem.” and he ended up sending me this and he said, use this to drain your tanks. It's going to happen lightning quick. It's going to be no problem at all. Hook it up to a regular garden hose, stick it down in there and it'll drain the tank down to within an eighth of an inch.
This is not a sponsored video or anything like that but my friend sent me this. I want to give it a try. It sounds like a lot of fun and it's better than sitting here waiting all day for it to siphon out. Going to give it a shot, we'll see how it goes.
[music]
Male Speaker: I'm not sure how this pump works. If it's one of those where you can plug it in and then put it in the water. I'm going to go ahead and err on the side of caution and say, no, it's probably not, probably want to submerge it and then plug it in. Let's see how it does, shall we? It's actually exciting I've never had a pump for this purpose.
[music]
Male Speaker: Let's go outside and see how much water is coming out. I get excited about stupid things. Yes, I'd say it's flowing pretty good, it can water my grass. Thanks Jay. Yes, the grass needs water. All right, the tank is completely drained. We're ready to go. There's a tiny bit of water in there, but I'll get that out when I get the substrate out, I am going to take the substrate out just to make it as light as possible to get it down those stairs but anyway the fish, they were not very happy about being caught in the net and having to transfer over to the tank here but they're in here. The FX6 is running on it. It's a nice little temporary spot for them to be for a day. Maybe two, if something crazy happens tomorrow, but yes, it's going to be no problem. Anyway, I am going to go to the store real quick, there's a Walmart about two miles from here. I'm going to run over there and grab a one of those razors scraper deals because I thought I had one and I can't find it and I don't feel like looking for it anymore. I'm going to go get that so that I can scrape the paint off of here, get this background painted and that way I'll know that it's going to be dry by tomorrow.
I'm going to buy a new, a new little thing of plumbing glue, PVC glue, because it's been so long since I've used mine. The caps are glued shut.
[music]
Female Speaker: [unintelligible 00:13:25]
Male Speaker: No other than I want to go to bed.
Female Speaker: You can’t go to bed you have chains to move.
[music]
Male Speaker: That was the muscle.
Speaker: [unintelligible 00:14:18]
Male Speaker: We already got thea job halfway done.
Female Speaker: David.
[music]
Male Speaker: Just sliding it down the stairs would be real easy but then when it's at the bottom of the stairs and you got to pick it up to get it through the loop, that would be real, real hard because there's not much room.
[music]
Male Speaker: What are we going to do? [chuckles]
[music]
Male Speaker: I feel like we need two more long ones and we can just keep kind of sliding it. Can you see if there's two more long ones up there? That's what she said.
[music]
Male Speaker: I can tell you this with no doubt, I believe a hundred percent we made the right decision not bringing the big one down because wow. Okay, it's Sunday night and we are done for the weekend. It's been a long few days, but really happy, really relieved at what we've been able to accomplish this weekend. Still have a lot of work to do, the 240 is pretty much done. There's not going to be a whole lot more that's going to happen with that, other than I am going to paint the stand, you've got to paint that black and then probably add some more fish or even entertaining the idea of doing a peacock tank, a half tank and an [unintelligible 00:18:46] tank.
Stay tuned to see if that happens but this one would be the half tank if did do that but anyway, the fish are very happy in here right now. There's even some shenanigans happening in there between two males, but you know, we don't judge. Anyway, as you saw, I know this video is really long already, but as you saw earlier yesterday, we got everything down here successfully. Nobody was hurt, the tanks made it through unscathed. Everything is good. Not everything is completely set up yet, the 125 gallon disc is tank is set up, filter on it. It's running, it's full of water, it's good to go. We have not put the fish in there yet because they're happy. They're in a 75 gallon tank right now and they've settled in and everything's good. Lisa's going to take her time getting that tank ready and then we'll show that to you in another video, along with the beta sorority tank, which also needs a lot of work, but that's the kind of thing that Lisa wants to take her time with. Just like she did when she originally set it up, she wants to take it slow and be real methodical about it. The fish are fine. The fish are all in their own places. They're all happy. They're as happy as my dogs are right now, that are freaking out as I'm recording a video. They haven't barked all day until now, but anyway, that'll come in future videos. Lisa's side of the fish room, basement, whatever you want to call it, kind of a grand tour of the finalized project there. Be looking forward to that, subscribe if you want to see that.
As far as this goes, it's almost there. Just a couple of little odds and ends and stuff like that. As I said in the video, about once we got this tank down here, there's no doubt in my mind that the 360 gallon tank was not coming down here. If we had an army of bodybuilders, I don't know that we would have been able to get it down here. It's too difficult to explain, but if you saw when we were coming down the stairs when the tank gets to the bottom of the stairs, and then you have to pick it up and get it through the door, it's really hard, because you can only have people on the ends.
