Hi! everybody, Joey here again
and welcome back to the final part of my planted nano aquarium build.
In last week's video I showed you how I built everything for it
And in today's video we are going to set it up
Plant it and get everything going
And show you the progression of how this tank is gone
The first thing we're going to address is actually the substrate
And substrate is arguably one of the most important parts of a planted aquarium
Next to CO2 and lighting
Now, if you remember my cube aquarium build, I used Amazon as aqua soil
And I actually had quite a bit of that left over so I just used some of that again
Once adding about 1 to 2 inches of this substrate into the aquarium,
I wet it down with a water bottle.
This makes planting it a little easier especially when you need to fill it up
Incase some of the substrate floats from not being saturated
Now the point of this mini series is to give you a demonstration of what we could do potentially
If we do all 'do it yourself' equipment
Now, if you remember when we did the cube aquarium,
We bought a lot of the equipment and then slowly started to replace it
However, it was difficult for me to show you some of the progression shots,
of comparing 'do it yourself' equipment to the 'bought' equipment.
So what I really want to do is essentially duplicate this aquarium using the same substrate and the same plants
So you can get a really good idea of the results.
So once again I went with some tissue cultured dwarf hair grass.
I rinsed it all out, cut it up into really small portions so I can spread it out and get that carpet faster
Took some tweezers and pushed it into the substrate as evenly throughout the aquarium as I could
Now when it comes to planting this dwarf hairgrass,
I do find that pushing half of plant the down into the substrate works best and makes sure that it stays in it's place and it roots really quickly
Now since I cut these portions up so small
I was able to spread it out a lot more meaning that I 'm gonna be off to a really good start
With getting this carpet established pretty quickly.
Before filling the aquarium up though, I turned the aquarium around and wet it down and cleaned it
And applied that clear window frost we added in the past
Again I picked this up on amazon for very little money and I'm able to use it on several aquariums.
This allows us to add a bit of a background to the aquarium,
While not taking away from the aquascape, it also adds a bit of a depth & hides the electrical cords behind the aquarium
Once I get all the dwarf hairgrass planted in, I fill the aquarium up and started all of the equipment
Now since the CO2 is taped into my cube aquarium CO2,
I made sure that the lighting was also on the same cycle.
Basically I just plugged it into the same timer
So immediately this aquarium is basically automated
One week later, the plants are starting to open up and develop their own roots.
And since the hairgrass is developing the roots and it seems to be doing well, I decided I will go ahead and add in more plants
Now since we're mimicking this cube aquarium, I went ahead and clipped out some of the rotala rotundifolia from that aquarium,
And simply transplanted it to the new aquarium.
I just took a few clippings and pushed it into the substrate.
With really no goal other than to show you what it would look like once this plant grows in and it can cover up the filter like I mentioned in last week's video.
Four days later and we already have some noticeable results
The hairgrass is also spreading through runners and opening up a lot more
Another four days after that and the rotala has grown to the top of the aquarium
It's at this point that I can start to propagate it and start clipping it and replanting it and making it even more of a dense bush
Three weeks later everything's grown in and looking great
Now mind you, there is no dosing going on here. The lights are on for about ten hours a day, we have some light CO2 in the aquarium,
and the good substrate but thats really it
Now its at this point that I would typically add in some animals, whether it be some shrimp or some fish
But really I just wanted to give you a demonstration of what these lights and really a 'do it yourself' system is capable of in a really short period of time
And what we're seeing here is the progression of less than six weeks
Imagine another six weeks from now
So I hope this little mini series on this nano aquarium potentially inspired you as to how simple a small planted aquarium really can be
But I gotta say, there's some contributing factors to this success here
One, its a good substrate
Two, I have CO2 being added to this aquarium and thats a big one
Finally three, theres some some decent lights on this tank
Everthing else isn't as nearly as important as those three
The rest really is finding balance on dosing and where you really wanna be
Whether you have too much light or not enough light. Too much nutrients , not enough nutrients
And so forth. Planted aquariums are really all about finding that balance.
And I guess I'll end todays video on that note
Anyways I hope that you guys enjoyed today's video and I'd also like to thank you for watching
And if you join me next sunday, I'll have a new 'do it yourself' project for you.