the scape shouldn't take very long I want to start off with the ugliest
pieces of the boulders and will try to hide them so this is a nice big piece
okay so today we're gonna be steeping the saltwater aquarium
I've already kind of been messing around with things let me show you how far
we've got so just to gain some inspiration for myself I already kind of
started adding the rocks into the aquarium now of course we're gonna start
over but I just wanted to you know get some inspiration for myself I've never
really scaped a saltwater aquarium before and I kind of wanted to see what
I could do here clearly there's a number of things we need to go over in this
video which is how I'm going to plan the scape what I'm doing it around of course
what types of rocks I'm using let's just get started so that I can escape it of
course I gotta put that breeze back on before we actually fill the aquarium or
we're gonna have an explosive result let me just give you a quick look at the
I've used this before you guys will be familiar with it this is called carob
sea life Rock I paid for this this isn't a sponsored video I just like it I liked
it for two reasons one it comes in some unique shapes as well as it's already
colored to simulate like coralline algae all over the rock so it looks like it's
established plus it's mined from old coral beds that used to exist millions
of years ago so it's actually real coral rock but it's not taken from the wild
another thing I like about is the fact that it's not having an impact on the
coral reefs of course like I mentioned but it's said that it's also coated in a
dormant bacteria that once it gets wet it can help to cycle your aquarium and
turn this close faster into live rock now of course it comes in a multitude of
shapes you can get it in the basic rocks and boulders but then you can get it in
some pretty cool shapes as well I got a hundred pounds of this one thing I want
to note though is that because this has never touched
any sort of system in the past that means its pest free there's no pathogens
no parasites no you know hitchhikers there's there's I'm starting off as
sterile as I can with the best chances at success now again I've used this a
few times in the past and I've had success with it largely because it
already looks like established rock and since this is going to be a fish only
system I want it to look pretty good because there will not be any coral in
here this is a predator tank so to give you an idea of what I'm kind of working
with this is considered the life rock shapes so it comes like there's usually
holes in it and whatnot film looks sort of like this as well which is kind of
interesting and then you've got pieces like this
this is also considered shapes then you just have the basic rock which is going
to be most commonly found and what most reefers start out with however I really
like the idea of having a bunch of different shapes to kind of work with
downside to using it is that when I order it online it just comes in boxes I
never hand selected them I have to come up with some sort of scape based on
whatever was sent to me and because I don't like the waste I also want to use
all of it now shipping is never perfect and because I want to use all of it I
will use all the broken rubble pieces as well to kind of fill in some of the
places in the rock to make it look more uniform will show you more on that in a
minute so the first thing I do when scaping is categorize all the pieces
meaning I have all the rocket or solid Boulder type pieces here all the shapes
up here so that when I'm stalking or escaping the tank I know exactly what I
have left and what I'm working with no good idea to practicing your scape is to
line out a piece on a table or something like that the same dimensions as the
aquarium itself giving yourself about a two inch perimeter all the way around so
as though you don't hit the walls and kind of practice caping like that but
for me I'm more so of just starting to put things in the aquarium and letting
it evolve so that like however if you're not in escaping that
much my suggestion of course would be to practice scaping on a table and see what
you can come up with and like take a few pictures so that you can replicate it
when it's time to go back in the aquarium just before we begin just a
quick disclaimer I'm not a professional aquascape er I don't think I'm good at
it I don't think that I'm the best at it if you're here to learn how to aquascape
you're probably not going to learn a whole lot about all of the rules and etc
etc but I will show you what I do and what I consider rules for aquascaping
we're always silly to meet anyways I'm a fish keeper so my main focus is on the
fish 1 how are they going to interact with the scape 2 what are the effects of
escape long term and as the fish grows are this this is this scape still going
to accommodate their patterns of characteristics on what they do on a day
to day basis so for me that's the number one thing that I focus on is what are
the fish I'm actually putting in here and what are some of the habitats that
they technically or typically prefer you guys know I'm going to be adding a eel
of some sort hopefully a snowflake eel so I want to have a lot of open space on
