Last week we set up the Discus tank, as well as stocked it. This week
we're setting up the Angelfish tank as well as stocking it.
But let me bring those up to speed that aren't familiar with this setup. Now you guys will remember, there's 10 x 120
gallon aquariums in this entire racking system, each aquarium kind of representing a different area in the world or a different location.
This racking system doesn't really do that, but I did want it to do something special. You see, in my opinion
Angelfish and Discus are both almost separated in the hobby.
You know sometimes going head-to-head on which one's better
and I kind of wanted to do a Discus versus Angelfish set up. Down low, we set up a
one of the 120 gallon aquariums with some white sand and one of those Aquadecor background,
as well as some of the logs that go up through the center. Then I added in
16! Marlboro Red Discus, which are doing fine right now.
As for the Angelfish tank, will talk about the scaping and how I set that up in a moment.
However,
you guys will know that I already unboxed 40
Platinum Angels. Now clearly all 40 is too many for a 120 gallon aquarium,
but that does leave us with some opportunities to use Angelfish in other aquariums. Again,
I was thinking about tossing maybe 20 or 30 of them into the 2000 gallon aquarium, but that's the topic for another day!
In this tank I do plan to add between 15 to 20 at first and of course let them grow out
dwindle that number down to maybe 8 or 10 maybe even 12.
I'd also like to add in some bottom dwellers like some Cory Dora,
maybe some loaches and then something mid water, perhaps
some Tetras of some sort which I'd love to hear your guys's input on! You guys always have some great
suggestions, leave them in the comment section below. You see when it comes to scaping all of these tanks,
I have to keep a number of things in mind. First and foremost, I want them to be visually pleasing. I want them to look
aesthetically nice when you look at them.
I want you to almost want something like this, but at the same time,
I have to keep in mind that the fish come first. They always come first to me.
I'm not an aquascaper at heart, I'm a fish keeper at heart. And of course,
we've got to mix them together at times; but for me,
I want the fish to be happy first and foremost. So, when I scaped a tank,
I keep in mind the type of fish that I'm actually keeping, the location that they come from and what's going to be best for them.
I also have to remember that at the end of the day when this entire gallery is finished being set up,
somebody's got to take care of all of this and guess who that's going to be!? Me! So I want these to be
pretty low-maintenance. I don't want to spend hours a day or hours a week on each tank, that adds up!
You know imagine if we only spent say four hours a week on one aquarium.
That's not much, some trimming, a little bit of water changes, etc...
Times that by 10 though and now we've got 40 hours a week just on this racking system.
So I want to make sure that the tanks are nice, but they also have to be
relatively maintenance free, to an extent,
you know, maybe some gravel siphoning, maybe some minor trimming, of course water changes.
But you know keep it really simple so that we're actually able to enjoy the aquariums,
and you know not grow frustrated with them because we're always spending all our time taking care of them.
But what I kind of wanted to do was create a piece of woodwork that would
encapsulate the whole tank, not worrying about depth or how high things were, how high they weren't. Again,
I'm not looking to follow any rules or anything like that
I'm looking to do what I think looks good,
and I think the fish are going to like; and with angelfish they do enjoy
some wood to swim in and around , they do like to have some places to go underneath,
and of course lots of open swimming space.
But I also thought some plants would look good in here.
So, b asically what I did was I took a fine grain sand and I started off at the bottom.
Then I took only three pieces relatively large pieces of manzanita wood and kind of placed them
almost in a U shape or almost actually circular. It might not look like that
from looking straight on, but if you look down on it,
or you know from other angles is definitely almost a circular shape which I really enjoy.
Now, this gives me a number of options; one, it's gonna leave the entire middle open.
It's gonna create some under sections, so and shadows, and give it a more dramatic look the angelfish are gonna
Be able to hide or come out in the open and it's also going to allow me to add in some really low light, easy
to maintain slow growing plants. I added some Anubias Nana,
Some...
Trident, Ferns, some Narrow Leaf Ferns basically, they're just Java Ferns.
And they're the identical to the ones that we had in the 2000 gallon aquarium. Now, over time
this is gonna grow in a little bit more,
but it's not going to get to the point where it's overwhelming and in my opinion,
I'll probably never have to do any trimming here.
