at ten feet long seven feet wide and four feet tall my 2 000 gallon aquarium is the largest
community aquarium that i've ever set up and in today's video i want to talk about the fish to
summarize we've got some wahru in here severums angelfish sunshine pleco tiger barbs denies and
burbs archer fish we've got corydora and all of these are working out well together we've got
breeding between a couple of fish and i'm going to let you guys guess which ones are breeding
and laying eggs as you just kind of glance at this tank maybe you can see some of them actively doing
it versus just assuming or guessing who's doing it let's start off with the walrus i kind of want
to talk about them first obviously because you guys know me i love them this is a cichlid from
south america their latin names uh wahru amphicanthoids i got this the six that i do have
back in september of 2017. they didn't look like this though when you get a wahru they are much
smaller of course but they also their coloration as well as their patterns are incredibly different
they're like little camouflaged leaves when you first get them and then over
the next two years they transition almost like through a metamorphosis into their adult form
it's incredibly fascinating and it's a fish that is incredibly difficult to get bored of or sick of
because you start with one fish and it's almost like you end up with an entirely different fish
a really big fish within their first years they should get to at least six inches by the
second year about eight and then it slows down tremendously these guys can potentially get up
to a foot long though there's been reports of them getting up to 14 inches i like to be a little more
conservative with my experience saying they get to about 10 inches in length but reach sexual
maturity at six inches and when it comes to sexual maturity well these guys aren't sexually dimorphic
males and females have so much in common it's tough to say which one's male which one's female
but a lot of the times the male will have a bit of a nuclear hump the male will have a minor
differences but they're not always guaranteed the only way to tell with these guys is to vent them
now when you hear large and you hear cichlid you automatically assume that like these guys
can't go in with anything they're just going to destroy the tank rip it apart
they're going to need a massive tank and a lot of that is just not accurate see these guys are large
docile and gentle cichlids and because of that a pair of them could live happily in a 75 gallon or
get a few of them and grow them out until you get like a 120 which is four feet by two feet by two
feet they do need a relatively large aquarium but they are a large fish however when stocking with
other fish you just want to make sure that you stock them with things that won't beat them up
because the waru rarely tend to go after anything else and they definitely don't eat smaller fish
like tetras for example i mean you can keep neon tetras with these guys and they're not
going to eat them the one thing you can't keep with these guys at all ever not once is plants
you see the walrus is an omnivore leaning towards herbivore so it likes a varied diet but if you
give it any sort of plants including i don't know romaine lettuce on a clip they're going to
devour it they absolutely love it now i personally love the waru because of
a number of factors but it almost like i said goes through a metamorphosis and you're waiting
patiently for two to three years to get that final result you know those big yellow googly eyes that
large dorsal fin that almost looks like a mohawk that color pattern and coloration of their scales
and the that like black blotch in the center i love their body form and the fact that they are
so docile and c yet confident just sitting in the the center column of the water just staring at you
kind of fluttering their fins just just so majestic absolutely love it but one of
the fascinating things that people don't talk about a lot of the times when it comes to waru
is that they are only one of three fish on the planet that feed their fry off the mucus of their
skin absolutely incredible you guys know discus do that there's only three fish in the world that do
that and waru is one of them in fact another name for the huawei is the poor man's discus now i do
have a pear in this tank and they are actively laying eggs they do it every week or every two
weeks i've seen them sometimes i see them two or three times but somebody's eating the eggs i could
move these guys to a breeding tank but there's no fun in that i'm not i'm not a breeder i'm not
looking to uh get into that again what i want to i just want to see what happens in a community tank
that's 2 000 gallons that's the whole point who do you think's eating the fruit the eggs though
i'll let you know shortly another fish this uh this tank is starting to become uh more and more
nostalgic to me because when it comes to south america my second favorite or you know maybe top
five top ten all these fish are in there is the several the hero severus also known as the severum
also from south america i got them about six months ago i've kept uh the red spot i kept red
i've kept the red red head or rot keel and then of course the greens the greens of them the basics of
them is what you'll find in the wild is what i have in this tank and i got about six months
ago and within a year you should see about six inches of growth and then it slows down uh really
a lot they have almost the same growth as a discus and because of that they do get a little thicker
