you know me I'm a super low maintenance girl and I like low maintenance tanks so in the past I've
always used inert substrates for my planted tanks like gravel, sand, uh Eco-Complete but
I have this five gallon office tank and there's a lot of heavy root feeders like cryptocorynes,
a dwarf aquarium lily and anytime I kind of get lax about giving them root tabs they just
melt back like crazy they did they they show their displeasure by hating on me and so I was thinking
maybe I should try putting an active nutrient-rich substrate in there it's I've never used them
before but then they would be all happy and then I wouldn't have to put as many root types in right
so I found this aquascaping store like well it's more like they sell online and then you can visit
their warehouse in person if you want to they're located in Commerce City, Colorado among a lot of
other warehouses so you basically go there and you go am I in the right place but when you enter in
first thing you see is a ton of different kinds of aquascapes like totally beautiful you're allowed
to take pictures and film in there the owner Tommy greeted me and he was like yeah you can film
everything except for my competition tank that he's doing for some kind of aquascaping contest
so that was really cool obviously there's bins and bins of Hardscape you know rocks Driftwood
stacks of rimless tanks and every kind of you know aquascaping Supply that you could think of
including the active substrate I was looking for since I didn't know what I was doing you know I'm
not an aquascaper I asked Tommy I think that's his name the owner what does he recommend and
he said well if you don't care about getting the name brand stuff he personally uses Landen in all
of his aquascapes because he feels like it's good quality stuff but it's a lot more cost effective
and affordable and yeah that's what I ended up getting I also you know with so many aquascapes
in that warehouse to maintain I asked him what is his secret to having algae-free tanks and he says
and this is not the first time I've heard this actually he says he uses RODI water so
reverse osmosis deionized water it's stripped of everything and then he re-mineralizes or redoses
in plant fertilizer and minerals for the plants and that's how he's able to keep them algae free
I personally do not have the time for this so but I figured I'd pass along the advice to you
if you want to try it there was this Hardscape looking Forest where it was only Driftwood it
looked like tree trunks with roots down not a lot of plants in there but there was one
single pea puffer swimming around among all the the trees and so I thought it was really
really cool I saw that taken I was like I need to have this especially with the pea puffer in it,
so super adorable it's a family-owned store company so you know Tommy was there his wife
and baby if you want to check their store out they are I'll put the link in the description I think
it's aquarockscolorado.com [Music] now to do a big renovation of my aquarium I basically waited
until I had no animals in the tank so it was right after I re-homed the chili rasboras and I was like
okay now is the time so I began the laborious task of you know removing all the plants the equipment
draining all the water taking the tank outside and removing all that stinky substrate which you
know it's full of mulm and rotting Organics in there which are good for plants but it smells
like swamp death so and then after that you know I figured it was a good opportunity to scrape down
all the algae and Gunk that I have neglected over the months then I brought the tank back inside and
I decided to put one and a half inches of the land and aqua soil at the very bottom and then I capped
it off with one and a half inches of just regular black aquarium ground level that I probably got
from Petco then you just replant everything back the way it was so I have my dragon Stone thingy in
the middle we've got the narrow Leaf java fern on the right side the dwarf aquarium Lily on the left
side lots of cryptocoryne plants in the front and then I have a floating Corral of salvinia right
in the middle right over The Hardscape so that it won't grow algae two days later I noticed that the
water was forming foaming bubbles which usually means something's off with the water chemistry
so did some measurements there's like a slight bit of ammonia no nitrite no nitrate so you know
good thing I have no animals in there two weeks later the foaming was getting like even worse so
same thing little traces of ammonia not so much of the other stuff I think the combination of you
know the aqua soil was leeching lots of nutrients into the water column plus the dwarf aquarium Lily
and cryptocorynes were really unhappy with the having their environments suddenly changed so they
started melting back and there was a lot of melted leaves and all these excess nutrients meant yeah
there was some blue green algae or cyanobacteria that formed and so I ended up having to do some
maintenance to remove it and all the melted leaves in the tank what I probably should have done was
and I'm belatedly remembering this George farmer is a famous aquascaper and he recommends every
time he sets up a new tank especially if it has nutrient-rich substrate he always says in week one
he does 50% water changes every single day, then week two he does 50% water changes every other
day, week three he does water changes twice a week, and then finally week four he's down to one water
change once a week and that is all to remove all those excess nutrients so that you won't develop
