what's up fishtank people what's up dog just as fishtanks branches you on a
Sunday baby want to talk today about the ghetto aquarium that's right today we're
talking about the ghetto I'm broke as hell
Aquarians we're gonna talk about a ghetto aquarium we're gonna talk about
ghetto substrate we're gonna talk about ghetto lighting we're gonna talk about
ghetto filtration and yes we're gonna talk about ghetto plants and fish so
here we go the first thing we want to talk about is your ghetto now for some
of you all get the tank might be hard I actually have a lot of tanks around but
if you don't have an aquarium already go scour for them at trash day go look on
Craigslist go find one that's cracked okay you can find aquariums it's not
hard drive around on trash day look on Craigslist you'll get one if it doesn't
hold water it's no big deal because I've gotta get away to fix it from the
leaking here's what you do see this right here this is a crap I
learned this from my man Chuck if I supplies plus back in like 1996 what you
do is this it's yourself some aquarium seal it like so and you get a CD case
that's right but whatever kind of piece of plastic
you have now look if you have a piece of acrylic lying around that fits it good
but this CD case will work just fine this is your crap here's what you do you
take the entire CD case and you don't just put a tiny little bit of silicone
on the crack you legitimately I'm not gonna use the silicon you legitimately
car every square inch of the seat right like this every square inch back and
forth back and forth back and forth back and forth with the silicon and then you
mash it on the inside of the aquarium you mash it in here like so so the if
you look at this the silicone will actually be squirting out the edges
right here you want the entire piece to be covered and you just smash it on
there ask me how I know this works my first 55 gallon pricing I did exactly
this so now we have our query now I want to talk about yellow substrate with your
ghetto substrate the substrate I would typically lay out on here and let it
bake in the hot Sun and you know mineralize it's good Fritz till
I get rained on dry out get rain on dry out but this is the ghetto aquarium so
we're gonna get ghetto we're gonna peel this back and we're gonna grab our
shovel and we're literally gonna take dirt out of the earth that's right we're
gonna take dirt straight up out of the earth just like this cost no money
because this is beyond broke this house aquarium so we're gonna take dirt like
this straight up we're gonna match up as best we can we're gonna try to you know
chop it up a little bit we're gonna take our pan that we a little clean now to
get this out of your mom's lasagna or whatever grab it out of the trash rinse
it out we're gonna put it in here now why are we using this we do not want to
use our wife's girlfriend's fiancees good dishes so we're gonna try to use
aluminum one if you can get away with using the pan without your parents wife
fiancee no one's good for you we're gonna put it in here we're gonna get
just about this is actually about the size of ten count aquarium so we're
gonna put about an inch of just straight up dirt off of the earth good old mother
nature at its finest dirt like this and we are going to make it for about 25
minutes at 270 degrees or so we're gonna keep an eye on it we're gonna kill
anything that's in this this is gonna be our bottom later next we're gonna talk
about our top layer of gravel toys all right so now that we have our ghetto
aquarium filled up we've let our silicone dry for over a day or so with
our ghetto aquarium beetle job right here so this should be
dry should be leak testing we've got our dirt right here the dirts
cool off it's been in our oven for to 73 or 50 degrees or whatever around 300
degrees we've let it cool off we picked out all the big chunks now it's time to
do our ghetto substrate so we're gonna add our dirt
I recommend you use less dirt and more dirt if it's your first time during a
tank people we often use way too much dirt in beginning less is more news less
than an inch 10 gallon tank use 1/2 inch or so I've got just enough dirt to cover
the bottom here break up the big chunk mix it around now obviously that I'm
just gonna put dirt alone in our tank so he's got to cover it with some sort of
gravel on top just to get a little area we've got to get o options any of you
guys have been on my free live webinars you should know that I'll talk about two
of these options there both I'm broke as hell options option one it's hope Tyler
stand this is a 50-pound bag of pool focus and this can be perkier for ten
dollars I'll say that again 50-pound bag ten bucks
this right here is another ghetto Kroger bag this is actually big growth pebbles
I got at Home Depot now these are a little larger size and this is actually
what I'm gonna use is the larger size gravel right here a little bigger than
my liking but will give you good gas exchange with your dirt again 50-pound
bag home depot about ten bucks so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this
