- It's time to tear up a 900 gallon aquarium folks, so.
(claps) Biggest tank I've ever done, comin' to you.
(upbeat music)
What's up fish tank people?
Dustin's Fishtanks bringin' it to you.
Talkin' about a 900 gallon aquarium.
How's everybody doin'?
I hope you're doin' well.
In last week's video we talked
about the substrate, the lighting, and the filtration.
In this week's video we're gonna talk
about the hardscape, the rocks, the structure
in this 900 gallon aquarium.
We're gonna talk about where these rocks are from.
We're gonna talk about my own internal fountains
of inspiration for this.
We're gonna talk about the people
who taught me how to hardscape.
We're also gonna talk about my design goals,
and Santa Claus is going to make an appearance as well.
I want to talk about the goal of this aquarium.
This is the Mekong tank.
This is not some freestyle Dustin aquascape.
This is meant to imitate, as best as we can,
the plants and the look of the Mekong River.
The Mekong River is the 12th largest river in the world.
It is the number seventh largest river in Asia,
and it runs through Laos, Thailand, part of China,
along the border of Asia, and India as well.
There are a ridiculous amount
of aquarium species from the Mekong River.
So if you hit the subscribe button you will get
that next video when I talk
about the plants for this aquarium.
But now, we're talking about the hardscape
of the Mekong River, and one of the things
that excites me about the Mekong River is the cliffs,
the mountains, the tension, if you will,
that surrounds the river.
You can see these photos of how the Mekong River
has sheer cliffs on either side.
However, personally having not been there,
I have to pull from a different source of inspiration,
and somebody asked me what is my source
of inspiration for this tank, and I will tell you.
If you look closely, you can see it
in every one of my aquariums.
You can see it in this aquarium,
you can see it in this aquarium,
and you can see it in this aquarium.
My source of inspiration for a large number
of my aquariums is the Red River Gorge.
I'm gonna quote the father of modern aquascaping,
may he rest in peace, Mr. Takashi Amano,
when he says, creating nature is the ultimate luxury.
I studied the Mekong River photos
and I've spent plenty of time and every birthday
for about the past six years in the Red River Gorge.
The Gorge is a healing place for me.
It's where I go to unplug, unwind,
and reconnect myself with a higher power,
with mother nature, and I challenge every single
of you to get outside and go for a hike.
I also got lost there one time and had to spend the night
because of rule one is you don't hike at the gorge.
But that's another story.
But this is not a happy time for Dustin.
It's not an easy time, this is not a tranquil and zen time.
This is a hard time for me.
While this is going on, simultaneously as I'm set
to set up an aquarium at the New Port Aquarium,
I also finally get the building started to be erected.
I got so much goin' on I don't even have time enjoy it.
But there is a silver lining to this story.
Fact I got to do a little bit of stress relief
in the construction of the 900 gallon.
The Mekong River has big high cliff bases.
The Red River Gorge has big high cliff bases.
Your boy Dustin has 1,200 pounds of beautiful rock,
a sledge hammer, and a whole bunch of stress.
It's time to make some cliffs.
(soft music)
(sledgehammer thumping)
This is a nice one, you can make this one stick out.
And the people were kind enough to point out
I should have been using a pick or some sort of a chisel
instead of using a blunt-handled sledgehammer.
We actually broke the sledgehammer during this,
I was having so much fun, hindsight's 20/20.
Uglies on bottom, bottom, bottom, top, top, top,
bottom, bottom if I can get it in.
We want these on the top because they gotten character.
They just have a powerful look to 'em.
The rob is I gotta get 'em up high.
I really want 'em about this high,
and I don't know how I'm gonna get 'em that high.
What did you think about my form with
that sledgehammer there, huh?
Drop me a comment on that.
You know how often I actually use a sledgehammer?
The answer, not enough!
What's our goal with the rocks?
Simple, we want to look at the face,
we want to look at the character of these rocks.
We want three piles and I learned this straight
from my man Oliver Knott.
You should go check out his YouTube channel as well.
