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0:00:03.4: You know, John, you got a lot on your plate. You've got a growing YouTube channel, a website that you and Lisa started up again back in July that's growing faster than you ever imagined. You've got 400 beta tanks, two 75-gallon aquariums, a 90-gallon, two 125s, a 240 and a 360 gallon. And oh yeah, I almost forgot, the doctor said, "You need to lose weight and get your blood pressure down." She also said, "You should try to alleviate stress and slow down a bit." So what are you gonna do? Get another monster tank. What did you think I was gonna say?
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0:00:58.0: Hey, folks, it's John with keepfishkeeping.com. Everything I just told you is absolutely true, and it's also true that I did get a new aquarium. You might be asking, "Why would you do all of that? With everything going on, why would you add to it, to get another aquarium?" Well, the truth is, we started talking about this way back in the summer.
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0:01:27.0: I had a very specific vision in mind for this tank. I wanna do something special, I wanna do something that makes kind of a statement. And I was talking to my buddy from customaquariums.com, and I was telling him about the project and what it is that I'm doing, and he said, "Well, where are you getting the tank from?" I said, "I don't know, it's a 150-gallon tank, I can probably just pick it up off the rack somewhere." And he said, "Oh no, no, no. No. The relationship between Custom Aquariums and KGTropicals goes way back. We can't have that." So we went back and forth for a little bit, and the deal that I ended up getting on this tank was better than what I could have gotten at some pet store somewhere just buying a 150 off the rack.
0:02:15.9: The beautiful thing about this change in plans was that I not only got a really good deal on this, but I was also able to increase the size of the tank to a 240-gallon. What can I say? Life is good. After getting this tank off the lift gate and nearly giving Lisa a heart attack, the driver was nice enough to pull the crate right up to the door of our garage, which is great, but unfortunately, it's sat there for about a week because... Well, let me just show you.
0:02:58.6: It's much warmer in here. Had to take the hoodie off. If you've been following this channel for any length of time, you're gonna remember this room. This is our two-car garage, which we insulated and it served as our fish room for almost all of 2019, and it was great. We loved it in here, we were streaming from out here, filming videos out here. It was awesome. I've got my 360-gallon tank out here, loved this space. But in January of 2020, our basement opened up. Our son was living down there with his family, they moved out, and we had that whole space to ourselves. We were like, "Well, we can expand our YouTube channel, we can get more tanks, we can do all this stuff if we move everything down there," which is exactly what we did. And then in July of 2020, we re-launched our website, we opened our website back up again, and this is where we had our products stored. You can see a little bit of it still in here. You might be thinking, "You guys don't sell a whole lot of stuff." Well, we've got this here, but no, all of our stuff now, almost all of it except for what little bit you see here in the shelves, has already been moved downstairs.
0:04:13.9: Basically, we're doing the old switcheroo. We're bringing everything back up here and taking all of the products downstairs. And most of them are already down there, except for this little bit, which I've gotta get down there today. So basically moving the business down there so that we have more space and we can again expand, but this time expand our product line that we're carrying on the website and move all of this stuff back up here. But I'm actually happy about it because I'm gonna be able to spend time with my 360-gallon, which I don't really want you to look at right now because it's very, very dirty and there's all kinds of stuff on top of it. This is a project area here, it's very chaotic in here right now. In fact, I've got orders sitting here right now that I have to pack. But anyway, this room is kind of crazy. We've gotta get all of this cleared out and down there into the basement so that I can free up space to bring in that the new tank and then also bring the other tanks from downstairs back up here, and my desk, and my computer, and all of that stuff. This is basically gonna become our fish room again.
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0:05:44.7: Okay, this is all very exciting. Through hours and hours of hard work up and down the stairs constantly, we were able to get everything that was up here down into the basement. Now we just have to organize everything down there. But I also got all of my stuff moved up here, with the exception of the aquariums. I need to wait for some help for the aquariums, but the good thing is they don't have to all be moved up right now. We can move those up as we're ready, no big deal. You see the 360 is over here, that hasn't moved and it's not gonna move. But our plan is to put the existing 240 that we have here, and then the new 240 is gonna go right in front of the garage door. And it's actually pretty convenient because it's sitting right on the other side of this door, so it's gonna be very easy to break it down, pull it straight into the garage, and then that's all that really needs to be done, so it's gonna work out good. I do have to get some help over here to help me get the tank basically three feet into the garage, and then we'll be good to go. And then the real fun begins because then we have to set everything up, get everything all organized. It's a work in progress. It's gonna take a while, but I am excited. Let's get that crate opened up and see what's inside, start this whole fun project off. It's gonna be a fun one.
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0:09:03.5: Alright, here it is. I'm so glad that this thing is in the garage now. It was stressing me out with that thing out in the driveway. We got mostly everything else up here too. We even got a new Oscar, we'll talk about that in another video, but we still have some more things to get moved up here, a couple more tanks and stuff like that, and a couple things to still move downstairs, but I don't wanna get too far ahead of myself. I am so glad that this thing is in here. It's kind of a funny story of how it got in here, though. You might see this tank and think, "Well, John, it was right on the other side of the door. It's not that big of a deal to get it inside." Well, yes, it is. This thing weighed 1100 pounds in the crate. That's with the crate, the stand, everything. Tank, about 450 bone dry. So I don't know too many people that are not competing for Strong Man competitions that could bring something like that in themselves, so I did have to wait for help.