and because of that they need slightly larger aquariums than the discus so with a discus in
my opinion start off with the 20 gallon for the first fish 10 gallons for every fish after that
really basic rule of thumb but it works with these guys 30 gallons for the first fish 10 for every
fish after that works well only because these guys get a little bigger and thicker they also
are probably twice as aggressive as a walrus but still generally gentle stalking should be pretty
much anything they can't fit in their mouth and the best stocking option for severums is simply
more severums when i stock my tanks a lot of the times all the fish require the same
water parameters the temperatures and diet so almost everybody in here gets the same
general varied diet they all eat it including the pleco that we're gonna get to here shortly when
it comes to sevrum though you might be wondering like how do you sex these guys are they actually
sexually dimorphic or how can you tell well a lot of the times you can look at the fins the
a lot of people will talk about how cichlids fins in a male are more pointed on the dorsal or anal
the the male gets bigger the male's more colorful it's so much easier with with the severum
just look at their gill plates or the you know the sides of their heads
the male is going to have squiggly marks the female's not and there you have it that's how
you sex a saffron pretty simple you could do it at around three inches of size now the angelfish
there's not a whole lot to talk about with these guys that hasn't already been said on the internet
and what people know but this is a south american cichlid as well i got these ones these are just
basic silvers about six to eight months ago it's the closest to wild caught looking that i could
get these guys should be four to six inches in a year and when it comes to stocking and tank size
it's about the same as severums except they prefer a taller tank for well obvious reasons sexing
in this tank though in this tank with this many angelfish i do find that they do stick together
not necessarily schooling but shoaling a lot closer than i typically seen in smaller tanks when
i had these guys in a 120 they would spread out towards the entire tank creating territories and
in the 2000 they have zero territories they just bunch up together a lot of the times it's very
interesting behavior that i'm observing in this 2000 versus when these fish were in 120s sexting
and angelfish of course if you don't know how to do it you've got to vent them that's typically
looking at their breeding tubes when they get to breeding age sometimes the male can have a nuchal
hump you know for me or the male's fins will be a little bit more pointed and longer et cetera but
for me i don't really worry about the angel they're so common they're so affordable that
a lot of the times you can potentially buy six to eight of them and hope for a pair and then
re-home the others or trade them in or whatever you know whatever your preference is there the
downside to angelfish and i don't know if you guys agree with me but they are suspiciously aggressive
dude like for such a dainty little fish with beautiful fins and a tiny little mouth they're
aggressive a lot of times mostly picking on their own type they don't really go after other fish
so you can typically keep angelfish with almost anything that won't really go after the angel
and eat their fins a lot of the times some people will say that you can't even keep neon tetras with
an angelfish but i know it's it's going to be hit or miss and these guys are an omnivore so they do
really well in this tank now i don't know if you guys guessed who's eating the wahru eggs yet but
it's my sunshine pleco yet another south american fish and this is the last of the south american
fish originally i wanted to have this as a south american aquarium but then i got those archer fish
kind of threw that off and now it's just a really cool community tank i've had these guys for
i've had this sunshine flacco for about two years but this is a pleco that gets
big it gets to about a foot long however they're not incredibly active
and they don't do what you think you can keep these guys in a 55 to 75 but they're not going
to be an algae eater like you would think most plecos they're going to eat what your regular
fish eat they're not necessarily going after algae or going to clean your glass this is
comparatively uh a pretty expensive fish as well i mean they're probably going to run you a couple
hundred bucks two three hundred dollars per uh sunshine pleco depending on its size and
they are slow growers a lot of times it takes a couple years just to get half grown like mine is
but when it comes to tank mates i mean you can keep pretty much anything with it that you don't
plan on breeding so if your fish lay eggs and you want them to breed don't keep a sunshine pleco
it's going to come in the middle of the night and eat it it can also be said that you probably
shouldn't keep them with rays because they tend to try to suck on the sides of a raise again
these guys are more of a carnivore than anything the other fish breeding in this tank right now
is my tiger barbs i've never bred tiger barbs because i've never really put much emphasis
on them besides these guys when we got them a few months ago or maybe
a year or so ago i uh added them this to this tank almost as an afterthought just to liven
it up a little bit and act as a dither fish a lot of people thought that the tiger barbs were gonna
you know go after the angel fins uh the angel fins uh or the severum's fins or
