Speaker 1:
Last week we set up the Discus tank, as well as stocked it. This week we're setting up the Angelfish tank as well as stocking it. But let me bring those up to speed that aren't familiar with this setup. Now you guys will remember, there's 10 120-gallon aquariums in this entire racking system, each aquarium kind of representing a different area in the world or a different location.
This racking system doesn't really do that, but I did want it to do something special.
You see, in my opinion, Angelfish and Discus are both almost separated in the hobby, sometimes going head-to-head on which one's better and I wanted to do a Discus versus Angelfish set up.
Down low, we set up a- one of the 120-gallon aquariums with some white sand, and one of those aqua decor backgrounds, as well as some of the logs that go up through the center. Then I added in 16 Marlboro red Discus, which are doing fine right now. As for the Angelfish tank, we'll talk about the scaping and how I set that up in a moment. However, you guys will know that I already unboxed 40 platinum Angels. Now clearly all 40 is too many for a 120-gallon aquarium, but that does leave us with some opportunities to use Angelfish in other aquariums. Again, I was thinking about tossing maybe 20 or 30 of them into the 2,000-gallon aquarium, but that's a topic for another day.
In this tank, I do plan to add between 15 to 20 at first and of course, let them grow out, dwindle that number down to maybe eight or 10 maybe even 12. I'd also like to add in some bottom dwellers like some cory Dora, maybe some loaches and then something mid water, perhaps some tetras of some sort which I'd love to hear your guys' input on, you guys always have some great suggestions, leave them in the comment section below.
You see when it comes to scaping all of these tanks, I have to keep a number of things in mind. First and foremost, I want them to be visually pleasing. I want them to look aesthetically nice when you look at them. I want you to almost want something like this, but at the same time, I have to keep in mind that the fish come first. They always come first to me. I'm not an aquascaper at heart, I'm a fishkeeper at heart. Of course, we've got to mix them together at times, but for me, I want the fish to be happy first and foremost.
So when I scape a tank, I keep in mind the type of fish that I'm actually keeping, the location that they come from and what's going to be best for them. I also have to remember that at the end of the day when this entire gallery is finished being set up, somebody's got to take care of all of this and guess who that's going to be? Me. I want these to be pretty low-maintenance. I don't want to spend hours a day or hours a week on each tank, that adds up.
You know imagine if we only spent say four hours a week on one aquarium. That's not much, some trimming, a little bit of water changes, etcetera. Times that by 10 though and now we've got 40 hours a week just on this racking system. I want to make sure that the tanks are nice, but they also have to be relatively maintenance free, to an extent, maybe some gravel siphoning, maybe some minor trimming, of course, water changes but keep it really simple so that we're actually able to enjoy the aquariums, and not grow frustrated with them because we're always spending all our time taking care of them.
What I wanted to do was create a piece of woodwork that would encapsulate the whole tank, not worrying about depth or how high things were, how high they weren't. Again, I'm not looking to follow any rules or anything like that, I'm looking to do what I think looks good, and I think the fish are going to like. With Angelfish they do enjoy some wood to swim in and around, they do like to have some places to go underneath, and of course lots of open swimming space. I also thought some plants would look good in here.
Basically what I did was I took a fine grain sand and I started off at the bottom. Then I took only three pieces relatively large pieces of manzanita wood and kind of placed them almost in a U shape or almost actually circular. It might not look like that from looking straight on, but if you look down on it, or from other angles it's definitely almost a circular shape which I really enjoy.
Now, this gives me a number of options. One, it's going to leave the entire middle open. It's going to create some under sections and shadows, and give it a more dramatic look. The Angelfish are going to be able to hide or come out in the open and it's also going to allow me to add in some really low light, easy to maintain slow growing plants. I added some anubias nana, some trident, ferns, some narrow leaf ferns basically, they're just java ferns. They're identical to the ones that we had in the 2,000 gallon aquarium. Now, over time this is going to grow in a little bit more, but it's not going to get to the point where it's overwhelming, and in my opinion, I'll probably never have to do any trimming here. I'll just have to siphon the bottom of the tank, a little bit here and there, as well as some water changes.
