She bid its head off is what I'm trying to say
This will be one of the last updates on the 375 gallon aquarium for quite a while
I wanted to do an update today because there's a few interesting things that have happened in this tank
There's also some things
I need to do so I figured let me tell a story and get those things done all at the same time
So a couple of things I want to show you right off the bat
First things first look at the substrate entirely clean you guys will remember that I was struggling with this before that was in
Keeping it clean because we had removed all of that aqua soil from that far and over here
And it created a massive mess within the aquarium the only thing that I still have to kind of clean up here is
The moss as you can see it's still well actually as we go to some lower flow zones. You can see here
It's still kind of coated in a little bit of aqua soil dust that stuff is absolutely
The messiest soil I've ever used, but it's also one of the best
I've ever used so you know kind of pros and cons to everything that you could possibly use
That said why is the soil so clean well? We've adjusted the flow of the
Wave makers those Ecotec wave makers, but it's also contributed to
this little girl swimming under there if you can see her so rays are constantly turning the substrate over and
You know just fanning the bottom and of course removing any debris
That might be on the bottom of the aquarium so that the filtration can remove it you might be wondering
Why is the sand kind of pushed back like I've said before
This is what Ray's do she'll swim up the side and come down and she pushes
it comes up the side comes down pushes it and she'll do that around the entire perimeter of
the aquarium
which is even more evident over here with the big guys as you can see they've really pushed this the
Substrate back, and this is unavoidable unless you want to have a foot deep of sand
Which is definitely going to cause you more problems than it's worth overtime with you know
anaerobic regions and nitrogen gas being released and of course
You know uneaten food everything else being trapped in it
And if this was my only aquarium that I had to take care of no problem
I can get in there and clean it, but I've got thousands of gallons out here this tank
I'm gonna give you a sneak peek this tank is getting a massive overhaul and by massive
I mean I've got to drain the tank remove all the decorations remove the fish, and we're almost starting over
We're of course gonna keep the same fish
We're gonna have five freshwater stingrays in here as well as the ancient, Arowana
And I'll admit the tank looks empty with just these little fish in it
But we have to remember that this guy's gonna get to about two and a half feet long
Those rays are gonna be you know three and a half feet long a disc
That's you know like this just an absolutely massive creature
We're gonna have five in there so in a couple of years of course
This tank will fill out tremendously what we just really have to be patient
But like I said the tank in here is looking really good. Everything is really healthy the fish are really healthy
I really enjoy the position of this tank some people have said now that the tank is pushed up against the wall
Are you going to Rescate it? No. I love it like this
We can kind of look at it from a bunch of different angles and of course having the gray background back there
Just like the color of the wall here in my opinion. It adds an extreme amount of depth in fact
I've been trying to you know toying with the idea of putting some lights back there
Just to see what it would look like
But we'll see maybe some light blue lights or something like that almost like the LED strips that I have underneath the tank that
Exposes the sump underneath which some people even said you know you need to cover this up. No
I the stand just like this and ripped open the front so we can have complete access and kind of display this sump at
You know at all times, which you know is a work of art in itself to be honest with you
And I love it being exposed like this clearly on
Camera when you kind of see it like this toward sort of thing I guess it doesn't look that great
But you know if you're a longtime viewer of this channel you know what I'm doing and you know what?
the reason for having this open like this
Now that we're down here
I should probably tell you a little story about what happened with some neurite snails that I added to this tank I added about
15 or 20 to this aquarium a little while ago just to help with algae
If there was any and you know just to turn over the substrate and whatnot and of course this was before we added the stingray
I knew once I added the stingray there was a chance that she could eat them or crush them
But your ice snails have a pretty tough shell and they grow to be quite large
But they don't really breed in freshwater in fact. They just don't so if I had 15
I'm always gonna have 15 unless they die or get out of the tank and snails will do whatever they want
But that said I picked up some pretty large knee right snails that I thought wouldn't be able
To get out of the overflow up here. This is quarter-inch teeth up here and those teeth go up to the top of the aquarium
There's no way they can crawl over them, but they can only get through them if you guys remember
I built this overflow. I showed you exactly how to do it
However some got through in fact I
I'm not sure how many get through, but this is a big tank lots of wood?
