in my last video i had finally completed my new aquascape for my big old 220 gallon reef tank
which i unfortunately had to rebuild after my previous aquascape was destroyed in my recent
tank move and it has now been what what a long time later and i still haven't placed that bad
boy in the tank yet and no this isn't just due to pure laziness at least not completely there was a
series of unfortunate events that occurred right after i finished my aquascape that created this
delay which i will get into but in this video we're going to finally finally place the new
aquascape in the tank you have no idea how excited i am for this if you're new to this channel hello
howdy hi my name is stephanie and i make silly videos about my journey in the reef tank keeping
hobby so if you are all so silly and like the reef tanks make sure to smash that subscribe right now
after an intense month-long brutal aquascaping journey i finally finished my two-structure bonsai
looking magnum opus despite all of the odds and all of the frustration i actually managed
to create something i really love way way better than the previous aquascape if you ask me honestly
and it was now time to soak this sexy thing in a tub of rodi water for a week you know just
to make sure that no nasties and concrete residue would get introduced into my tank i'm only really
doing this because i have fishies and coral in my tank when i started my 220 gallon up i just did
you know a thorough rinse and just dropped the scape in but because i already have creatures in
this thing it's a bit too much of a risk you know so i went to my local home depot and i found the
biggest baddest tub i could find after barely managing to load it into my car i made it home
and it was time to finally place the aquascape to soak and be one step closer to actually having my
tank look decent i had i had a lot of confidence in my structures you know so this was this was all
supposed to go smoothly well y'all that confidence was foolish it was just straight foolish
it broke i just oh the left structure was in fact not structurally sound it was not it was not
structurally sound it broke into sad little pieces and uh only the top arch ledge thing remained
intact pretty much due to me not learning my lesson again and using rock on the base that was
way too thin to hold up the weight of that arch so i set off to rebuild the structure again from
scratch and the sheer anger i had at this point i mean and after a lot of cursing and rebuilding and
cursing some more it turned out like this i used much thicker rock on the base this time around and
reinforced the back of the aquascape with a ton of emarco 400 cement you know beef that beef that
escape up i kind of like this smaller structure 2.0 though more because it has a lot more room for
corals here at the bottom you know this extended part here and more room for corals is exactly
what i need right now so i held my breath and i attempted to move the structures into the bin
it held bless it held well well except for this tiny little ledge portion that cleanly snapped off
the right structure but only because it couldn't physically fit the width of the tub but whatever
you know no biggie easy fix so then i poured in my rdi water added a little power head for some
circulation and left it to sit for a few weeks now longer than necessary completely but that's
where my laziness kicked in you know meanwhile the 220 gallon ah the tank is in a rough state
a rough state indeed i've still been dosing i've still been testing my water parameters you know
cleaning out the skimmer cup and the filter shocks yadda yadda but that's pretty much been the extent
of my upkeep as you can clearly see the glass is like absolutely nasty there are so much coraline
growing on it now i honestly don't even know how to begin tackling this mess and i've also noticed
like a bit of bubble algae popping up but nothing major you know the aptasia though that's become
major major problem it's completely out of control completely out of control these problems you know
they have easy fixes on the scale of things but they're still they're still really annoying
problems to have but now that my laziness streak is over it's time to get the tank back into shape
so excited about it you know i'm not sure if i'm the only person in the hobby who acts this way but
my love for the hobby comes and goes you know ebbs and flow i mean my love never completely goes away
don't get me wrong but sometimes i just need to take a mental break from everything ever so often
where i go into this you know autopilot mode doing my maintenance routine and i don't really
think about my tank or look at my tank pretty much at all and when this little mental hiatus
finishes though i always come back stronger and crazy passionate all i think about and talk about
is reef tanks and i think this whole obsession to autopilot to obsession cycle is the only way that
i've actually managed to stick out this hobby for so long i don't know is that weird am i am i weird
probably but y'all the time has come and i'm ready to put in my aquascape and place my corals but
i'm a little bit concerned i have my concerns yes because during this whole rebuilding my aquascape
and re-rebuilding my aquascape and that lazy hiatus time period i don't know what happened
but my corals grew i mean really they just popped off overnight just look at the bubble monster
i mean if i considered him a monster before i mean now he's truly i don't know a way bigger monster
and the hammers and the rock flowers i mean we're talking a lot of growth here i'm pretty sure it
can be attributed to my tank like finally maturing and becoming more stable now that it's been set up
for like what close to two years now i'm jeez time flies but i think it's my tank is entering
those golden years after the wild bumpy ugly stage and hence you know some fast growing corals now in
every other circumstance every other circumstance i would be over the moon but i unfortunately
didn't really take into account my new coral sizes when building my aquascape one good thing that i
have going on with my scape though is that i made sure it has a ton of negative space you
know people always think you know negative space minimalistic style such a bad thing but really if
you have plenty of media in your sum and you take your time with adding pearls it's actually really
fantastic because you know corals grow you know and corals need more room to grow than you'd think
i mean i really could go on a long rant about this but i'll save you from that this time
anyway moving the aquascape into the tank i did a little water change just to help make this process
a little bit easier put some of the larger corals into this cooler here so i could have
more room to actually put the aquascape down move the sand to make space for the base of it
and had david here do the heavy lifting going back in with that extra e marco cement really
did the trick though because the scape was pretty easy to place inside a few little pieces fell off
but with a lot of super glue and some piping to hold it in place the aquascape came together
just like the first time i added escape to this tank it looks really empty but
just wait until next week when i place these corals y'all because it will not look empty
at all it's going to look sick and i am so excited and i really like this scape a lot
and this is just this is gonna be a good good time good time from here i'm excited
you