To attach a lot of these plants, I have about three options. One, tie the plants to the wood with some sewing string, and over time that sewing string is going to dissolve and the plant will attach itself to the wood. Or I could use a gel-like cement, which will cement the plants directly to the wood and of course once cured is non-toxic as well. Then I could also do what I did with the 2,000, which is just jam some of the plants in some of the crevices, and I did a combination of things here. No real planning on where I was going to put the plants, I just kind of wanted them sporadic.
A lot of the times we plan our aquariums around what it's going to look like from the front without really considering how the fish is going to react to it. In this aquarium what I wanted to do there, was almost create their own little world within the tank not worrying about what we see.
Now, the background in there right now is one that kind of has outcrops at the bottom so it does appear as though there's rocks or at least something in the tank, so I didn't add any rocks to the bottom. I didn't want to overdo it or overall complicate this or give too many crevices and spots for detritus and uneaten food or anything like that to build up over time. Again, I want this to be very simple.
Now I did run it into a problem, once again with the wood floating, it floated for about five or six days. Manzanita can float at first, but it sinks relatively quickly. I didn't want to toss rocks on it in advance just to sink it immediately so I did add some plants on to it and all the wood started floating and kind of ruined everything so I had to wait a week before I came back to this. Otherwise you guys would have seen this a week ago.
Now that everything's sinking and ready to go, I'll be able to add the Angelfish in shortly. How many should we add upfront? Is a good question. Clearly, we can't add all 40, they're not going to last in here so forever. But technically we can now because at 40 in a 120-gallon aquarium, 300-gallon system, we’ll do okay with plenty of water changes given the fact that they're only the size of a quarter or so. Technically the filtration system can handle the bioload. But you might be asking, how are you adding fish so quickly to your systems all the time? I've told you guys this time and time again. When I set up a filter, a lot of the times I'll take established media from other filtration systems like my 2000 gallon sump system, where I always have about 10 or 20 liters of additional cycled media in there that I could take out of there and jumpstart new aquariums.
We've already added that to the sump system and the Discus that are in here are established on that. What I'd like to do is give this a few more days, this has already been running for about a week like this. I'd like to give it a few more days for the bacteria on that media to get even more established before we add in the Angelfish. I think in the next video we do, we’ll certainly be adding these Angels, but I'd like to know what you guys think on stocking. Should we add in all 40 just for an immediate display? Or should we add in just a little bit and move on to some of the other fish that we're going to be putting in here eventually, like the corydoras, loaches, and whatnot? Clearly, we can't add everything at once, the tank system will crash, and we don't want that, the fish are going to end up dying.
This is the Angelfish and I got to admit, once again this is my favorite aquarium at the moment. I don't know about you guys but, actually I do know about you guys, because every time I set up a new one of these racking systems, I read it time and time again that this is my new favorite aquarium. I know you guys are feeling the same way I am. I mean it started with the tropheus tank and then the Malawi tank, and then, of course, the Discus tank, and now the Angelfish tank. Mind you, we almost skipped over the middle section where we still have to do some South American, Central American.
Of course, another 420-gallon system behind us here, but long ways to go. Bottom line is that I got to admit that every new aquarium I set up I absolutely love it. I hope that many of you do. I hope that you can see that, maybe you draw some inspiration from this to some extent. Especially with the plants, these are low light slow growing plants, they don't need to be in a substrate. They have a rhizome, so they can be planted on anything and it's a great way to add a splash of green to your tank. I got to admit, I don't mind this aquascape at all. I think the wood works well together, and I think it's going to be low maintenance. I think it's going to be easy to care for and I think it's also going to be great for the fish, not to mention nice to look at. But again, I'd love to hear you guys' thoughts. Let me know in the comments section below.
Anyways I'd love to thank you guys for watching, and if you're not subscribed this channel yet, and you enjoy what I do out here my aquarium gallery, and you are excited to see these Angelfish get added to this aquarium, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it.
