Hi, I'm Alex and this is Tank Tested. Today we're visiting the fish room of my
friend, Rachel O'Leary. It's an incredible space, and even if you
follow her on YouTube, you've never seen it like this.
Oh, and yeah I did get a new logo.
But I'll talk more about that and the other exciting change to Tank Tested
at the end of this video. Now here's Rachel to give you a tour.
My name is Rachel O'Leary. I run a YouTube channel and a busy website called
Invertebrates by Ms. Jinkzd. I live in York, Pennsylvania, and maintain what most
would say is too many aquariums. I focused primarily on fresh water nano
species, as well as some monsters, and almost every aquarium that I own and
operate utilize live plants.
The fish room grew by accident when my
children were really little I got interested in this hobby in order to
have something to make me feel like I was learning everyday.
The racks in the fish room, I designed out of necessity. I was running out of space using
conventional stands, and you know, there was a lot of floor-to-ceiling space that
wasn't being utilized. So my husband and I drew up some plans together and he
fabricated my racks out of Steel. We utilized a stepped system because
I wanted as much room above the aquarium to reach in to be able to aquascape and
to be able to add wood and add stone as well as net fish.
For the aquariums that I wanted to display the main display racks are 75 gallon on the
bottom, 55 in the middle, and 20 longs on top. They're in four foot sections, and
that way, if I want to restructure the fish room at any point, I
can move smaller amounts of the aquariums instead of an entire wall at once.
My water is sourcefed from a well, which
means I am very lucky in that I have no chlorine or chloramine. But it does mean
that I have to keep a very strict water change schedule so that I don't run it dry.
I do approximately 15 to 20 water changes a
day to maintain the fish room, anything over that can compromise the water
supply for my families. So I try and try and do about 15 water changes every
morning, less if I'm doing the big tanks.
My big boys. They are my babies. They are without a doubt, well one fish in
particular, the lightest colored Pullip Taurus, is my absolute favorite fish in
the fish room. I just think that they are so fascinating on so many levels. The way
they move, the way they eat, the way they interact with you, and the fact that
they've been around since the time of dinosaurs.
You know, they've really earned that primitive fish moniker and they're just
absolutely fascinating from an evolutionary standpoint, from a fish
keeping standpoint, and they're just gentle giants.
That is quite literally the biggest aquarium that can fit into my home, around the corner to my fish
room, and down the stairs. It took five guys with no necks and several hours to
get it into the fish room. The larger tank that I have planned for those fish
will have to be constructed in the basement itself. All of those fish pretty
much grow for their entire lives, which can be 20 years or more. I'd like
to build them an 8 foot by 4 foot by 3 foot aquarium.
Captain Crankypants. My wild Oscar with the bad attitude. He's perfectly
imperfect. He's ancient. I think he's, he's gotta be almost 12 years old at this point.
Due to his nasty attitude, he lived for this about six or seven years by himself,
and for some reason captain has decided that whiskey's is buddy. And it's worked
out and they've been together for several years now.
The newest aquascape or biotope style aquarium in the fish room is my 75 gallon lake tanganyika aquarium.
Right now, the tanks a week old. The fish are all very, very young, but in
another couple of months, these fish's colors are gonna rival saltwater fish.
All of these fish come from Lake Tanganyika, which is a massive body of
water. And also extremely over-fished, so the goals for this aquarium to sort of
mimic a little slice of nature in order to showcase some really incredible fish
who could use a lot of conservation work.
my inspiration for this aquarium was actually supplied by my friend Pam Chen
now Pam goes to Africa every year to snorkel actually in Lake Tanganyika or
Lake Malawi she actually has a YouTube channel and there is tons and tons of
footage there that I utilized for inspiration for these fish that I could
get the most natural behavior possible
I really think it's going to be an excellent excellent platform in order to
talk more about sort of the responsibilities of hobbyists and
sourcing their fish some of the things that we can do as consumers to protect
the environments of the creatures we love as well as just highlight some
really freaking cool fish this wall of Tanks is going to be a whole bunch of
different display aquariums featuring various regions around the world some of
them will be aquascape by guests Aquos capers from around the US but each
of them is gone to focus on specific fish and creating an environment that
will help them to exhibit their best behavior
that aquarium was inspired by the fish the fish our pilot sharks Weitzman eye
or the black tartar tetras which can be a bit shy and can also be a bit nasty to
one another but when housed properly they are stunningly gorgeous so in their
aquarium I wanted to provide some very dense thickets of plants as well as some
branch work to break up line of sight and to add interest to the overall
aquarium
they're notoriously ugly in stores if you can find them but if you have
patience with this fish and provide them with this sort of lush environment that
they just grow up to be absolutely stunning
so for the past ten years or so I have been setting up Rubbermaid tubs in my
yard in order to breed fish the lazy man's way the easiest thing in the world
is to set up a tub put in a sponge filter throw in some plants and add some
fish and they will almost always do it on their own there's an abundance of
live food naturally occurring within the tubs I start them about six weeks before
I move fish out and by the time the fish are moved out there's a booming colony
of Daphnia or Cyclops mosquito larvae and the light in the tubs because
there's so much live food available to the parent fish they rarely per date on
their eggs or fry and because there's so much food for the babies the babies grow
quickly and and just do really well
the greenhouse was a gift from my husband last year and it's still very
much a work in progress this spring I installed two bradley sinks and turned
one of them into a succulent garden and the other into a ball garden which
houses carnivorous plants
the interior of the greenhouse is only about halfway done one side is housing a
bunch of Laguna bins each heavily heavily heavily planted and stocked with
various fish that I like to either use in my aquariums or have for sale you can
see more of Rachel at her YouTube channel she's one of the most
knowledgeable people in the Hobby I've left a link in the description below and
a card right here her YouTube channel is about three years old
it's just a few thousand subscribers away from a hundred thousand so if
you're not already subscribed go visit her channel and hit subscribe I would
love for us to help her get that hundred thousand subscriber plat all right now
back to me and tank tested in addition to having a new logo I've also created a
new website tank tested dot org there you'll find articles on every video I
produce from here on out including this one it has more information about the
tank or the scape or in this case the location that I visited and maybe a few
stories that didn't make it into the video in addition it has a detailed list
of products I recommend and tips and tricks that I've learned a lot of the
way eventually it'll also have merch because we all have to pay bills but
that'll be for a future video finally thank you so much for subscribing I
wouldn't have created tank test org if so many of you hadn't welcomed me into
your hobby if you haven't subscribed already and subscribe and while you're
at it go visit Rachel O'Leary and subscribe to her as well I will see you
next time