so today we're finally going to plant the 700 gallon aquarium yes you heard that right
700 gallon planted aquarium which is going to end up being absolutely phenomenal with that said
we're gonna do this live but more on that later oh and the worst part about this is i've already done
the scaping or at least the dry scape to this tank so wish me luck as we work around it so
we do have a bit of a vag plan and you guys will remember it and start off by kind of laying some
pool filtration sand in and around all of these uh tree trunks just to kind of fill in any voids i'd
rather pool filtration sand do that as opposed to uh the more expensive planted tank substrate
now look at this that is a beautiful color i've never used this uh brand of pool filtration's
sand but it's definitely a much smaller grain which is certainly going to contrast really well
with the brown tones i'm gonna have no choice but to take these out for the time being so this
top layer of sand is just basically a filler i probably could have used a larger grain gravel
to kind of lift up the substrate because i do want it to be level with these rocks here
but uh pool filtration sand is definitely going to serve the purpose again check out the consistency
very fine so now comes the aqua soil i hope that 100 pounds will be enough
i think we definitely got enough soil though because that was 22 pounds or 20 pounds or
something we got a hundred and it looks to be about 30 percent already covered we'll see how
this actually ends up spreading what now that i'm seeing this in the tank and the idea that i want
the plant yeah that's an entire fingers width deep so we definitely got the three inches that
we're looking for so originally i wanted to also cap this with pool filtration sand but i'm not so
sure i need to now i feel like this just might be enough i think it'll look good having two toned
all the plants are gonna cover it anyway yeah this is so much soil
this this type of thing makes me so happy i love doing this it's just so expensive
like the soil the tank the equipment
adds up so damn much
i think i'm gonna plant directly on top of this we're definitely gonna need some
water in here before we do that i know this is probably not gonna be a good idea but like i'm
dying to see what the sand is gonna look like i'll probably have to go barefoot
moving forward so please don't look at my toes or my toenails
i don't know if you guys are keeping count but
every time i dump a bag of sand in there that's another 20 pounds
so that was 240 pounds of pool filtration sand and 80 pounds of planted tank substrate
so if you want to get idea of how much it takes now one of the things that you can do to develop
like a depth perception in a tank is kind of like uh angle the substrate up so it's shallow at the
front and that gets deeper at the back but we don't need to do with this tank it's already
got great depth perception and i think having it more wavy and letting the fish do their thing
is going to be far more interesting to see but i will kind of uncover some of the logs
and make them a little prettier so thus far it's looking pretty good now what i was thinking was to
take some more pool filtration stand and coat the top of the planted tank so all that black is where
the substrate or i'm sorry where the plants are going to go and i think that if we plant that area
it's going to cover up the black anyway plus the sand is very fine i'll give you a closer
look at it it's not really your typical pool filtration sand it's actually quite
fine but still a good size grain it's very much sand like and if we put it on here
the sand is going to sink to the bottom and the bigger stuff will stay on top yet if this gets in
here it's going to do the same thing whereas these are just going to kind of be on top which is going
to be fine because once we add in the rest of the logs which kind of are just right over here
it's going to uh it's probably better that we get some of this on here than that over there
now i'm adding in a little bit of water just to saturate the substrate the reason being is if i
don't do this and i add in all the plants into a dry substrate when i do finally add the water
they're simply going to float up and i don't want to deal with that in a 700 gallon tank
so i've added a little bit of water to the aquarium just to saturate that planted tank
substrate just so the the plants are going to have something to grip into as opposed to doing it dry
and then when i fill it the plants a lot of the times will just rise straight up out of the water
which is a pain the downside is i've already put the sand on and i've already kind of escaped
the tank for the most part so i'll have to work around and get in there barefoot one of the things
that i do need to do though is have a bucket of water in the tank and i'll tell you why when it
comes to these tissue culture type plants they have this gel on there it doesn't have a smell
and to be honest with you i've tasted it already and it doesn't have a taste i believe it's just
to preserve it or to give them some sort of nutrients as they sit in the cup that's not
something you really want in the tank so what i do is just put it in the bucket of water
and kind of just squeeze it off like a like you would like a sponge and kind of just get rid of
it that way now it's ready to plant i'm gonna take all the largest ones or the largest growing plants
out of their cups and prepare them because they'll be planted in first all around the perimeter or
the i mean like the the closest to the branches that's where i wanted to grow the thickest
and then like the grass-like ones will come out who knows what this is going to look like
long-term but it's incredibly exciting to think about now i do feel like these guys should be
dominating the back area and kind of growing out from there so i'll try to sparcely plant these
so just take the plant grab it with your tongs this is an important tool to have as well
and then we're just going to kind of like jam it down into the substrate let the leaves stay out
and it's not a lot of plants back there it looked like a lot in the cups and whatnot but
