Testing, test test test.
Ohhhh!
Yo, what's going on SerpaSquad, Tanner here!
I've been working on so much stuff lately. From new projects as well as doing a few updates on
older ones, so rather than talk about it why don't I just go ahead and show you what I've been up to.
One of the first things I need to address is this failure of a tank.
This is or was the intended setup for my Surname Toads.
As I'm sure you could tell it looks absolutely terrible, but it smells just as bad.
At first, it was like rotten eggs and now it's a sour smell.
Let me explain.
In most cases, driftwood will mold or get a film on it when you first set up a tank.
It usually lasts a week or two and goes away.
No big deal.
That was, of course, the case with this tank but it never went away.
At first, I did water changes for a month or so to keep this smell at bay.
It helped, but it never solved the issue.
I then tried Carbon and Purigen, which probably helped a little, but the problem continued.
I stayed diligent, kept up with the water changes, and here we are months later.
The film is still on the wood and throughout the tank at this point,
the plants are dead, and the smell persists.
I've honestly never seen anything like this before and I'm not taking any chances.
I've just about run out of patience with this and to do what's responsible for the animals,
I've decided to overhaul this tank completely.
As usual, that's easier said than done though, so let's go ahead and get this tank dismantled.
I finally got all the driftwood out of the tank and there's not
a doubt in my mind that this is where the smell was coming from.
I've used pieces about this thick before and as you can see, these ones they look semi-seasoned,
except for about up to here and then especially when it gets into this thick area here.
It's really dense and I'm just guessing that this legit could take years before we
get to the point to where I would feel comfortable putting fish in the tank.
It just has this sap or whatever is leeching out of it that really stinks
and I'm having a hard time talking here to be honest,
but the smell it's it's a combination of rotten eggs and some kind of smelly cheese.
It's not a good smell and needless to say, I'm not going to be using this in my tanks anytime soon,
Anyway, what about redoing the tank.
This time, I went with Malaysian Driftwood, which usually doesn't have a seasoning period at all.
Thankfully, I was able to keep most of the
background intact and get it cleaned off quite well.
All I had to do is fit in the new pieces.
The scape ended up looking very similar to the previous one, which I don't mind at all.
I secured the wood to the background with expanding foam.
I also added more moss to the background like before.
After all that, I filled in the bottom of the scape with the stones.
I should mention that I scrubbed all of these prior.
I filled the tank up and here we are now.
Nothing left to do other than add the leaf litter.
I thoroughly rinsed and boiled them to clear away any nastiness.
Introducing the new Surname Toad aquascape.
I really like how it turned out and although I like the original one,
I think I may actually like this one better.
That might be due in part to the fact that I can actually see what's going on in this setup,
but I do like how the hardscape turned out.
There's still pretty much the same amount of room for the toads in here
and they actually have a few hiding spots as well, which I think they may appreciate.
The only thing I'll need to address design-wise long-term is to add some more plants.
That's the plan at least.
As I'm looking at this though, I could definitely see it as a moss only setup.
Let me know what you think.
I really want to put them in now, but I think it's probably better
to wait a week or so just to make sure nothing bad got transferred.
That said, the original one was dirty almost immediately,
so I have pretty high hopes for this one.
I wanted to show this process quickly without being redundant.
If you want to see how I built this scape from the ground up,
be sure to check out the original video because I go in detail on everything.
The only thing with this one obviously is I changed out the driftwood, but if you watch
that one knowing that I did it, it really doesn't affect the build process at all.
It's unfortunate that I ran into so many issues with the dragon root because I think this is a
really awesome looking driftwood and I thought that it added a lot of character to the setup.
However, if it's not gonna work for us, it's not gonna work for us and hopefully,
it saves some of you from having a headache in the future.
You put this in the tank, you're having issues like I had before
and you're wondering what the heck is going on.
So maybe it happens with this wood.
I don't know if it happens with all of them.
Maybe it was just a bad batch?
Maybe I did something else in the tank?