them on the floor of the aquarium so we can zigzag and tie itself up maybe some
caves to hide in XY the rock I also want to have a porcupine puffer fish because
they're adorable and those guys tend to stay out in the
open but will probably venture throughout the scape as well as at a
smaller size and then of course a lionfish and those guys tend to drift in
the midsection or upper portion of the aquarium so I do want to have lots of
open space again I have about a hundred pounds of rock and usually a rule of
thumb is one pound per gallon for love live rock but I'm not gonna be doing
that how I'm going to be filtering and biologically supporting this aquarium
will come up in a future video oh and then of course the last thing I consider
is aesthetics how does it look does it look good does it complement the
aquarium is the scape taking away from the fish or of the finish taking away
from the scape we'll get into that in a minute
Oh before we begin I kind of want to talk about since we're using all rock
there's a chance of it all falling over and smashing the aquarium and there's a
number of you can do to prevent that one you can
use an epoxy putty to hold things together or an epoxy glue to hold things
together or you can simply drill through the rock using something like this which
I've already done just to try it out drilling through it adding some PVC pipe
and drilling through another one sticking them together like that making
it more permanent but for me what I'm going to do is make sure I balance the
rocks good enough so that they don't fall over and since this is a predator
tank a lot of the fish that are going in they're gonna get considerably larger so
long term I'm not going to be able to keep the scape that I initially put in
there I would want to remove rocks here and there and I want to keep that open
so I'm gonna have to do my best at balancing these good so the fish can't
necessarily knock them over okay the scape shouldn't take very long I
want to start off with the ugliest pieces of the boulders and we'll try to
hide them so this is a nice big piece
last thing I need to consider is the actual flow of the aquarium is the flow
going to be able to accommodate the scape in terms of are we gonna have dead
spots in the tank so I do have an eco tech mp40 and b20
I forget what size this is but it's an eco tech wave maker over on this side
that's going to be constantly blowing this way the return is going to be
blowing this way so I want to make sure that I cleverly scape it so that this
the flow of the aquarium is still and the circulation of course is still
efficient and you guys have ever watched me skate before there's really no goals
or plans here I just start tossing in the rocks or wood and see what comes of
it I guess my idea here is maybe to create a horseshoe of some sort I don't
know we'll see
say I think about that's about as high up as I want to go on this side because
of the output over here we don't have an output so we can build it up a little
higher we'll see how we could do that one of the things you'll notice about
these shapes though is that because they're kind of shaped like this now of
course there's rules of thirds and all different type of placements of where
you can put things but for me I'm just doing what I think is gonna look good
and the fish are gonna do interact well with so right now I'm just building the
base of the skate giving myself solid structures to set other pieces on later
again none of this has to be perfect or even permanent we can move this later
on if we need to oh you know what I might do instead is build escape here
and build escape here like I said I have no clue what I'm doing
see that's what I'm talking about you can stack these up they're not going
anywhere
so all of the bottom as you see the flow can get in between the rocks of course
we still need to substrate but that's going to come in a future video
why am i adding in the rocks before the sand good idea or good question I'm
asking myself it's because if I put the sand in now in the rocks on top
depending on how deep that sand bed is and depending on the types of fish I put
in here they might be able to dig underneath and undermine the rock that
I'm putting in here but the beauty part about this is if I don't like what I
have going on here and I can slowly change it over the next few days and
we'll go from there now I'm just going to take some of this rubble and try to
fill in a couple of the voids here and there to make pieces connect a little
bit better or at least appear like they're connecting better what would you
have done you've seen the rocks you seen the pieces you know the dimensions of
the tank being four feet long two feet wide two feet tall you know the fish I'm
putting in it you know where the flows at what would you have done let me know
in the comment section below it's not as high up as I'd like it to be but I want
that lionfish to have plenty of open swimming space up top I also want the
puffer to be able to swim in between everything and evade the lion or
whatever might happen and of course I want the eel to be able to zigzag
through everything and hide and find comfort in the skate let's take a closer
look hmm
I don't know guys so this is how I see it from my perspective I don't have a