this is all going to spread and this plant gets relatively big
i don't want these to cover the wood though i i only want them to kind of come up to here
now you'll notice that i'm planting them two to three inches apart that's because when these
grow they're going to shoot at runners and you want to give them space to grow
all of this is going to fill in i'm running out of plants i don't know if i have enough and
this is the only downside to using tissue culture plants is that we're not using adult plants these
guys are all little babies so it doesn't look like we planted the tank at all but rather just
splattered a bunch of tiny little leaves everywhere mind you let's give this three weeks
and see what this tank is going to look like obviously we also still have to put in the logs
and finish off the routes everything that we removed so we were able to walk around
but this tank is going to look absolutely phenomenal so now everything you just watched
was filmed on february 2nd my birthday which was 18 days ago and this is the tank today
it is filling in quite nicely as you can see in comparison to what it did look like compared to
now like the plants are literally taking off it's looking absolutely beautiful uh mind you it's
been less than three weeks so we're not getting like explosive growth but it's quite substantial
um so i got all these plants in canada one was uh some were from aquascape room dot ca which is a
canadian company and then of course my local fish store one fish two fish in dartmouth nova scotia
as for the tank i am starting to see algae in the aquarium which technically is a good sign i'm not
a huge fan of uh hair algae but i haven't done even a water change on this yet i'm just trying
to get the plants to take off and then you know i'll kind of address that algae i really need
the plants to kind of root before i even hit the uh filtration up and turn that on so right now
we do have the wave makers on and you can see it's kind of collected a few of the plants that weren't
planted that well just to give the water some circulation right now i don't need filtration
on this aquarium because there's simply no fish in it so there's no real point to you know uh
adding in any sort of strong flow or anything that might kind of take away uh from the aquarium but
you'll notice right here the sand is uh perfectly clear that's because i focused the lights i did
drop them slightly i don't find it takes away from anything because they were up higher but i
lowered them down about a week ago just to focus more on the plants and less on the sand because
i started to notice that we were getting a little algae on the substrate and that's going to be easy
to siphon out and i probably could have did that before this video but i want to give you like a
raw look at everything and see how it's going but so far it's just absolutely gorgeous i wanted to
give you a before and after and of course like i said this was filmed like three weeks ago
but let's give it a little bit more time another three weeks another six weeks another nine weeks
and it's just going to continuously get better and better i suspect within a month
we'll hook up the filtration and then we can look at cycling as well as stocking this aquarium
but uh we'll go from there isn't this cool it's so cool it's such a big tank and i know
that some of you might like it some of you might not but we got to give this a chance
let it grow in and see what it looks like anyways back to three weeks ago now once the plants grow
in and we get everything set back up the question has to be what fish do we add to this aquarium let
me know in the comment section below oh and before we go remember when i said we were doing this live
you guys ready don't you disappoint me be on your best behavior well for those that don't know we
have we do have a membership portion of this channel where you just i don't know click the
join button you can see all the benefits of it but these guys have been watching with us the whole
time this is absolutely phenomenal and i even got you a little chair to sit in while you watch me
i don't know why they want to be a member oh oh hi guys i i didn't see you there
i brought you guys along for behind the scenes video and i really enjoyed making it with you um
so that's what you guys are going to watch tonight and then some air freshener for
when tamara comes out because she stinks you guys will be there just for the opening scene
which i don't know what i'm going to say and then you pretend then you come back down and
you move the camera oh you want to see some birthday presents this is the first copy
of the book ever printed uh and tamara got me this check this out um hi everybody no we don't
do that did i hit record you guys know if i hit record i do that way too much we're gonna do this
live but more on that later another camera angle i like that loosened stuff i've
had it before and it grows really well here at this point i don't know who i'm talking to anymore
if i'm talking to you or the camera i really gotta figure this out some of these are literally rotten
i always give him a shot anyway so we definitely got the three inches that we're looking for
tamara if you're watching three inches is a lot right can you tell the chat
that three inches is enough that's another 20 pounds did you even know
that every time i dump a bag in here it's 20 pounds even counting
i don't know where i was going with that and then like the grass-like ones will come out who knows
what this is going to look like long term but it's incredibly exciting to think about
that's what i say when i don't know what this is going to look like long term
is this weird for you guys you don't even know who i'm talking to do you is he talking to us or is
he talking to his damn camera again i got a lot of space to cover with this stuff let's get out
every tank once you start off with tissue culture they're just tiny little baby plants in those
little cups look at my mess oh and i even got you a little chair to sit in while you watch me
i think the chair is so funny all right i'm tired of talking
to myself guys why don't you give me 10 minutes and i'll be in the discord