I'll just have to sleep in the bottom of the tank, a little bit here
dnd there, as well as some water changes. But to attach a lot of these plants,
I have about three options; one, tie the plants to the wood with some sewing string, and over time that
sewing string is going to dissolve and the plant will attach itself to the wood; or I could use a gel like cement which will
cement the plants directly to the wood and of course once cured is
Non-toxic as well; then I could also do what I did with the 2000,
which is just jam some of the plants in some of the crevices, and I kind of did a combination of things here.
No real planning on where I was gonna put the plants, I just kind of wanted them sporadic.
You know a lot of the times we plan our aquariums around what it's going to look like from the front
without really considering how the fish is going to react to it, and in this aquarium what I wanted to do there, was almost create
their own little world within the tank not worrying about what we see. Now, the background in there right now is one that kind of
has outcrops at the bottom so it does appearr as though
there's rocks or at least something in the tank, so I didn't add any rocks to the bottom.
I didn't want to overdo it or overall complicate this or give too many
crevices and spots for detritus and uneaten food or anything like that to build up over time. Again, I want this to be very simple.
Now he did run it into a problem, once again with the wood floating it floated for about five or six days.
Manzanita can float at first,
but it but it sinks relatively quickly I didn't want to toss rocks on it in advance
just to sink it immediately so I did add some plants on to it and
all the wood started floating and kind of ruined everything so I had to wait a week before I came back to this.
Otherwise you guys would have seen this a week ago. Now that everything's kind of sinking and ready to go,
I'll be able to add the Angelfish in shortly.
But!
How many should we add upfront is a good question. Clearly we can't add all 40. They're not going to last in here so forever,
but...
technically we can now because that 40 in 120 gallon aquarium, 300 gallon system,
will do OK
with plenty of water changes given the fact that they're only the size of you know a quarter or so. So technically the filtration
system can handle the bio load.
But you might be asking how that how are you adding fish so quickly to your systems all the time?
And I've told you guys this time and time again. When I set up a filter, a lot of the times
I'll take established media from other filtration systems like my 2000 gallon sump system where I
always have, you know about 10 or 20 liters of additional cycled media in there that I could take out of there and jumpstart new
aquariums.
But we've already added that to the sump system and the Discus that are in here are kind of
established on that. What I'd like to do is give this a few more days this has already been running for about
a week like this.
I'd like to give it a few more days to
for the bacteria on that media to get even more established before we add in the
Angelfish. So, I think in the next video we do, will certainly be adding these Angels,
but I'd like to know what you guys think on stocking. Should we add in all 40 just for an immediate
display, or should we add in just a little bit and move on to some of the other
fish that we're going to be putting in here eventually,
like the Corydoras, Loaches and whatnot. Clearly, we can't add everything at once, the tank system will crash.
And we don't want that, the fish are gonna end up dying.
But this is the Angelfish and I got to admit,
once again this is my favorite aquarium at the moment. And I don't know about you guys but...
Actually, I do know about you guys because every time I setup a new one of these racking systems,
I read it time and time again that this is my new favorite aquarium
So I know you guys are feeling the same way
I am. I mean it started with the Tropheus tank and then the Malawi tank and then of course the Discus tank,
and you know now the Angelfish tank. And mind you, we almost skipped over the middle section where we still have to do some
South American, Central American.
And of course another
420 gallon system
behind us here, but long ways to go. Bottom line is that I got to admit that every new aquarium
I set up I absolutely
love it! And I hope that many of you do. I hope that you can see that,
you know maybe you draw some inspiration from this to some extent I mean
Especially with the plants these are low light slow growing plants. They don't need to be in a substrate. They have a rhizome, so they
can be planted on anything. And it's a great way to add a splash of green to your tank.
But I got to admit, I don't mind this aquascape at all.
I think the wood works well together, and I think it's gonna be low maintenance.
I think it's going to be easy to care for and I think it's also going to be great for the fish, not to mention
nice to look at. But...again, I'd love to hear your guys thoughts.
So let me know in the comments section below. Anyways I'd love to thank you guys for watching,
and if you're not subscribed this channel yet, and you enjoy what I do out here my aquarium gallery,
and you ever excited to see these Angelfish get added to this aquarium, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it!!