wide angled eyeballs but this is what I see I like it and this is difficult to
create a scape without adding it a bunch of coral but again this isn't going to
be a coral reef this is going to be a predator tank I want it to be as simple
as possible and it won't man it's gonna be so easy to take care of the rest of
the process is quite simple we'll get into that here shortly though you know
in a future video but let's take a look from above so it might look from the
from the front of the tank that all the rock is touching the glass but it's
actually not some of it's quite close but if you can see what I was trying to
do here this portion comes over like this and then this portion comes out
like this this type of rock here this little area here was almost like a
separator between the two the only part I don't like is this I'm not sure if I
like these rocks like circular like that it almost looks like they're bought at
Walmart like not a whole lot of detail to them well they're still pretty
awesome and they pile up really really good if I had a bunch of small rubble
I could definitely fill in all the gaps there but I don't know I I like it I
think I might change this a little bit to come out more and be more of an
overhang other than that I think I like it
I don't know I'd love to know what you guys think again we put this together
within ten minutes so it's not like um a whole lot of thought went into it did
you like this one or the one previously I I think I'm gonna keep it like this
and then over time it'll be fun to kind of switch it up I know that it does look
like the rock wouldn't be that stable but it certainly is I wonder if you can
see I got to clean this glass because this used to be quarantine
see all of the detail and dimensions that I see see when I walk into the
gallery this is what I will see right and I like that I can easily see all the
fish but when I come to the front of it it changes maybe I used too much rock
maybe I shouldn't have used to men all of it I don't know I like it though no
I'll be honest with you guys almost any saltwater aquarium kind of looks cool of
course if this was covered in Coral I probably would have did things a lot
differently but we're not doing that so my only thing I can do is rely on the
shape of the scape and the overall appeal of the rocks yeah I don't think
the video truly captures what I've done here I like it I like it a lot I'm gonna
go with it but of course I need to know your guys thoughts we only have a couple
of days before I can't adjust anymore after this I'm installing the sump
system I have all the equipment I need you know what I don't have is salt I
thought I did I gotta go to my local fish store and pick up some salt maybe
I'll do an updated store tour while they're probably buy some fish but I
also need to order in the fish that I need once we get this tank we're gonna
be adding in sand like a coral types and another coral but Agra night types and
if that's how you pronounce it and there's about 40 pounds 80 60 pound
something like that that we'll be putting in and it's a heavier sand so
it's not gonna be blowing throughout the aquarium but after that because there's
a wide live bacteria added into that we have to fill the tank up immediately and
the cycle will can begin I'll also be doing a few different things to see if
all of this bacteria that's in the sand and then that's supposed to be on these
rocks is actually going to work we're gonna test this with pure ammonia as if
fish were added to the system see how quickly that ammonia dissipates or at
least oxidizes through the bacteria that turns to nitrite and then of course my
trait that'll be interesting to see
and then of course getting the fish I had already told Jeff from one fish two
fish three fish that I want and he says no problem we'll see probably take a few
weeks for that to happen but in the meantime that's how simple this wise
ultimately there's so many different escapes out there that you can grasp
inspiration from I'd love for you guys to follow along if you're thinking about
getting a saltwater aquarium just grab something
toss some rock in there this is where I'm at next we're gonna I'll show you
how to mix the salt and you know how to which equipment you really need and what
you don't really need will make this easy to take care of cost effective as
cost effective as weekend but planning for the long term as well because maybe
this one day turn into a coral reef so we kind of want to keep that in mind and
not restrict ourselves at the same time anyways I hope that you guys enjoyed
today's video I should probably stop talking but let me know your thoughts in
the comment section below should I have stuck with the original scape where do
you like this one better clearly we're probably not gonna go back to the
original skate but it only takes me 10 minutes to escape the tank anyways 20
minutes for a freshwater tank go figure but if this was yours with these right
types of rocks what would you have done leave me suggestions in the comment
section below believe it or not I read them I respond to as many as I can but
most importantly you're not helping just me you're helping other people watching
the videos the comments section I've always said it is the second half of the
video so I look forward to hearing your guys thoughts