If you're dealing with a tank that's 750 pounds, it's going to have to be some Mark Henry type of people to get it through there and again to get them through without hurting somebody or whatever. I don't even want to talk about that anymore. That tank's not coming down here. We've got one if not two other tanks, that are going to come down here as opposed to that one. That one will stay upstairs for now, until it gets moved to its permanent location. We won't talk about that yet. We'll talk about that when the time comes.
Anyway, I am very relieved at the whole thing so far. We still got a lot of work to do. The garage is a mess, we got to clean that up, we got to tidy things up here. Lisa is going to take her time on her tanks, and that's the beauty of it. She can take her time and there's no rush, because the fish are safe. I feel good. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted because we got it down here, nobody got hurt, and everything else.
How do you feel about the black background? It probably doesn't look super black right now on video, because the water's still got a little tiny bit of a haze to it because of everything, but I love it. I absolutely love the black. To me, you almost have to have a black background with African cichlids, they just pop. You can't really tell in video in this shot, but I'll try to get some B roll of them. They're really popping in there. They just went back in there today after having a stressful weekend, so yes, I definitely liked the look of it. It will look even better once we get the stand painted, get some art hung up above it. It's going look fantastic.
Yes, we have the current serene light lighting up the wall behind it. I don't know, I think that looks cute. Anyway, success. Not done yet completely, but I hope that watching this video you were able to see how important it is if you're going to do something like this, to have a plan and also understand that the more you plan, the better off you're going to be, because it's never going to go the way you have it planned. We thought we had everything set, and nothing worked out the way we thought it was going to.
[chuckles] Understand that coming up with a detailed plan, sitting down, writing it on paper if you have to, is absolutely critical when you're talking about a huge project like this. Because you're talking about hundreds and hundreds of pounds of glass, you're talking about staircases, all of this, you're talking about the fish' lives that you have to make sure they're safe. There's so much to it. Having a detailed plan, is going to save not only the fish, but also you and your back and everything else, and also having an army of wonderful people that are willing to come over and help you. That was also nice.
Plan, plan, plan, and then when you think you have a good plan in place, plan a little more. That was hard to say. [chuckles] I've had fun making this video, because it's just kind of a free for all, whatever happens happens. If the video is a half an hour long, we'll see. Maybe people won't watch it, because it's so long. Hopefully it's something that has kept you entertained, and also expressed to you the importance of coming up with a plan to do something like this, because it's just moving fish tanks, right? When you're talking about big tanks, there could be big problems. The best thing you can do is just plan, spend days planning and hope that it goes according to plan.
Video's coming in the coming weeks about Lisa's side of the room. I'm sure she's going to want to do a video all about her Beta Sorority. Obviously, it's getting changed up quite a bit from what it was last time. She's going to go a little bit more streamlined, which I think is a good idea, because it's easier to take care of. Then the discus tank, we're going to start breeding the discus for fun. That's not the project that's going on in the garage. We're not starting a discus breeding operation for fun. She's going start breeding discus down here, so we'll show you all of that on video, too.
If you like this kind of stuff, you're going to want to subscribe, because there's tons and tons of stuff coming along with our Sunday videos, which are always a lot of fun. Anyway, thank you. If you have hung in this long, let me know in the comments section, and also let me know why. I've done this before in videos. I like to see people, maybe it's just for my ego, I don't know, but I like to see people give their rationale for watching these videos this long, [chuckles] because it's hard to sit down and watch something this long. One guy and a bunch of dudes carrying tanks and stuff. I don't know.
If you made it all the way through, let me know that. It means a lot to me to know that people stuck it all the way through. I don't know why I'm still talking. I don't know why, because I'm rambling at this point, but I love talking with you, so that's why that's happening. Anyway, I'm going to say it one last time, thank you so much for watching. Subscribe to the channel if you want to see stuff coming down the road, and obviously be on the lookout for that big announcement for what we're going to be having.
Straighten up, John. What we're going to be doing in the garage, be on the lookout for that, and also the new tanks that are going to be coming. I think we're going to order those custom or it or those, probably just one. We're going to order them custom, so they're not going to be here next week, but it's going take a little bit of time. You're going to want to be subscribed because you're not going to want to miss that. That's it. I'm done. I can't talk anymore. Thank you again. That's the ninth time. I'll see you next time, if I make it that long, because this was a weekend.
[music]