0:10:04.0: My son came over, and he is a big giant ox. He was able to help me get it into the garage, which is just three feet, but getting it up onto the stand, that was another story. This is how I know it pays to be nice to your UPS driver and maybe even become friends with him, like I have with mine. The short version of the story is this. My UPS driver comes here every single day to pick up orders for us from you that we're sending out for website orders. It's a beautiful thing because he does this, and it's not even on his route. He just does it to be nice. He comes through here, our neighborhood, the last stops of the day, and he swings through here, he picks the stuff up, it's awesome. Otherwise, we would have to take it to a UPS access point, which isn't that big of a deal, but it's just another thing that we would have to do, and his graciousness allows us to not have to do that. So he hit me up one morning earlier this week, and he said, "Hey, could you do me a favor?" I said, "Of course." And he says, "Could you print me out a UPS shipping label?" I thought that was a little weird because, well, he works for UPS. But the thing is, I guess they don't make it easy for them to get their own labels, I don't know.
0:11:20.4: But I didn't ask any questions. I said, "What do you need?" He sent me the information for the packages and all of that, and I said, "When you come here today, I'll have them ready for you." Anyway, he gets here to pick up our packages, he comes out here because I wanna print out the labels for him, and we get all of that straight. And I said, "You know what? While you're here, I have a favor to ask of you. Maybe you and your helper," who was with him for the holiday season, you know, UPS drivers have helpers that go around with them. I said, "Maybe the two of you could help me lift this 450-pound glass box up on to the stand. And I start going through this whole spiel of, "Hey, if you don't wanna do it, I understand, because it's a liability and you could hurt yourself." He said, "Stop talking. Let's just do it." Those were his exact words, "Stop talking. Let's do it," because UPS drivers are always in a hurry. So between him and his helper, who's a Dallas Cowboy fan, and my nephew who was here at the time, the four of us were able to get it up there and get it onto the rack and... Or not the rack, but the stand.
0:12:29.3: What a huge load that was off of my shoulders. I was stressing out, wondering how I was gonna get that thing up there. But thanks to him and his helper and my nephew, we got it done and nobody got hurt. So we haven't really talked about the details with this tank yet. Let me tell you about this thing and all the plans that I have for it. This is a 240-gallon aquarium. If you've been watching my videos for any length of time and you've seen the 240-gallon tank that I have in my basement, well, this is the exact same thing. Exact same measurements as that, except for one, and we'll talk about that in a second. It's 72 inches wide, 24 inches deep, and 30 inches tall. And that's my favorite part. That 30-inch front panel is amazing. When I initially set out to start a 150-gallon tank, I wanted the tall version, not the four-foot wide, tall, really tall, 150-gallon, but the six-foot long, 30-inch tall, and I think it's 18 inches deep, I think that's the measurements. This one is the same exact thing, except it's 24 inches deep and it's an extra 90 gallons. You can never go wrong with more gallons in the tank.
0:13:39.3: So, yes, very, very excited about that. I love the size of that front panel, that's what it's all about for me. It's just high enough to not be ridiculous, it's wide enough and deep enough. There's so many things that you can do with this tank. You wouldn't wanna do alligator gar and big, giant redtail catfish, I don't know, but large cichlids, African cichlids. Spoiler alert, that's what I'm gonna do here. All different kinds of things you can do in these tanks. Or you can just make it a magnificently huge community tank with live plants and maybe some discus or something. The options are endless, which is why I love this tank. If I was to change my mind down the road and wanna switch from the fish that I plan on putting in there, I can do that, and there's so many options of things that I can do. So, yes, very, very cool.
0:14:30.3: There is one difference, actually two major differences, in this versus the one that I have downstairs. First of all... No, there's really three. The style of it is different. That one down there is, I think, their classic design, where this one is the contemporary design with the raised panels, more straight lines, not a lot of routed out fancy edges and things like that, basically straight edges, which I like and I plan on building something very similar to that to wrap my 360-gallon. But also went with black, which I kind of wish I had done on the other one. I'm gonna paint that one black some day, I've only been talking about it for two years. And the two biggest differences between this and the one that I have downstairs, that one's 30 inches tall, this one's 36 inches tall, which brings it up just a little bit higher and gets it kind of at that perfect level for viewing if you're sitting on a chair. Or if you're standing in front of it, you don't have to bend way down to see in it, it's kind of at that perfect level. I'm six feet tall, and you can see, with the tank, it's almost the same height as me. So it works out really, really well. But the biggest difference between this one and the one that I have downstairs is this one has a big secret. And I didn't really zoom the camera properly to show you this, but I'm gonna show it to you anyway. This aquarium is on wheels.
