Speaker 1: Towards the center, so they get even more light and we get a more dramatic effect. Oh man, that is good. Look, out of every aquarium in the entire gallery, there's always been one last tank that we never really fully set up. We did saltwater when it was a racking system, but other than that it's just always sat empty. Today I figured, you know what, let's just jump into this and see what we can create. This is, of course, the last tank. It has housed the XO Dawn's. It has some carbs in there and also has a lot of clown loaches and a really large sunshine pleco, all of which we will see once we start taking everything out.
The materials we're going to be working with. This is what I figured we'll do. We're just going to use some of the manzanita wood. The problem with is I didn't have any of it that was sinking. It was all floating stuff so for the past few days I've been waiting for it to sink. It's finally sunk so now we can move ahead with actually trying to create a scape here. Now if I can get the reflection off the glass, remember all of this crypto Corrine, we still have it from that original unboxing.
It's all here. It all looks to still be alive. We'll try to utilize all of this so we will need a planted tank substrate for it.
Now it's alive because obviously these lights are still keeping them alive. I'm going to assume that this is going to be sufficient. As for substrates, we do have some brown sand, very fine and then we have lots of planted tank substrates. I don't plan to make this a fully planted tank. I do plan on a fully planted tank in the future. It's going to be absolutely amazing more on that in a future video. First things first is, I got to drain this tank and remove everything and then start the scaping. Plan here is not to go crazy. This bag of substrate is the last bag that I bought two years ago. That planted tanks substrate is also leftover from the planted tank.
You want to see that? Now, this thing is ready for fish. Isn't that incredible? Most of the grass has covered the entire bottom of the aquarium here. Let's see if we can adjust it so it looks a little better here. We've got a couple of little bald spots here and in the back, but for the most part, check that out. Isn't that absolutely gorgeous? Now imagine a couple hundred tetras. Whoa, I got to place that order soon before they're gone. Let me know in the comments section below which species of Tetra you think I should go with schooling or shoaling and then the species if you can.
Personally, I think the planted tank needs a schooling fish. As the tank trains, of course, I'm just going to disassemble it slightly, removing the lids. I will remove all of the wood and when I put it back in, it will sink again and is waterlogged. Wood sinks or doesn't sink based off its density. At least I think it all sinks. It's all just bunched up in here so, but I just took some pieces that had the most character and twists and winds and we'll see what we can come up with. I don't really have a plan.
Yes. My main goal here is just get the substrate and get some wood in. Plant the plants. We can always rescape but we can always make changes. Let's just skip that part. Let's just jump in, see what happens. While I wait for that tank to drain, I'm going to use the 2000 gallon to see which pieces of wood sink, which ones float in advance just so I don't have to deal with any floaters later on. This one still floats.
Out of all that only two don't sink. They're still floating, could use some more time soaking. A couple are neutrally buoyant , almost like you touch it and it will sink a little bit, but bobbed back up and then the other sinks up. We've got some good materials here.
Now I thought about using rocks as well, but then as I look around all the tanks, I want every tank to kind of be pretty unique, but as I look at all the tanks, they all have rocks into them to some extent. The planted tank doesn't, the wall root tank, this tank is going to be switched over and completely changed here shortly so that doesn't even count. Then of course, this Lake tank you could take also has a ton of rocks in it. I think ideally I will just go with wood substrate and some plants. I think that might look pretty cool. Plus the background is already completely rock. I don't know if I want to have all of the wood on the bottom or maybe it droops down. I'm not sure what's going to happen here, but I guess we're going to have to find out.
All right, so all the plants are out and I got to say it's looking pretty good so far. Lots of strong roots, although, because most of them were tipped over in the tank, you could see the plants started to grow up towards the light as opposed to straight out. They'll always go towards lights. What we'll do here is we've got to get him out of this foam. This is going to dissolve in the tank over time, but your fish might eat it, they could get constipated, clogged up over it. I just like to rip it off. It's also going to clog your tank over time, getting in your filt. It's just a complete mess. I take off as much as I can, just with my fingers.
A lot of hobbyists like to snip the roots for better growth, I just break off the really long ones. I take off as much as I can. Take it over to a pool of water, give it a quick little switch wash and that should be good. We've got a lot of good root growth here. These look healthy to an extent. I mean the leaves aren't doing that great, but if that's what they did in just some sponge and basic lighting, I'm sure they're going to enjoy a planted tank substrate. Wow. This one's huge, the size of this guy. This, of course, is what we are left with. Didn't want any of this stuff in the tank. Some of these were not that strong anymore and they're just pulling apart and breaking.
I'm not going to bother with them because I want to be able to put the fish right back in. We've got some of the smaller ones and some of the bigger ones here. I think that's enough to get started. These do grow pretty quickly and I think we'll get quite the boost when we add them into an actual planted substrate. We'll see what happens. I just don't know where in the tank they're going. Alright, I'll fish out. We're going to shop back the rest out just to have a clean start. All right, nice clean start. Let's start with the hardscape as opposed to dumping in the substrate first. I'm not looking to build up a substrate here.
This is my favorite piece and it's the one I want to start with. You guys need more light. Okay, here you go. This one is my favorite piece, so that's the one I want to start with and I really like it like this. I'd love to have it up to the water's surface, but I'll need something else to prop it up. Let me see what else we got here. Maybe this guy here, this is a semi floater, but hopefully the other piece will hold it down at least long enough for it to sink. I don't know if this is going to work, something like that. Ooh, that doesn't look so bad for it's first piece. There's a couple more branchy style stuff. I wish I had more than that with sinking right now, but heck, it is what it is. We'll go with it.
