Fish for Thought is famous for his fish tank reviews where he submitted in aquariums that
he either praises or takes down and so i desperately need help with my aquariums
i decided to send him some of my past setups to completely roast me on but yeah I'm really
curious to see what he says this is going to be a one take blind review so let's go
oh my goodness I'm nervous. hope you're having a great start to the week
happy Monday or Tuesday if you're Australian good day mate fish tank
this FTR isn't unlike any other FTR because this one is special we have a special guest
appearing yes Irene from Girl Talks Fish has sent in basically her evolution in this hobby no okay
she's not a Pokémon i just met her evolution as a hobbyist from beginner to what she like what stage
she what from beginner to what state she is now go check out her channel by the way girl talks fish
if you haven't seen it yet you are really missing out go and subscribe because she has very high
quality videos i cut it out like when she had like very little subscribers but now she's over 100k
congratulations this is totally true back in the day uh we did a collaboration and Chris was like
just keep on chugging you're gonna reach 100k in no time at all and he's completely right although
Chris here is absolutely uh on the hustle train he's definitely going places okay first off we got
her first family betta tank which was a 3.5 gallon betta tank here is a crown tail called Darth Vader
that's a pretty cool name Darth Vader looks very healthy best case scenario for a 3.5 gallon with
artificial decor i've seen people just rub salt on the wound where they put SpongeBob decor and it's
like the worst SpongeBob decor anyone could find on this planet at least that pineapple house looks
adequate I'm surprised he didn't say more because that was uh definitely one of the smallest tanks
I've ever kept and yeah SpongeBob you know i got all the colorful i even have rainbow
gravel in there which he didn't pan down to look at but it was a kid's tank it was a family take
all right moving right along this is first community tank which is a whopping 20 gallons
that's how we do it there's a school of neon tetras nothing too crazy albino corys in the
bottom we also see the hatchetfish up top people who enter the hobby they don't just go straight
for the hatchetfish okay so it's a nice mix-up of the combination and is that in amano shrimp
whoa and is that a ram you can see Irene deliberately filling out every single niche of
the water column bottom dwelling corydoras to the neon tetras in the mid ground and the hatchetfish
in the top as well as complete with a centerpiece ram and the algae eating amano shrimp that's right
i was already you know getting some tips from the masters on make sure you have fish in every level
bottom middle top have your centerpiece fish get your algae eaters that kind of thing so
a lot of thought went into this tank um however we are still not at the planted world yet so it's
definitely i tried to get as close to real plants as possible while still using fake decor from the
amazing stocking choice alone for a beginner I'm putting this up at a 3.9 out of 5. and here we
have Irene's first attempt at aquarium plants in a 3.5 gallon halfmoon we got the normal java ferns
we got java for window we got some anubias nana perhaps that is nana petite on the driftwood the
bonsai looking thing i think the plants that are in the substrate are actually fake but for first
time aquarium plants this is pretty much again as great as it could go notice how there's no absurd
stocking choice a solid 3.95 out of five if you can see that little blurry dot in the middle that
is my pea puffer Jinx so yeah i tried to just go for all beginner plants because i was deathly
afraid of aquarium plants at this point i was like i am going to kill anything that goes in this tank
and despite all of my mistakes like i didn't give these plants any light or fertilizer hardly and
yet they still survived for quite a while so i probably have some of them even to this day
this is a second attempt at growing plants which is a 5.5 gallon betta tank ladies and gentlemen we
are in for a treat and so is that beautiful blue betta fish you can see a deeper substrate again
with the dark color which i love contrasted by the green plants looks like steroid weapons looks like
some bucephalandra ketagang which is about to flower underwater and a bit of oco stone clean
glass rimless this is next level from everything else Irene has done so far brilliant light up top
definitely not going too long with the photo period because we don't see absurd amounts of
algae and i love this side profile here it looks very nicely escaped oh i see that there's like an
addition of tiger lotus in the back now and some more tinier bucephalandra attached to the
oco stone bucephalandra mini coin ah perfect the anubias nana petite of the bucephalandra
world 4.2 out of five I'm fighting the urge to say keep it up because we're not done with Irene yet
so that better tank uh again like he said was one of my first or second attempts for i think it was
my first attempt trying to escape a betta fish tank and absolutely he was right about not keeping
the photo period long because that aquarium unfortunately became completely full of algae and
i was not able to keep several of those plants alive but it was a really good experiment um
and yeah i got kind of more into the world of substrate and adding fertilizer and obviously
there was only one fish in there of the betta fish so the bioload was quite low but i had a
lot of fun with that tank for sure and yeah the rimless tank it was my first rimless tank as well
it just elevates everything first time aquascaping you mean to tell me those were not even attempts
at aquascaping they look pretty darn good already irene now you're working on a sort of golden ratio
you've got nice seiryu stones and manzanita or spiderwood in there with some normal java phone
and tried in java fern i absolutely love the eight month progression on this tank because
of the attachment of anubias nana petite on your wood it just adds so much dimension to it that
nice goal of either cardinals or green neons some honey or flame gouramis a nice gold albino cory
gang this is a 4.4 out of five i really like that aquarium again it was back in the 20 gallon high
and it just uh it looked really nice however i had a lot of fish in there and then the plants
i chose like java fern and anubias they definitely do not grow quickly so it was that classic case of
too many fish to have a bioload and the plants aren't able to uptake all of it so
now knowing what i do i would have definitely put a huge carpet of well i shouldn't use the
word carpet i would cover the whole top of that aquarium with floating plants
and that would have probably prevented that beautiful stone from being covered with algae