0:15:55.3: I didn't put this on casters, this is on wheels. It's not sitting on furniture dollies or anything like that, these are built into the stand. Now, the reason why they did this is for people that have aquarium service businesses and stuff like that, they put this into a, I don't know, a hotel, and the hotel is gonna do their routine painting of that wall, and they want you to come in and move it. Literally one person could go to that business, drain the tank down and move the tank off the wall, they can paint it, put it right back. It's very, very nice. I don't necessarily need my aquarium to be on wheels, but I thought it was really cool, and I said, "Why not?" Because hey, usually when you have an aquarium this size, you just say, "Well, there it is, and that's where it's gonna stay," and you never wanna move it. Believe me, I've moved mine way too many times. This one's easy. As long as I'm staying in this room, I can wheel it around wherever I want, if I decide I wanna switch walls or whatever. I like that. It's very, very cool. It's not a cheap option to do this, but you know what? In certain situations, it could save the day.
0:17:09.7: Now, there's another big difference between this tank and the one that I have downstairs, and that is that with this one, I elected to not go with the Custom Aquariums seamless sump. Now, don't get this twisted, folks. It's not because I don't like that filtration system. I am a retailer for this company. Trust me, I love the seamless sump, but I've already got two of them. I've got two big tanks, my 360-gallon and my 240-gallon, that both have those seamless sumps. So with this one, I wanted to do something a little bit different. I wanted to try something that I haven't done in 10 years, and that is make my own sump system. I'm a little bit intimidated because it's a big project. I know how to do it, I'm not scared of it, but it's a lot of work, but I think in the end, it's gonna be very cool. And I'm gonna take you through every single step of that process, of building the sump system for this. I'm not gonna give you any spoilers. You're gonna have to subscribe so that you see that whole project. It might even be something that is a couple of videos, I'm not all that sure. But let's talk about some fine details here. Let's talk about what you've been wondering. I hope you've been wondering, I hope you care enough to have been wondering, what am I gonna put in here?
0:18:25.1: Well, first things first, I'm gonna put black substrate in there, and I'm gonna put black lava rocks. Do you see a theme here? I kind of like it all blacked out. That was the goal with this, everything to be black. The background, the stand, even the blanket hanging up behind it, everything is black, even the decor. But I'm gonna put bright yellow fish in there. I am gonna fill this tank with about 50 yellow labs. Yes, I am an African cichlid guy, I've always loved African cichlids, that's how we got our start on this YouTube channel, but we're going back, we're going back to something we haven't had in years, and that is a tank full of mbunas. Now, I could have done anything, I could have put any kind of mbunas in there, but I said, "You know what? Yellow labs are one of my absolute favorites." They're bright yellow, they stand out from across the room. They're very nice, you don't usually have to worry about huge aggression issues with these fish, and I can put a whole bunch of them in there, and they will look spectacular up against everything black, bright yellow fish, they're gonna pop, It's gonna be amazing, and that is what you're gonna see behind Lisa in every single live stream. I would say that I'm gonna be jealous, but I'm gonna have the Oscars and the severums behind me, so it's an even thing. I think I'll be fine. But if we do get jealous, we can just switch it up every once in a while.
0:19:55.9: So this is a big project, and it's one that I'm gonna take you along the ride for, even when it comes to getting the fish. We're gonna include you in the entire process of this, and because we're gonna do it that way, it might take a while to get this tank fully set-up. The smart thing to do would be to have it all done, record all of that and then start uploading the videos, but no, I kind of like the pressure of having to do it. Otherwise, people are gonna be asking where the videos are. So I'm gonna take you along the ride with us, as we go along with this project. Like I said, there's gonna be a video all about the filtration in this tank. I'm gonna do one that's probably gonna be lighting and aquascape. The aquascape is gonna be pretty simple, it's just gonna be black lava rock. But we'll stack it up and we'll have all kinds of fun with that. I'll do a video about the getting the fish and all of that, and I'm gonna do the 12th video on cycling that I've done on this channel. I've done so many videos about cycling, but we're gonna cycle this tank in real time. I'll show you how I do it, and we'll go through the whole process. And that one will be several weeks in the making before it actually goes out because I'll show you everything about cycling an aquarium, and how long everything takes and all of that.
0:21:16.1: So it's gonna be a blast. It's gonna be awesome. Come along this journey with me. It's gonna be fun. We will go on this journey of living a healthier lifestyle and lowering our blood pressure and setting up a beautiful tank. We'll do all of that together, or at least I'll be the one doing the health stuff 'cause I need it. But anyway, this has been a lot of fun. I hope you appreciate me doing things a little bit differently in this video. I don't know, my creative juices have been flowing here lately, so expect more of that too. If you enjoy this kind of thing, subscribe to the channel. Plus, do it because you don't wanna miss what happens with this. It's gonna be a fun ride, and you're not gonna wanna miss out. Plus, we do a lot of other really cool videos too. So subscribe to the channel so that you don't miss out on all of that. I don't know what to say anymore because I'm just running my mouth. So thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next week. I don't think we're gonna be talking... I don't know what we're gonna be talking about, but I'll see you next week.
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