I think that looks pretty good. I'll give you some better view here in a minute. I don't spend a ton of time doing this stuff. I don't spend a ton of time scaping and I always thought that the best scapes, the best ideas, never really take that long to actually accomplish like that. I think we're going to go pretty simple. I think I want something over here. Maybe, maybe something over there. I also love this piece. This looks like a root growing on the ground, doesn't it? Maybe this one comes out from the back and this will be covered in a substrate, so it's not incredibly too important to make sure that the placement is great.
Maybe something like that or does it need to come out further? Something like that, perhaps or like that. Then maybe something like this could do the same. No, I don't know if I like it there. We're going with it. We don't spend all day trying to scape the same tanks. Let's just throw wood in here, shall we? Scaping one-on-one with Joey. Just toss it in. Hope it looks good. We'll see now that I've have all the branches coming down. I can't have one coming up. This is going look too contrived, too placed. I think that I might attempt to make this one a little taller like it is also coming from above, type of deal. I like that better. Ooh, I liked that a lot better.
Two more little pieces. Do we put them in or is enough, enough? I feel like I need more of the background filled in. I love this idea. Maybe this one's coming from over here. You know what? I like it. Let's have a closer look. What are we in here for, three minutes? I don't mind that. I don't mind that at all. What I'm looking to accomplish here is just depth. I want the fish to be able to have shadows because the axle dons are going in here. I almost want this to look mysterious and a little bit crazy. Let's see from above here. I don't mind that. That's what? One, two, three. One, two, three, four, five pieces of wood. I know many of you guys would do a much better job and take much better time with this, but I've always got to go with the first scape or I'm just never going to be satisfied with it. Just toss the wood in. You can always re-adjust and make minor adjustments, twists, whatever you want to do, later.
I like the simplicity of this. I like it a lot. I don't want to go too crazy with adjustments or changes, but I do want this to come out more. Does it do this? This is the one piece I'm not overly excited about, so maybe we use it as a filler somewhere in the back. Maybe it comes down like this instead. [laughs] I think ultimately it's going to look good no matter what you do here. I like that, too. I love that. Good idea, guys. Now, this guy here, that'll come and fill that out. I'm not looking to follow the rules or scaping rules or something, I always thought that was bizarre. I think that that is probably one of the more natural looks. I like this a lot more. It's also much different than the other aquarium. That was very important.
Look at the shadows it's creating. I love it. I'm not sure about this bottom piece. Does this come up? We should get rid of that, don't we? We're going to get rid of this piece down here. I'm a little depressed that this piece didn't stay up higher, but I'm not going to get too crazy. This gotta come out. I think that this is just drawing the attention. I think the bottom of it's too busy and I want the sporadic amount of plants to be there. I think with plants. We'll just plant- I don't even know what I'm going to do there. Let's just see what happens. A few minutes of this and I'm done. The only focus that I really-- I like that. I like how it sits on there. That's fine. We could use that to plant stuff on. No second opinions.
I just did what I think looks good and what I think the fish will interact the best with, and that's it. We call it quits. Now for a substrate, I think the plants are going to focus mainly on the center of the scape, so that's where I'm going to dump this in, right over that piece of wood there. I'll smooth it out here in a minute. I think what I'm going to do is like the poor man's planted tank where you only have a little bit substrate. I think adding this root in was great. It adds a little bit more structure to it. I think the plants are mostly going to be based in the center, although spreading them out would look great, as well. I think this could be fine.
Now I'm just adding in a few inches of water just to moisten the substrate, make it easier to plant in, but as you can see, it's probably about three inches of depth of that planted substrate, that root that we put in there. Is it virtually gone? Perhaps over time it will expose itself, but this is going to be good enough for the very little amount of plants that I do have. I just want to put them in the center, just see what happens. Maybe we'll even angle the lights towards the center so they get even more light and we get a more dramatic effect. Man, that is good. Look. Like I said, I angled the lights and jeez. In person this area is really lit up and then everything around it, the parameter, is very dark and mysterious.
I think this scape is going to look absolutely phenomenal, but we'll see. I think it's just something new. I think it's off the top of our heads. We're just having fun. We're just doing what looks good and what makes us excited and, of course, what we think the fish are going to enjoy. Honestly, screw everything else. Now, as that begins to fill, I'm going to add in the sand. This is going to give it a dramatically different look. I've only got a 40 pound bag, but it's dusty. Pour it in. That's filthy. It doesn't look that great right now. Way better ways to add a substrate than this, but I've got to get this going because I have to get the fish back in it. I have no idea where any of these plants are, because I can't see anything.
There you have it thus far. Obviously, it's got to clear up. We'll discover and see what the substrate and plants look like. Once it does, I think this is actually going to look good, even if it does mix up the two substrates, but I like the wood. I think it looks fantastic. I think it's going to look incredible once the tank is filled up. I am worried if some of the wood might float, but now we have to figure out which of the fish we're going to actually add into this aquarium. We've got clown loaches, barbs, we've got the exodons and we've got a massive sunshine pleco in here. Let me know in the comments section below what your thoughts are thus far. I know clearly I could've added in the substrate and made that a lot cleaner.
Buy one of two things. One, simply rinsing it before adding it in, or two, adding it into a dry aquarium, but this was going to happen one way or the other and I figured I can go ahead and fill it, then go ahead and drain it and fill it back up. It's going to be crystal clear, but in the next video we will add the fish, we will see what the scape finally looks like, and if that's something you want to see, you're not subscribed to this channel yet, make sure that you do so you don't miss it.
