hi I'm Irene with Girl Talks Fish and remember how i said i was done with aquascaping because it's
too high maintenance well i just couldn't help myself hear me out i originally got rid of my 10
gallon aquascape because it just got too jungly messy but one of the real reasons is because
i ended up interviewing my coworker Zenzo from disallowed tanks back in
January because i was writing a blog post for aquarium co-op on shell dwellers and the more i
researched and wrote about these adorable little African cichlids that live in empty snail shells
i just had to have them luckily Zenzo happens to have a bazillion Neolamprolagus multifaciatus or
multies and so he promised to send me some as soon as i got my tanks up so time to start planning
now when i started looking online for pictures of shell dweller aquariums they always were a
bunch of algae-covered shells and some mismatch random rocks everywhere like i want something
functional but also nice looking so Zenzo why don't you tell me your list of tank requirements
for the species? okay Irene i know you've never kept African cichlids before but it's pretty easy
especially these types so the first thing that you want to do is you want to get yourself a 20
gallon long it's a perfect footprint for keeping these shell dwellers great picked up my order from
Petco for an Aqueon tank matching lid and it pass a leak test substrate is going to be important
i would recommend using aragonite the reason why i like using aragonite is that resemble sand which
is great for them because they will like to build and create mounds and bury their shells and move
stuff around so having that smaller substrate is important and the reason why i like aragonite
is it has buffering qualities shell dwellers come from Lake Tanganyika in East Africa where
the water is very hard and a high pH and having a substrate like crushed coral and aragonite really
does help in that buffering so i would recommend aragonite sand oh my goodness this is why i do not
like sand as a substrate rinsing 40 pounds of this stuff in the snow was not fun this better be worth
it and the next thing you want to do is basically just set it up like any other aquarium you want i
put a heater in there yeah you want to be 75 to 80°F right around there is perfect temperature
and i would recommend some type of filtration that doesn't allow fry to get sucked up because
the baby fish are very small the fish themselves are small so i would think that a sponge filter
would be optimal and that's what i use and probably something that you have laying around so
try a sponge filter check and check i am using the aquarium co-op 100 watt heater and then for
the sponge filter if you don't know how to install one I've got a whole tutorial about it over here
all right I'm gonna add a quick little step in here because as soon as i had the bare
bones of the tank set up i wanted to start the aquarium cycling process as soon as possible
and if you don't know what that is it's basically trying to grow a lot of beneficial bacteria
and live aquarium plants that will help purify the water and consume the waste chemicals
produced by your fish's poop now i have done a whole playlist over here of various cycling
methods which one's the fastest but basically for this tank i threw every trick in the book at it
over the course of three to four weeks i added a cycled sponge filter live aquarium plants
eventually a group of juvenile platies and then for good measure a healthy dose of Fritz Zyme7
nitrifying bacteria all right back to Zenzo's list now one thing that i think is really helpful and
something that you might want to try and setting up your shell dweller tank is to have some kind
of line of sight break in the middle of the crane or in part of the middle of the crane it's some
kind of larger structure that could be like a large decoration a pile of rocks a large rock
large piece of wood big clumping of plants but something that's going to break up that line of
sight so in your tank if you've got a male with his little colony here and a male here
they can't see each other across the tank because there's a big rock in the middle otherwise if
there's nothing in between they're going to be doing this and fighting all the time and
having that little structure in the middle really does kind of help break that up so they're not
always going back and forth they'll fight a little bit anyway but having that little structure in the
middle is very helpful now we're talking about something interesting hardscape if you remember
previously Kenny from Natural Technique graciously provided the hardscape for my 10 gallon tank well
he came through again and this time with petrified wood from New Mexico so gorgeous i had no idea it
came in so many different like textures striations and colors black white gray brown i ended up
going white because i wanted kind of a higher contrast with the black background anyways i am
not sponsored by him but you can see his link down below thank you so much Kenny um with the help of
Mr. Gamer i ended up doing an escape that's kind of like a double mountain look and then i had
to transfer it from outside the tank inside definitely do not recommend aquascaping when
there's already water in the tank like i guess i should have drained it out but you know what it
worked out okay now as far as plants are concerned it's not always easy because shell dwellers as i
shared earlier they will dig their little they're the little Bob the Builders of the aquarium world
so they'll be digging anything up that's planted but you can do plants they're not going to eat
them they're not going to destroy them if they're not rooted so things like anubias
java fern anything that's attached to a rock or a piece of wood or decoration would do well and
floating plants would do well as well that sounded weird as well as well well i don't think I'm gonna