those algae problems that I experienced. Bottom line: good thing I did not have any animals when
I first set up this tank because active substrate will release a lot of nutrients at first and then
slowly it'll kind of decrease over time the plants and the bacteria will be able to absorb them as
well and handle the increased bioload and then it'll be safe to add your plants once your water
parameters are looking good finally the tank parameters got stable enough where are safe
enough to borrow Sunstreaker the mystery snail for my 20 gallon but I'm in the five gallon for a
little while to eat up all the melted crypt leaves he does a lot better job than I do anyways and
then the first animals I added were the Neocardina shrimp I got the Bloody Mary shrimp it's a type of
cherry shrimp I guess you could say as well as clown killifish and everything was going well
and hunky dory the plants stopped melting I think eventually their Roots got deep enough where they
were reaching the aqua soil but then about I would say three months in I saw my first shrimp
death and I was like what's going on so you know when an animal dies the first thing you do is do
a water test I hadn't been doing you know again my low maintenance aquarium keeping lifestyle
is to not do a ton of water changes because I use aquarium plants to consume all the excess
nitrogen in the tank unfortunately the nitrogen was not the problem it was actually the pH
GH and KH had just like plummeted over time which I guess is to be expected with aqua soils because
they have these buffering qualities to them that's why they're also called active substrates because
they will change your water chemistry parameters so I freaked out did a water change and I bought
dinner lay Shrimp King Shrimp Salt GH+ / KH+ kind, which is for Neocardina species as well
as Aqua Vitro Shrimp Exo I think is what it's called and that's extra iodine again to help with
molting because my guess was because of those low uh water chemistry parameters the shrimp
were dying from failed molts unfortunately the only way I could keep them alive was to have to
do at least weekly water changes and then weekly dosing of the shrimp salt minerals and the iodine
and then I don't know what was going on but the pH, GH, and KH were all higher and at what I would
consider good amounts for cherry shrimp but I was still getting shrimp deaths so I'm not sure
if it was like the iodine amount wasn't enough but then I looked online and there weren't really any
good iodine tests for freshwater aquariums like the reviews I saw on Amazon were just abysmal
honestly the constant one-off deaths here and there and the constant water changes
we're really taking a toll on me it was just so stressful trying to keep on top
of water chemistry all the time because of this Aqua soil that I put into the system
after I would say a month of failing to consistently prevent shrimp deaths it was just
time to throw in the towel I was now going to have to redo the whole take again get rid of that Aqua
soil and this time I'm going with a completely inert substrate I'm done I'm just gonna go with
good old Petco black aquarium gravel the Tank's teardown is the same process before but this
time I have animals to deal with so great! Drain the water remove the plants and the equipment and
then just sit there with my little net picking out one shrimp or one chili fish at a time it
took a long time to say the least now since there are zero nutrients in that gravel I put a ton of
root tabs exactly where I knew the cryptocorynes and the dwarf aquarium Lily were going to be as
well as my water is actually on the soft side so I did end up dosing one teaspoon of shrimp salt
as well as one teaspoon of the iodine you can see a ton of micro bubbles all over the tank because
I'm doing this when it's winter there's it's pretty chilly groundwater out there coming out
for my tap and then when you warm it up the excess oxygen in the cold water can no longer be held in
the warmer water so then it just gets outgassed into actual bubbles into the tank a lot of fun
Now some of you clever folks out there may be thinking, "Irene, this was your chance to get your dream
shrimp those Caridina blue bolt shrimp. Why didn't you do that?" Ah, I mean they do like soft
acidic water but the fact is active substrates only buffer or change your water parameters for
about a year or two, like, people try to extend it by using RODI water. I'm not about that life
obviously so I would probably be having to change my active substrate every single year and by this
point I am sick of doing that that is not the life for me. As for how the five gallon tank is doing
this is around the time I basically had one month of being out of commission for a medical emergency
and I did not do any water changes on this at times I didn't even feed the tank because I was
out of commission and guess what? Zero shrimp deaths. Amazing! Because of the neglect there's
a slight coating of algae on the glass but I just measured the water parameters and it's 18 degrees
GH, 4 degrees KH, and 7.4 pH which is slightly lower than my normal pH amount in my aquariums
and I think that's because I've been feeding catappa leaves to the shrimp which is mildly
acidic and that's what's doing it but basically I'm so relieved to have a low maintenance shrimp
tank again that will survive even when I'm out of commission. If you want to know how I normally
set up a cherry shrimp tank that doesn't muck up your water chemistry parameters check out this
video over here otherwise take time to enjoy your aquariums and I'll see in the next video [Music]