I don't know, but you saw as soon as I swapped it out,
tank's looking good now and I've tried all kinds of different driftwoods before.
Never have I seen anything like this before.
So needless to say, I'm not going to be using this in an aquarium again anytime soon.
I should probably clarify though.
On a day to day, the animal room doesn't have any smells really at all.
Since we've been talking about them,
I figure I might as well give you a quick update on the toads themselves.
That one swimming around, right there, is Pancake and the one down here is Flapjack.
I actually can tell them apart.
Pancake is just a tad larger than Flapjack and he is typically lighter than she is.
They do change colors throughout the day, but I would say in most cases
he's lighter, and then she's this darker color.
They're so cool.
Easily one of my favorite animals in the room right now.
They just have such a cool little face.
They're very personable and they always want to know what's going on outside of the tank.
As you see pancake is begging for food actually.
She knows that I'm sitting out here and she keeps swimming right up to the top and then sinking.
You see how she's sort of trying to put stuff in her mouth there?
Completely different than if she's coming up for air.
If they do that, they come up and they just kind of hang out at the top for a little bit.
But, oh he knows too!
It never takes long.
So, why don't I go ahead and try to feed them?
They're both really good eaters.
Pancake as you'll see always wants to eat.
Flapjack occasionally goes on strike, but she always eats.
Let's see if we can't get Flapjack to eat some as well.
He must not be feeling it right now.
No big deal, I'll try again later tonight.
that's usually when he's more interested in eating, but it's not a big deal.
As soon as I stopped recording there, it looked like he was trying to get it.
And there he goes!
Just took him a little second
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One of the last things I want to talk about and I know I said I wouldn't talk about them again
until I actually started setting them up, are the plywood tanks over here.
I know a couple videos ago I was talking about how I finished the one on the bottom
here with the sliding glass doors and all of that, but since then, I've also added
the wooden trim around the front and it just makes it look a little bit more complete.
Moving up you'll notice that I also finished the doors on the top three here
and I really like how they turned out, as well as the whole front of the unit.
I went with a much more minimal approach on these compared to my other ones and I think it paid off.
You really get to appreciate the view into the tank, without excessive hardware,
but you still get the style of the brass handles and brass hinges, alongside the finished wood.
Not only do these ones look better, but they function better as well.
I have a lot more experience making doors and that sort of thing since I made the original set,
so whenever I made these I was able to keep them really clean
without any latches or any of that sort of thing.
Check this out.
Open it up.
Real clean.
Shut it.
Locks on its own.
To pull that off really was quite simple and
as you can tell I really got a yank on the tank to open it up,
which is nice because you know your animals aren't going to be able to get out of here.
But anyway all I did was embed some neodymium magnets into the tank
and into the door, so that way whenever they link up, it locks shut.
As I'm sure you could tell, I'm super excited to get these
tanks going and I cannot wait to have them set up.
I'm gonna start uploading the videos for the top three in about two weeks if all goes according
to plan and the bottom one I should have done in three to four weeks, give or take.
I've actually been working on the scapes for them while I was building the tanks,
so they shouldn't take too long, but I'm not going to have the DIY build video for
any of this out until after I finish a couple other tanks that I'm making in the same design.
Rather than have individual videos for this tank and this tank,
I'm doing them all in the same video because I'm showing different techniques,
ways that you can adjust things based on the size of the tank, etc.
It just made more sense to do it that way, but I have no idea when that video will be out,
but the actual setting up of these tanks, happening very soon along with a few others.
Last, but not least, I just got back from the store with a nice plant haul.
I gotta get at least probably four times this amount for what I'll be working on, but
I figured I might as well get started because they had a good selection.
Anyway, as always, I really hope you all enjoyed this video.
Maybe you learned something new?
Let me know what you think about the updated tank
and if you're excited about all the stuff I'll be working on.
I got a lot more to show you, but I gotta get back to work.
Until next time SerpaSquad, take care and peace!