ghetto gravel right here look if you're really really super broke go to the pond
or whatever and find like tiny little gravel along the shores of a lake or
something and then heat it up in the oven separately to kill anything about
it you can use that it is nature Willis so we're going to take our ghetto
substrate and we are going to layer it pretty darn thick on top of this here
there's no need to rinse it because we're gonna do a lot of ghetto water
changes here in a little bit so we're gonna take this cover it less than an
inch of dirt more than an inch of gravel we're gonna cap this sucker
hopefully understand is a nice alternative I'm gonna use the ghetto
fish that's gonna require slightly larger graded gravel but I I'm gonna
layer it on pretty thick there again you can use you know tiny pea gravel you
find in your yard or whatever or in the pond or on a beach or whatever we're
gonna layer this up pretty thick
got a nice cap and now we're gonna fill it up and I'm gonna show you how we're
gonna get a leak filter this and now we are gonna get a leaf fill it up first
we're going to take our aluminum pan and we're gonna bend it we're gonna rinse it
out real good with our garden hose rinse it real good get all the dirt off of it
then we're going to place it strategically and gently in our tank and
then we're gonna fill this sucker up know we're using this tray for a reason
because we don't want to disturb the dirt that is underneath our substrate so
we can run the garden hose hole blow but you can see how it just kind of barely
leaks over the edge here instead of just blasting down in so we're gonna go ahead
and fill this up as you can see we are letting it intentionally overflow cuz
it's outside we want to get all that water all that dirt and stuff this might
be in our water call them out doesn't matter where any to using a deke lure
anything we're just getting any sort of dirt particles out by overflowing it get
Olie outside next I want to show you guys one of my most favorite ghetto
things of all times I forget to you to subscriber who suggested this to me but
it's fantastic take a single this is a 20 ounce bottle you can use a 2-liter
bottle whatever but it's gotta have this fitting and what you do is you cut the
bottom of it off we're gonna make our own siphon so we cut this off right here
cut the end off like that take the wrapper off and then we grab a plain
Jane garden hose okay you'll notice you've got the female fitting right here
you can get a cut garden hose and get this little piece you can like clip it
on there you can modify for like two blocks you can have your own siphon just
simply screw this piece onto here like so
again dad it was good folks get it was good and by the way I would love to know
your suggestive on the ghetto filtration voila ghetto ass I seem to know the
threads don't exactly match up on this myth doesn't matter cuz this part will
be inside the tank soon simply take it like this raise this end up lower this
shove this down in there make the bubbles go out and we're siphoning and
we're just gonna clean off anything in the substrate with this bad boy water
changes are my number one favorite filter if I've said it once I've said it
a thousand times water changes water changes water changes but for the my
number two favorite filter it's plants and that's what I'm going to show you
next then we're going to show you lighting diggity ghetto is good it's
working might have to hold your hand around there or use silicon at the top
to seal it off but regardless we're getting the water out
and with a dirty tank you want to drain it fill it drain it fill it I'd
recommend that overflowing it if it's outside like I'm doing but these grand
spills will work this one train almost all the way down then we're gonna add
some ghetto plants
now at this time we are going to naturally filter this sucker with live
aquarium plants this is a key thing okay and I've got a little ratio for you all
that it's a done ratio but whatever for every inch of fish you want like a yard
a meter or more of plants too you know offset that by a load of the fish
obviously depends on the fish or whatever but uh I'm gonna use sundae
species sunny I'm gonna use LOD and a Chris right here this is the broke as
hell aquarium broken I'll go to a pond and find some of this stuff or fine just
straight up plants that uh you know you find in your local streams and waterways
if you're paranoid about you know parasites and bad stuff getting into
your tank take five milliliters of bleach put it in a gallon of water and
just quickly dip the plants in there I can't imagine anything even my little
ghetto gogo is excited about this tank here so yeah we're just gonna plant a
bunch of this lod an actress you can find species like Liguilla
natively you can find jungle val in the wild I really just say go wild with it I
mean go get a bunch of wild plants and then plant them down in the dirt like
this you know plant the heck out of this sucker with easy plants dwarf sad you