I have seen some of the snails on the wood, so I suspect most women are in there
but one day I came home and I came out here, and I heard one of my pumps just
Grinding and I immediately shut it off. I looked down and a few of these fell out of it
little near right snail
shells
There's four in there, but oh and look see the pump is really dirty
That's that dusting that is all throughout the aquarium
I got to do a really big cleanup of this tank and really clean this out
But you know it's adding nutrients to the tank and the moss loves it the moss is doing fantastic so I've decided to kind of
Leave it
Just because technically the stalking in this tank is relatively low in comparison to the volume of water
I mean we've got almost you know well. We do have 500 gallons of water
We have a bunch of tiny little fish in one little stingray again in five hundred gallons of water where I'm doing 30% water changes
Every three days this one actually is begun to get you know 50% once a week like the rest of the tanks
But when it was first set up I was doing far more so no dice on the knee right snails they cut down there
It's unfortunate they think that they did get down there, and you know they were kind of sucked out of their shell oh
I'm guessing and minced up. There's probably more in the sump somewhere that I'm not seeing
I'm only I'm happy that the the pumps didn't burn out or it ruined the impeller
But these are centrifugal pumps meaning that they can actually even pump sand
Like murky sand if you needed it to to be honest with you. I've tried it. They will do it
I put these things through there though through their limits. Those are the the Ecotech vectra's last time
I talked about this 375 gallon tank we talked about the fact that
The wood kind of collapsed, and it's just looking sad right now
I
Don't mind the way it looks but one of the things I would like to do is kind of bring up the middle a little
Bit I don't know if you guys like it as is
But I think I'm just gonna get in there and adjust some of the wood the water might become a little murky
But I got to do a water change today anyway
So let's go ahead and see what we can come up with now the wood is sunken
However, it's still very almost buoyant it's very easy to move it around so when I do this
I just create a huge mess, so hopefully I'm able to make something look relatively better
I would like to fill it out in the middle a little bit more mind
You there's only I think five actual pieces of wood in here. I don't have a lot to work with although
I got tremendous amount more outside if I need it
Ideally, I should drain the tank before doing this but
I'd rather just do what to see what happens?
Happy with that
They're ridiculous
So all I wanted to do is fill out the middle a little bit more
Adjusted this piece here and a piece in the back and this piece of the center. I like that a lot more
I think I will add a little bit of more wood
Or I think what I might do is when I do my big water change
I'll bringing the water level down considerably and I want to spread the wood out
I don't know. I love messing with this tank though. It's so easy to you know manipulate it and change things that
Yeah, I might as well. Just do it. Okay story time
In order to feed this tank I have to do two things one. I have to feed the rainbows immediately and
Distract them almost well I feed the freshwater ray why?