shy guys tank look at the beautiful floaters up top we got some parrot feather we got different
sorts of mosses a big anubius barteri big tiger lotus we got kuhli loaches swimming everywhere
i think those are gudgeons that are swimming around as well some galaxy rasboras Irene is
just going off but about seven months later apparently it got hit by like the worst algae
outbreak in history the stalking also changed a little bit there are endlers in this tank
uh okay well that's kind of cheating Irene because i got the endlers because of you Chris totally
and i absolutely love them i wish i had been had females in the fish tank but they only
had um sorry in the fish store but they only had males so yeah they're awesome i definitely
want to keep them again a 4.45 out of 5 for the version that has not been taken over by algae
again same problem i would say that tank looked really good when the whole surface was practically
covered with um frogbit i believe it was at the time and then when i started kind of keeping
it more contained so it'd be easier to do water changes and it wouldn't just get all over my arm
uh that's when problems started and also i just needed to learn more about fertilization and
adding root tabs too not just liquid fertilizer and here is the second attempt at aquascaping it
is a corner heavy escape with brilliant little lines of wood coming across looks like vesuvius
swords embedded through the rock and we got an apistogramma pair and then months later it just
became this jungle apparently Irene is using this to breed their fish what is that pygmy corys are
you breeding pygmy corys in here that's crazy that's right i don't feel like they get enough
like everybody loves them but they don't you don't really hear about people breeding them that much
and they are not too bad so check out a future video for sure on them and honestly i love this
one even better because it's so natural 4.6 out of 5. and then we have a tank called the back to
basics fish tank I'm not sure why it's called that but i it's called Back-to-Basics planted
tank because i was just fed up with a lot of my aquariums having horrible problems with being
covered with algae and then that would eventually basically um prevent the plants from going because
they couldn't photosynthesize at all and so i was like okay I'm basically going to go to the
Aquarium Co-op website and just like hit their beginner plants collection and only buy plants
from that section the first thing i notice is the brilliant contrast between such a nice lush
green background of plants with the brilliant red colors of the platies yes
i love those red orange dwarf platies they are the best fish ever i mean for a heavily planted tank
like me because i do tend to even if i escape an aquarium it tends to eventually go into that
jungley crazy look and since most plants are green they just pop so well for them highly recommend
the plant that's grown everywhere might be pogostemon stellatus don't quote me on that
we got anubias cryptocorynes java ferns a big canopy of tiger lotus just embracing
the wildness of this aquascape and i think my favorite little feature the sponge filter
because it allows the water to be so calm yet they have more than enough oxygenation
you know I've never thought about that but yes most fancy aquascapes they do go with that
clean canister look with like the lily pipes and everything is really hidden
and honestly the main reason why I'm doing sponge filters is not for aesthetic reasons although the
aquarium called sponge is really nice because it is kind of got that green tube it's honestly from
ease of use i just had some problems with my hang-on-back filter where i forgot to
maintenance it and then it flooded the area under my tank and after that i was like okay
we're going with sponge filters check valves this is never happening to me again and again since i
keep mostly nano fish the very mild gentle current with all the fry especially or shrimp if I'm
keeping them that's always super helpful it does a lot for the aquascape more than some people might
realize and this is a solid 4.7 out of 5. this is one of Irene's latest tanks the 5.5 gallon and she
is asking specifically for some feedback on how to make this better now you already have a lot
of existing plants in here to work with so that's an amazing thing the first thing i would do though
is to get that substrate nicely vacuumed because it seems like it is quite dirty down there
that is very true i just with planted aquariums i don't tend to heavily gravel back them a lot
however since i have sent him this footage it is just a little more cleaned up because i added some
fish that are just good cleanup crew members so that can also help you too if you don't want to
you know get rid of all that nutritious mulm and then i will move every existing plant except for
maybe that's the erosion in the foreground back create some space I'm going to try to find the
most perfect piece of wood and i want it to be a bit more solid like not flimsy little lines but a
one piece sort of solid that kind of goes up like that make that just like smack dab in the
middle center piece anubias nana oh interesting okay i like this take i like the sake of having
just because I'm so used to having the jungle style non-aquascaped kind of tank but i do
like putting some sort of attractive centerpiece hardscape that would take up that room in there
i would do like three to five of them around the wood so now you have this foreground row of plants
a centerpiece wood and then all the background plants that you already have in this tank just my
two cents on how i would try to improve the look of this tank oh thank you Chris that is really
really helpful especially since you see a lot of tanks you know people are submitting tanks to you
and i think you have a good eye for design this has been a pretty comprehensive look into the
evolution of a FishTuber that is Girl Talks Fish once again go follow them if you haven't already
Irene thank you for giving me the honor being able to review the steps and processes that you took
and that you had on this fish keeping journey the only thing that is more impressive than how far
you've gone from your first fish tank to now is how far you've gone with your channel very
incredible channel growth keep up the good work oh my goodness Chris uh you totally flattered me i
completely thought you were gonna rip me a new one i personally i think when you criticize you know
you look at your own tanks you're a lot harsher with them so i am completely pleased with this
fish tank review guys if you want to see more of Chris i actually did an interview of him a while
back talking about his experiences as being a pet store employee and then over here once it releases
there's going to be an interview that Chris does of me with a special little twist to so make sure
to stay tuned for that take time to enjoy your aquariums and don't forget to get your hands wet