can use you could use a bunch of java moss although you're never gonna get it
out of your tank I'm using the hell idea here doing it with the water part ways
hole and I'm just using the ton of it and I'm gonna say that again because I
want you guys to understand that the heavy heavy plant load the plant do the
work for you okay you can have a light fish load and a heavy plant load you can
get away with a lot of it elodie is weird that has these like weird ways it
runs off like this piece will be healthy and then it'll shoot off another way but
roots take the root break them put them down in here
get this all planted up and then we're gonna fill it back up and the waters
cloudy so we are gonna drain and fill this sucker again so Jeff plant the heck
out of it
lighting is actually going to be really really important in this because part of
our filtration is a large amount of plans okay so we're gonna need a lot of
light you've already got food for the plants under the sub here so we're gonna
need a lot of light lights something we should not skimp out on so jeno lighting
is pretty simple you can use ghetto desk lamps now look I have seen a million
different ways to go with this this has a compact fluorescent light in it
it's a 2700 K Kelvin scale doesn't mean a whole lot but you want something under
about 6500 K projector you could get away with the desk lamp like this and
grow plants just you know turn it on get off so yeah get out get creative with
the lighting I recommend that and then also for years
and years and years I use t12 with my own homemade ballasts a la link a video
of this at the end where I used just you know these fluorescent ends from Home
Depot screw to men bought a ballast and I had like a whole lighting setup for my
125 very ghetto and grew the heck out of plants with that but now I want to move
on I want to talk about filtration okay so filtration get off the Tracy now
look you guys have the money go out and buy a freaking filter alright I'm and
you can get the little ones for not that much money or at least get an air pump
let's see you just really don't have that you need a ton a ton a ton of
plants you also need plants to grow above the
water plants the girl above the water have more access battling to co2 but
nitrogen and all other kinds of gases and they work harder for you they get
more light above the tank so I'm using water water lettuce here you could use
water hyacinth as well that's a big secret they're super super work hard for
you as far as filtering the water and I've got the fast-growing LED at macorís
underneath here so yeah I use a ton of them you use a very very light fish load
and roll also with filtration you want to get get out you don't have enough
money for dechlorinator you can take like you know jugs like this or
fuck it like that fill it up with tap water and you can let it sit overnight
and that will remove all the chlorine the the gas exchange on the top of it
will remove all the chlorines so you can do water changes that way or if you want
to run the risk and I hate to say this but if you'd like a ten gallon tank you
can remove little less like I don't know seven to ten percent and replace it with
just straight tap water and if the chlorine might dissipate enough to not
worry about it everybody's tap water is different so
but just proceed with caution on that but you could use straight tap water and
just do a lot of little water changes all right dog just to wrap this up do a
little recap for you all you want to get cheap tanks or free tanks Craigslist
yard sales and scour around a trash time you find a crack tank you can use the
ghetto form of a silicon and entire piece of plastic and shoving it on there
as far as gravel you can use big row pebbles you can use pebbles out of it
yard as long as you boil it or excuse me uh toilet fake it boil it whatever the
dirt you can use dirt straight up from your yard I make no guarantees nothing
with it but if you baekje you might kill anything it's alive in there and then
you can use that for plants you can use that native caught stuff Ella dia and
Acuras works good jungle Valley you can find all over the place in the United
States and then as far as lighting use a desk lamp use like a 6500 K or less
light bulb on I'm also using a little bit of sunlight in this I think it's
important you can use a little bit of sunlight not a lot filtration big thing
use a you know seven to ten percent water changes you don't have to worry
about D coordinator or just let the water sit out and also a heavy heavy
heavy heavy plant load I can't emphasize it enough a heavy heavy plant look folks
so if you like what I'm doing subscribe please leave me a comment on the most
ghetto thing you've ever seen done in an aquarium I'd love to hear the ghetto
stories are fabulous and click the link in the description box and somewhere
around here for those free live webinars and I'm having an absolute freaking riot
hoping out just under a hundred people the other day on those so click the link
and get on those making it off we could get all folks and tank on it
one light