Because I've noticed that when I'm dropping in the food to the rag
This cloud of fish just takes it all regardless of the size of it they take it and run off with it like little dogs
with a bone too big for their mouth, so
What I've been doing here is
I'll show you guys. I'll drop in some food. I like to drop in tiny pellets for these guys
from time to time because it does take them longer to eat them and
They also expand inside of their bellies, so it fills them a little bit more
When it comes to the Ray though, I got to take this acrylic tube now
I got this idea from my friend Mark Levingston from Mel's wreath
Mel's reef which also doubles as my favorite saltwater channel for aquariums
But he used this big 4-inch tube to add clownfish to his aquarium
Directly to an Anatomy really interesting
So I thought maybe if I just dropped food in through this I could bypass all the fish and just feed the Ray
Directly so that's exactly what I do now, and it's a little bit fun to do so as well
So I'll give you guys an idea of what this looks like she's right there
put this in
All the way like that now she's just getting a mix of
Some shrimp, and you know a bit of a homemade recipe that I do for larger fish she'll jump on that
And she didn't like me touching her it's all clumped up right now Ashley breaks apart, but he was sitting here for a while I
Was chaser yeah, and now she knows it's there, and she'll rip that apart
Yeah, so now
She can get all the food. She wants without having to worry about all the the rainbows. You know bugging her or anything like that
See this is what they do see them taking that clump of food, they'll take it and run off with it
Like a little pack of piranhas
The Pearl has that big chunk though the most of it, so
She's getting everything she needs she's growing she's doing fine
But you'll notice in this video and in many other videos showcasing this aquarium the rainbows
Leave the pearl stingray alone
They don't bother her whatsoever which is a good thing because rays are a very curious creature if they go here if a fish goes
Near them almost regardless of their size
They're going to try to mouth them pin them up against the glass
Taste them in a lot of cases the bike their heads off
It's just part of what Ray's do they're not necessarily an aggressive fish like that. They're just very curious
you keep them well-fed and they're not gonna kill anything in the attack even these small little things in fact as you can see the
Pearl simply just doesn't even care that there's a ton of rainbows around it. It's searching through the substrate
there's rainbows inches from her head, and you know she's just looking for food minding her own business, but
There was a bully in the tank one of these big rainbows or one of these rainbows became one of the big
Dominant males and the dominant male at times does dominant things including
Nipping at the Pearl. I noticed that
There's one individual rainbow. It was the most beautiful in the tank
Continuously followed the pearl around wherever it went nipping at her. I thought yeah long-term. This is going to be a problem
I'm going to have to remove that individual rainbow good luck. I'm not removing the pearl no real place to put her right now
She can stay in here no problem, but when it came to this one rainbow
It was so persistently biting at her that eventually it caused a sore in the exact same spot
On her disc which is completely healed now and no other rainbow has gone near her however that little
spot that was picking at
Exposed a bit of the flesh on the Ray mostly just like a white
Irritation really it wasn't really flesh
With that said that's now a target for that rainbow to attack the Pearl it
Continuously picked and picked and picked and picked and picked at that spot now
This wasn't over the course of days or even weeks
This is like I've noticed that one day and the very next day this happened. I frank gehry. It was over
We were both sitting here. Just talking about a few things, and he looks over the aquarium. He's like oh my god
The Pearl had that bully rainbow pinned up against the glass, and I thought that's the one is such a beautiful rainbow fish
That's so dark and red and coloration that
You know giving you a real idea of what these guys will one day look like they have a long ways to go of course
But she had it pinned up against
the acrylic and I knew that
That rainbow
got a little too close and irritated that Ray a little too much, and you know something like this was potentially bound to happen I
Think the little pearl stingray got a little fed up with
That rainbow and wouldn't let it go
I just let nature take its course and let them do their own thing now of course this isn't nature
We can call this nature all we want
But we have captive animals inside of a glass box a lot of people judge me of what I do
Meanwhile they turn around and they've got an aquarium right behind them
these are captive animals inside of glass boxes and
Weed control their environments anything that happens to them regardless of I don't know what happened. It wasn't my fault
Etc etc the minute. We put an animal inside captivity. You are responsible. It is your fault and I'm no different
She bit its head off is what I'm trying to say
She killed it and let it go. She wasn't interested in eating it. She couldn't she
stopped the rainbow from biting her and
That was it and unfortunately the rainbow had to
Move on without a head, but I removed it and everything's been fine since there's been no problems
But there's been no issues
I knew that this might eventually happen where the look of them still going after a little piece of food
This is why I have to target feed her and they'll eat it. They don't care though rainbows pretty much eat anything you offer them
But yeah, so that's my story today on
That she just bit its head off to control a problem
And I guess moral the story for any of you bullies out there that like the bully little younger kids in school is
Eventually one of these days they're gonna turn on you, too