just eat everybody's fins and that would have been the case in like a 30 gallon tank with
five tiger barbs and a few angelfish because when you have a small amount of tigers they tend to be
a lot more aggressive they're not occupied with themselves i highly suggest you get six to eight
minimum tiger barbs if you don't want any problems and keep away from small tanks with other fish
other than that i've tossed these guys what do we have here 30 or 50 i don't know if you guys
remember and we put them in a 2 000 gallon tank i want you to find a single fish in here with a torn
thin there isn't it tiger barbs are leaving them alone but they're also actively breeding
and flashing and that's really interesting and fun to watch the downside is it's really hard to
see everything in such a deep tank with such thick viewing panel and trying to see such small fish i
guess that's one of the only things that i regret about this being a puny community tank is it can
be tough to see everything those denies and burps man i remember when those guys were going extinct
and they were incredibly expensive over a hundred dollars a piece now they're incredibly common
uh they're they are found in india uh tiger barbs are from borneo if you're curious um they only get
to about six inches but they're incredibly active and one of my favorite barbs i gotta admit though
the tiger barbs hands down my favorite barb of all time i just think it's a classic looking fish
i love the black bars you know what i really like that i think i want to do for essential men
the central american aquarium and a lot of you guys especially new people in the hobby might
not appreciate them anymore because they're so common and they're so affordable and they've
they're so easy to keep and breed but i love the convict cichlid let me know if you agree with that
i love their contrasting colors i love their bars i love how easy they are to breed i love what
they look like when they get adults and get into breeding dress i think they're just an absolutely
gorgeous fish but because they're so easy to breed and they're so cheap a lot of people sleep on them
i think i'm gonna have to bring them back into popularity and you know let me know what you guys
think there the last fish in this tank is one of the fish that's definitely getting uh moved to the
new gallery and that's the archer i want to set up an asian themed aquarium with these guys in it
and i want to be able to take the tops off and set up some targets so we can do target practice with
flies or krill or whatever the case might be this tank's just too big to do that in but you will
notice that they constantly circle the tree it's almost as if they it's it's instinctual and they
think something's going to drop from a tree like a bug or an insect and they're going to get it
i can't see these guys swimming out in open water because they do spit at
bugs and whatnot to knock them off of the leaves and branches so it's very instinctual for them
to swim around things like this and that's what they do they they circle it non-stop
i thought you guys might appreciate that and seeing that because it's a
it's really interesting to watch these guys though are the clouded archer they're typically
found between bangladesh and thailand i got them back in august of 2020. they are one of
the smaller archers only getting to about you know 12 inches but probably going to max out at eight
uh when when we have these max sized that's because somebody found one in the wild or
there's been a abnormal abnormally where a fish has been you know found but it's not common so
when you hear about max size a lot of the times they don't actually get to that that's just like
one that was found type of deal these are surface feeders though but they will eat a variety
of foods and i've watched them eat sinking foods constantly so it doesn't have to be a floater
there's no known way to sex these guys and they're rarely bred in captivity though
so if you plan on getting them and breeding them good luck maybe we'll have some
luck in the gallery but we'll see what happens the thing that i like about these guys
always active never really hide and if they do they just kind of circle
in a smaller area always circling like a little pool of piranhas
which we also have
just not in this tank for obvious reasons
downside directors is they will eat smaller fish i had a bunch of tetras in here one day and within
a week they were all i had a bunch of smaller tetras in this tank and the next day i did not
the archers had fat bellies though so can't be putting them in with uh smaller fish the
benefit to our the the clouded archer though is one of the only archer fish that's a true
freshwater archer fish the majority of the rest are salt or i'm sorry brackish water which is a
mixture or of salt water and fresh water meeting in between however a brackish water tank with
some monos and archers and maybe some puffers and things like that is something i've been seriously
considering let me know if you want to see that in the near future with that said if you guys
enjoy this type of video i'm rushing it along i feel like i'm rushing myself just to try to talk
about everything but if you guys like this type of video and you really want me to dump a lot of
information about fish onto you let me know in the comment section below and if you're not one that
comments just hit the hit the like button and i'll continue to make these types of videos as i can
anyways anyways that's it for today's video i want to thank you guys for watching if you want to
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