the red belly piranha was the first fish i ever kept in the aquarium hobby fast forward
some 20 years later and we're gonna keep them again this time i'm keeping a pack
of at least 20 red belly piranha i've got 180 gallon aquarium waiting for them
mind you the pressure is on me at this point because i really want to do these guys justice
i really want to display them properly and i want them to flourish in this aquarium
i got 180 gallon aquarium at six feet long two feet tall two feet wide and a ton of manzanita
wood and that's exactly what i was gonna go with for this aquarium because when i imagine a piranha
aquarium i picture it being dark and gloomy and a lot of wood and it seems like it's dangerous
even if you just jump in the water because the wood will stab you and if you get stabbed by
that wood it's gonna cause the blood to go in the water and the prawn are just gonna get you
so that's what i'm going to create i started with the two biggest pieces that made sense for this
aquarium and i was going corner to corner you guys know i'm a corner type scaper i like to start in a
corner and scape out from there i do it in almost every tank i'm trying to do different things but
for this one i decided we're going to do both corners and i'm going to try to connect them in
the middle i want this to seriously look dangerous and i don't know if i if i hit the right mark and
i'm going to leave you guys to judge me i'm telling you right now i love this aquarium but
i'm standoffish about a few things that i'm going to explain here in the video so first and foremost
we're using manzanita wood i've got so much of it left over from over the years of collecting it and
it doesn't go bad i mean it's a dense hardwood it's going to last me for decades and decades
but what i was trying to create was uh basically imagine if you have your hands upside down and
your fingers pointing out towards each other almost like two hands kind of trying to reach out
of the water to grab you and that's kind of kind of what i was i guess i was trying to create and
the longer the scape went by i realized that this just has to be a tangle of wood
something that looks good and that i think the piranha are going to look absolutely
menacing in because at the end of the day they got the worst reputation for such a
really a gentle fish but i kind of want to get them in sooner than rather than later because
they are in a 40 gallon breeder holding tank at this moment and i don't think they're doing that
great they're skittish i can't turn the lights on they'll dart all over the place they're eating but
only in the dark once i get them in this big tank they're not only going to do much better
but they're going to have a massive growth spurt as you can tell from the initial uh layout
of this aquarium it's definitely missing something now i know two things one it
would look a lot better with some rocks too all of this wood is gonna float it's dried out in my yard
for the last few years some of it's been used in scapes others haven't so i knew i was gonna have
to add in some rocks luckily i had some maple leaf rock i use this rock for two reasons one
it's like an earth tone color almost like mud like a red mud almost clay two it's the maple leaf rock
i'm canadian and for some reason unbeknownst to me we love the maple leaf and beavers
and and moose and that the most weird things but anyways i went with some maple leaf rock and
i actually really like it but i don't think it's going to stay in here permanently again it's going
to look good initially and i'm using the rocks to weigh down the wood so it will become waterlogged
because it could take weeks plus i think i wanted to see how it would finish it off and i knew
if i didn't like it in the long term i'll just pop it out but once all this rock was in there
i realized it's still missing something um do i want to do a planted tank with piranha no
i don't think that would suit them well i don't think that would do them great
but looking through the escape i realized there's plenty of room it doesn't look like
it straight on but if we kind of look at it from different angles you can really
see that there is a ton of room and swimming area and swimming space for these guys to grow
i always try to leave the front area open because it kind of forces the fish to the front
and yet they still have enough room for cover with that said it's a very simple scape with the wood
isn't too entwined so as these fish grow i can remove a piece here and there because the average
red belly piranha will max out at around a foot long in the home aquarium that's highly unlikely
we're looking probably at closer to six to eight inches um which is still a really big fish so uh
when i was doing this scape i realized you know let's be practical and understand that we might
have to uh dwindle the numbers over time but it also needed a substrate and i had a few options i
was gonna go with a initially what i was thinking and i still might do it um and this is the second
thing so the the rocks were the first thing that i'm not sold on the second thing was
the substrate i wanted to try a larger grain uh earth-toned substrate like basically river pebbles
and once i added it in i thought well it is a bright color but it just doesn't look natural
to me at all maybe it would look a lot better you know mixed in with a brown sand and i kind of wish
i went with a brown sand and no big deal worst case scenario i'll vacuum all this stuff out save
it for another tank and i'll go with the brown sand but there's a few things that i kind of wanna
um i gotta bring it up because i'm not sold on this tank entirely i like it it looks fantastic
i mean i love every new aquarium i set up for one reason or another but again the pressure's on me
with this one and i'm judging myself hard and i'm being very critical as i do this voiceover for
you when i watch this video i feel like it's not even me and there would have been so many things
i would have done differently and this tank is probably not going to get filled for a couple of
weeks as i mum over it and i figure out what i really want to do and i read your comments and
read the discussion below this video but let's try some greens out in this tank i took a couple of
silk plants just to see what they're going to look like and toss them in the corners definitely made
all the difference and made me reconsider maybe i do want to do plants in here i'm going to leave
this one up to you guys though let me know what you think of this scape i love the wood the wood
is great not sold on the substrate not sold on the rocks and i'm on the cusp with the with the plants
but i guess that's the benefit of having you guys watching is that i get to relay this stuff back
to you and see what you think and am i being too critical or do is this tank really the ultimate
piranha aquarium i don't know let me know what you guys think in the comment section below
i think i'm going to leave it at that i really want to hear what you guys to have to say
and what you guys really think about this so make sure you leave me some feedback and something
critical in the comment section below that we can all use and run with until then i guess the next
step is of course fill the aquarium up water lock all that wood you know set the filter up
get all the cycled media in it to make sure everything's kosher and then of course add the
piranha into it we'll do that all in one video of course if there's any changes into the scape
or anything i'll make sure i film that and i'll include that in that video as well but right now
these scapes that i've been putting out i'm pretty sure they're coming out back to back
i just really want to show you the beginnings of all of these because they'll change and
evolve over time and you know maybe we add in a different plant or whatnot but final stocking
is going to be like 20 piranha and about 100 200 tetras most likely neons are cardinals
depending on which one's more available at the time but until then ladies and gentlemen
thank you for watching hope you enjoyed today's video if you don't want to miss anything i'm
talking about make sure you're subscribed if you're not already i'll see you in that video