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The Beginnings of a HUGE HARDSCAPE: GIANT DRIFTWOOD and GIANT ROCKS/ SCA 135 Gallon AQUARIUM

By MASS Aquariums on

Mike: What's up YouTube, Mike from Mass here, MASS Aquariums. The tank is empty. It took about an hour to drain it. I used the Maxi-Jet Pump. Those are good. I actually have one down here. These are good for all sorts of thing. It's like a three in one. It’s a power head. It’s a circulation pump. You can mix your saltwater with it. You can pump water out.

Actually, what I did was, I went to Home Depot and got 60 feet of one half inch tubing, hooked it up to the Maxi-Jet, plugged it in and pumped it all the way out of the basement. It took about an hour. The tank is just about empty. I got the gravel rinsed.

My son Luke, he's two, he rinsed the gravel for me outside. Follow me on Instagram if you want to see that video.

I got a one Marineland LED Strip on this tank. I think I might put a second one on just for a better coverage, but it looks pretty good so far. I like it. I like the way it looks. We got the gravel in. I have three sizes of gravel. I have this big, big coarse gravel. Then, if you can see, I have some smaller gravel and then the medium sized gravel mixed in.

The small and medium is in the bottom and the big one is on top. We did rinse it, but however, it’s still going to keep the water cloudy for a day or two. I’m just going to throw some filter floss right in the filter sock in the sump. That would polish the water really good to make it nice and clean.

I am excited to scape. All I need to do now is get some all different size of a river rock. Those nice, big, smooth, gray, light gray, dark gray. I don’t want to say, “Boulders”. Maybe from like golf ball size, tennis ball size, softball size and maybe a few big, big ones.

The best part about this whole thing is all these driftwood that I get to play with. Now, I’m not going to use all of this, but I have some gnarly, awesome pieces of driftwood here. Just gorgeous, gorgeous driftwood. I cannot wait to play with this driftwood inside the tank while I hardscape.

Now, again, the tank is going to be focused solely on hardscape. I am going to do Pothos and maybe a couple of other small plants. This tank is going to be clearly-- not clearly, focused on hardscape alone.

My objective is to have this tank be different but beautiful from three sides. If you come down here, you’re going to look this way, it’s going to look one way. From the front, it’s going to look completely different. Then, from this side, it’s going to look different.

I really, really want to focus on the hardscape folks. I want to scape this with the driftwood and the rocks and the gravel and have it look absolutely gorgeous that you don’t need plants. Because what happens with me is I make a beautiful hardscape, I plant the shit out of it and then the plants take over. Even when that trim had been looking nice the hardscape completely disappears besides maybe some driftwood.

I’m going to focus on hardscape. I did fix that leak in the sump. If anybody watches my live stream, go check it out the replay. It was really simple. The connection to the return pump, I didn’t put enough Teflon tape on it. It was just a tiny, tiny, little drip. I unscrewed that, took the Teflon tape off, retape it with a lot of Teflon, screwed it back on, tighten up all the clamps with the ratchet and ran it all day yesterday, all last night, all day today and not one drip. I’m excited.

Somebody did say or mentioned, “Magnetic panels to hide the sump and just pop off”, which is a really cool idea. I forgot who said that idea, but I'm loving that idea. Right now, I’m just going to get a black skirt and just wrap it around the tank to not only--

I don’t care about the looking at the sump. It’s in the basement. It’s not like it’s in my living room or anything, but it’ll keep the kids out. My son Luke has already been fiddling down there and seeing what’s what. I can’t wait to scape this.

I’m not what I would love to do. Once I get the boulders is maybe do a LiveScape, get people’s input, but I might have to have Greg here or somebody here reading the comments. Maybe I’ll even have my son do it.

Maybe one night, if Greg comes over to hang out we’ll have a few beers and scape this thing. He can read the comments and have almost like a viewership. I do have a few ideas. Everybody can always use more input. Someone might see something that I don’t.

I’m really excited to see this scape going. I’m also very excited to get some fishing here to get this baby cycled. It’s going to be a super, super, super, simple filtration. I’m going to fill every one of these media baskets with BioHome Ultimate Media. I may experiment with just packing the filter sock with filter floss as a good polishing agent.

Since there’s no dirt in this tank, there’s not going to be a lot of plants, I don’t see a whole lot of gunk building up in this filter sock that it’s going to really need to be cleaned out that often. I will be putting filter floss in it, so it’ll polish the water nice.

I’m going to put two circulation pumps in here or maybe one Marineland makes a nice internal polishing filter that I can stick in the back corner. It creates a great flow. You won’t even be able to see it because it will be black against the black background. Plus, there’s going to be so much driftwood in here.

Anyway, I can’t wait to do this. Finally, it’s been like over a year in the making. The tank’s in. The stand is built. The sump is built. It’s been leaked tested. The sump has been fixed. Everything is all good.

I’d like to thank SC Aquariums for donating this tank as well as Custom Aquariums for donating the sump. I couldn’t be more pleased with my sponsors. I just want to give them a big shout out. They’ve been great. Via email and phone calls, they’ve been nothing but nice.

Steve Chow over SC Aquariums and Ted Judy over Custom Aquariums have been just amazing. If you guys want a beautiful tank or a very awesome seamless sump to go with any of your next builds, please hit the links below and contact them. Let them know MASS Aquariums, Mike from MASS sent you.

I don’t know, maybe they’ll give you a discount. I don’t have any discount codes available, but if they see that I sent you over and you’re interested, it’ll be B plus for both you and me. For now, I will get back to you on the scape and I’m out.

About MASS Aquariums

Mike chose the Seamless Sump filter system for his 135-gallon black water planted aquarium.

"My channel is all about simplifying the aquarium hobby. My focus is making videos on planted aquariums, reef aquariums and utilizing live streams to educate and excite. My goal is to inspire hobbyists and let them know anyone can enjoy a beautiful aquarium. You will learn, triumph and make your aquarium thrive."

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