don't you hate it when aquascapers show you this brand new newly set up planted aquarium that
looks amazing but then they never do any updates because in reality it's so much harder looking
making it look good in the long term hi my name is Irene from Girl Talks Fish and on this channel
I'm happy to expose all my mistakes to you so that you can learn from them and that's why i
want to talk about this 10 gallon aquascape that i set up a year ago now this aquarium
has been set up since 2018 primarily as a breeding tank so I've bred honey gouramis,
cherry shrimp, platies, you name it uh the thing is i didn't show it on camera a lot because it
usually looked like a total mess because i was more focused on growing babies and not plants
but in 2020 i thought to myself you know there's no reason why i can't have a nice
looking breeding tank for once so i decided to set up an aquascape that had this triangle shaped
layout using sagewood and pink granite and then really easy plants like narrow leaf java fern
dwarf sagittaria on the ground as well as anubias nana petite kind of glued to the driftwood so if
you missed that whole setup video I've got a list of everything i used and how i did it over here
so the first problem i encountered was at the time i was trying to breed Apistogramma agassizii and
so i was feeding out lots and lots of live baby brine shrimp and somehow that caused some kind of
weird fungus to start growing on the substrate and kind of on the front glass as well so no problem
you can just gravel vacuum it out right well whenever i would do that 24 hours later it would
grow completely back and then the second thing was every time i stuck my hands in the tank to do
take maintenance the apistogrammas would freak out and basically eat all their eggs so it was just a
really bad combination of me not being able to do a lot of water changes and then the tank looking
super terrible so in the end uh i just ended up re-homing the apistogrammas and decided to try
something completely different the second issue i had is this light over here is a little bit too
bright and was starting to cause some algae issues even though i had the time lowered all the way to
like five and a half six hours and unfortunately the ceiling is too high so i cannot hang it from
the ceiling and maybe i should have looked into some custom-made 3d printed light stands to raise
it up a little bit but the route i decided to go with instead was floating plants i was thinking
the extra cover provided by the really thick roots and their ability to suck out the extra nitrogen
compounds that come from over feeding this tank would be really good for a breeding tank and yeah
it actually shaded out the algae and caused it to go away however uh yeah the floating plants they
tend to grow crazy fast and out of control and if i wasn't completely on top of this tank and
constantly removing the excess growth basically they ended up shading out not only the algae but
also my dwarf sagittaria causing them to melt great eventually i got a group of pygmy corydoras
which are there right now to breed in this tank but at first they were incredibly shy and they
always hit all the time so i made the decision that i was just gonna let this aquascape go
and become the thickest densest jungle basically possible so that they would have more cover
and then hopefully feel more comfortable spawning the other thing was since I'm doing kind of colony
breeding where i allow the babies to grow up with the adults in the same tank i wanted to grow a
really thick thick layer of mulm and micro fauna in the substrate so that the offspring would have
lots of yummy stuff to eat right when they were born again not the best look for an aquascape
in fact i currently have tusks of black beard algae growing on the driftwood which i don't
really mind because the pygmy corys actually sleep on them like little fluffy pillows in
fact there's been one there the whole time we've been filming and i think it's absolutely adorable
so i would say my main two takeaways from this aquascape slash breeding tank experiment
is number one i just do not have the time to maintain an aquascape right now they take
a lot of maintenance I'm a busy mom with two young kids so obviously they take the priority
and all my aquariums right now need to be low low maintenance which is why i don't mind the
this breeding tank ended up devolving into a jungle because all i have to do is basically
add water directly from the sink faucet and then every once in a while maybe a squirt or two of
Easy Green fertilizer and that is it i don't even like adding root tabs which is terrible because
that's another reason why the dwarf sagittaria isn't looking so hot right now the second
thing i learned is i feel like the goals of aquascaping versus breeding fish don't always mesh
completely well and so you know unless you're breeding something super easy like livebearers so
in my case when push comes to shove i personally like breeding fish more than aquascaping and i am
more than happy to have a nasty looking tank if it means I'm going to get some cute little baby
pygmy cores totally worth it so now that i have my priorities on straight i don't foresee myself
in doing any fancy aquascapes at least in the near future and in fact since i accomplished both my
goals of setting up an aquascape and breeding pygmy corys video to come soon I'm actually
planning on taking this aquarium down that I've been running since 2018. don't worry it's going
to be replaced by a new aquarium it's a size I've never kept before I've already know what kind of
bulletproof plants I'm going to put in it and then i just got to wait until the warmer spring
season so i can get one of my co-workers to mail me the fish for my next breeding season comment
down below if you have any guesses what that fish is and i will see you in the next video bye