I'll link it up in the comments.
We want three piles of rocks.
We want the large pile, the medium pile, and the small pile.
But with this aquarium the large rocks have
to be really large rocks in order to keep the scape.
Obviously this is being done around Christmas time.
The Newport Aquarium is known for their Scuba Santa.
Kids can tell the Scuba Santa what they want for Christmas.
How 'bout Scaping Santa?
That's right, as I was packing to go
up here my neighbor walked by
and asked me what I was doing.
I said I'm about to go set up a 900 at the Newport.
She goes, I hope you're doin' it in a Santa suit.
Bring crack lady, I actually was able to find a Santa suit
from one of my mentors in less than 12 hours
prior to doing this hardscape.
Give it some height, that flat edge right there
will help me achieve that.
We're gonna go, put another something big into here.
Maybe even off the back corner.
So it kinda pulls you back a little more,
and then I'm gonna do some sorta tension with the driftwood.
I've got insane driftwood for this.
And then in here, I really wanted to, I didn't do it yet,
I wanted to build a layer to that,
and I didn't do that, but we'll get that higher up.
You're looking at this in thirds,
I don't like being in the bottom third.
I'm gonna be up in the second third.
Note, I learned this from both the hardscape master,
Mr. Kevin Kelly from Brooklyn Hardscapes, and Oliver Knott.
I like to bring my aquariums up into the upper third.
You can see it being done successfully in this tank work.
I'm up out of the tank, you can also see it done
in this tank, and this tank.
You want to above that 3/4 to 1/3 line.
I think it gives you more stuff
as well as use of the negative space.
Not going all the way to the top
but giving it a little space between it.
We're gonna show you the negative space in a second here.
(soft music)
You don't see the folks
from the Newport Aquarium standing behind here
but actually Sam, Michelle, and Jeff,
three people were helping me,
handing me stuff as I asked for it.
I need skinny sticks, I need fat sticks.
Hand me all the big driftwood.
Hand me a bunch of little rocks, et cetera.
They were super helpful passing everything
over to me so I didn't have to keep gettin' out it.
It was nice little flow I had goin' here.
(upbeat music)
Okay so we've been working on the gravel behind the scene.
This is just how you walk out.
But my turtles right here.
Gonna roll out and I've been havin' a good time
and they've been super helpful their resources.
Like everybody's available, I've got people to help me.
So it's been a lot of fun.
But over here I want to show
how we got the gravel up in here 'cause we took the gravel
and you can see it in the other clips.
This wasn't here last night, I did this off camera,
but I wanted to raise this up.
So visually you'd come in right here at the level.
Now you don't want to go too high
because you get algae and stuff, and its hard to clean,
but I wanted to raise this level up
and make sure that it's there.
And actually, that's the level I'm gonna start,
but then if you look at it,
I actually wanted to start immediately comin' up.
So I'm gonna add more gravel probably another
50 pounds on top of that, like that.
We're gonna add more gravel then we're gonna start fillin'.
So I've been climbin' in and out
of that little hole right there.
There are no concerns with water at this point.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm actually gonna take the old shoes off
and hop up in there.
And they're gonna fill through here, I guess.
Top down look, not bad.
Oh yeah, (chuckles) that's awesome.
I never get an actual human response on YouTube.
That just made my day, see you gettin' chocked up.
First fill, they have resources.
Look at this giant like water flow comin' in here.
I was in here a minute ago, there's no big major
dirt explosions which I was concerned about.
It goes up slightly here which was the goal.
Now it's gonna be golf ball size for days,
so I'm just gonna take a bunch of that,
that size rock and pop 'em up there, so that'll be fun.
I'm gonna leave that little hole there 'cause why not?
Once it got wet it got real.
Because I started seeing it get dark.
We still need some vertical height
with the big boy in the back, but we can get there,
and that'll help hold that down too.
So I'm gonna let it fill and then drop it
and then we're gonna go plants here in a little bit.
Hit that subscribe button and check out part three
when we show you the plants, tank bomb.
(upbeat music)