go with anubias or java fern just because the rock work is so pretty so instead i went with floating
water sprite just because it's so fast growing and sucks up nitrate like crazy which means less water
changes for lazy old me and then the big broad leaves will be really good at shading out the
shells and the rocks so they won't become covered in algae for lighting i just got a Finnex Stingray
light that i had hanging around six hours a day and then just add a few pumps of Easy Green when
the nitrate gets a little too low super easy the most important part of your shell dweller setup
is shells i recommend using escargot shells the extra-large ones i think the company is called
Roland you can find them in any restaurant supply store amazon you can buy a bag of
like 36 empty shells for pretty cheap they're big enough to allow the shell dwellers to go inside
they are also very hardy they're tough they look good and they are clean well before i put the
shells in first i gotta remove all those juvenile platies who have gotten super fat without any
competition from the adults and then yeah i just bought these shelves off of amazon the trick is to
continually turn them until all the bubbles escape otherwise they'll float and then after
i got them to sink i just put them in two piles on opposite ends of the tanks so that hopefully
they'll kind of form their own territories and the rocks will block line of sight like Zenzo
suggested now Irene you did mention that you have softer water where you live so i would recommend
using like a cichlid salt for your water just to kind of help create that correct water parameter
for your fish so probably like a tablespoon for your 20 gallon tank as a starting point is good
and then every time you do a water change just put a teaspoon or so in there you don't have
to be exact it doesn't have to be exact science just use your little aquarium co-op test strips or
something like that and check the water parameters to make sure that it's in the range um but that's
what i would recommend and it's very easy yeah my water is soft enough that i have to add Seachem
Equilibrium minerals for my plants to even live so adding cichlid salt to the sink is not a big deal
i went with Fritz over the Seachem cichlid salt just because it was a little bit cheaper
and then it did make my water cloudy at first but because of the filtration it cleared up in about a
day or two all right Zenzo i did everything you asked for send me my shell dwellers
all right yeah about that we sent some fish to Irene. Irene,
you got those obviously - cardboard feels...
damp
and we had a kind of a tough situation so boxed up the fish and the problem is is that when i
went to the postal place to ship them i had a few options some of them were very expensive
and then the next option was uh like a hundred dollars to ship a very small box of fish to you
- it feels a little wet in here
- i smell fishy smell
- the heat pack seemed like room temperature
well it wasn't next day, it wasn't even two days later
it was three days later so not only did we have to wait like six weeks to get them out
because of the weather then we had to deal with this whole issue with sending them through USPS
- it smells really fishy
and it was very stressful i wasn't sure if they were gonna arrive
alive or not which we'll hear from Irene about
you guys when i got this box from the mail carrier it smelled like the ocean in a really bad way
oh no they're all dead, i'm pretty sure
i opened it up and i was super, super bummed
because only two out of the eight shell dwellers had survived and it was really scary because i put
them in the tank and then they're gasping at the surface probably because their gills were burned
and then they were doing this weird shimmying behavior when they were swimming so i was in
constant contact with Zenzo like he was great about the whole thing and he was like hey try
putting some more cichlid salt in there and I did and now they're acting more normal thankfully
so i was very disappointed i was gutted to be honest with you i love fish i love these little
animals and to know that they didn't all make it because it's our fault right it's not anyone
else's fault it's our fault my fault for shipping them not next day um guaranteed next day but
we decided that uh let's do the right thing and let's ship some more out to her and let's send
them out at a UPS overnight which was like double the cost it was over 200 dollars which is much
more than the value of the fish obviously but we wanted to get them out to her and i promised her
some and those arrived from what i understand the next day like the next midday right away so they
were barely in those containers for more than 24 hours and irene i'm happy that you got those - ooo
- they're still warm yay oh my goodness overnight shipping totally worked
look at that i'm kind of nervous because it's been a couple weeks since the first package arrived and
i've been praying like crazy for 100% survival rate this time but we've got four live fish this
is awesome oh my goodness okay i've got to put the camera down and start temperature acclimating them
thank you so much Zenzo it worked well it's been a couple of weeks and everybody is doing it great
and i'm really really happy with the way this super easy scape has turned out because i've
never seen any shell dweller tank at least look quite like this especially with the petrified wood
and i think it strikes a really good balance between beauty and functionality and best of all
the multis haven't destroyed in my design yet yet i am also really excited because this is my first
time ever owning a 20 gallon long aquarium and that opens up so many possibilities in the future
so if you're curious what kind of fish you can keep in this particular tank size
Zenzo and i made another video of our top five fish stocking ideas that you
need to check out take time to enjoy your aquariums and we'll see in the next video