all right this is really tall step all right step two i don't want to be doing a ton of
tank maintenance so i'm leaving for vacation soon and i figured i'd do a quick cleaning on the 20
gallon aquarium but it has completely grown out of control it looks like a crazy jungle
which i don't mind that look but it's getting to the point where some of the taller plants are
out competing the lower plants for light so let's get the chainsaw out and start packing
hi my name is Irene with girl talks fish here with practical tips on nano fish and
plant aquariums and here is how i do a deep cleaning of my planted aquarium now normally
i don't do most of these steps because i'm lazy and busy like that but also because some of them
you only have to do like once a month or once every three months first thing we're going to
do is scrape off the algae from the aquarium walls you can see i use a razor blade because i've used
algae scrubbers and magnets in the past and i don't really like them because they tend to
sometimes pick up particles from the substrate and then that ends up scratching my glass which
i do not want so yeah this is my favorite tool luckily ever since i added a co2 injection
the green dust algae that used to grow on the walls of my aquarium
has pretty much disappeared which is awesome because i hate algae scraping
all right step two we're gonna do pruning i of course have my scissors and tweezers over here for
replanting stuff towel because i'm probably gonna drip water everywhere as well as a nice little
kind of shoebox sized container to contain all the trimmings my goal is to mainly hack back
a lot of the stuff so that i get some nice empty space more in the middle of the tank and that
way just kind of looks a little less jungle-y keep the tall stuff in the edges if possible
okay you can see i've done a lot of trimming on the pogostemon stallatus 'octopus' and yet
there's a ton of it these are the trimmings i don't plan on propagating them so instead
you can either throw them away compost them feed them to your goldfish or turtles or sell them at
your local fish club or maybe even your local fish store now i'm going to start trimming the
water wisteria as you can see it's supposed to be over here but it has snaked all the way over here
and gotten way too long as well as the bacopa and i do want to propagate and replant those
oh okay that took forever so i wasn't planning on doing this but the new plan is we've got
our Pogostemon stellatus over here then i want the scarlet temple the Alternanthera reineckii
because it's kind of like a broader leaf and it's pinkish then i'm gonna have the water wisteria the
unfortunately the aquarium dwarf aquarium lily is kind of in the middle and then the bacopa
will hopefully grow taller behind the java ferns so that's why i did all that craziness
all right step three i am going to add some root tabs i know this seems a little bit out of order
but basically i'm trying to get done all the steps that are going to muck up the water and
then when i do my water change hopefully i can suck some of those particles out and
they do kind of float sometimes so i like to use my tweezers and insert them in
at an angle and i basically set a calendar reminder about once a month telling me to
insert the root tabs underneath the cryptocorynes and any bulb plants because those are kind of the
heavy root feeders versus the stem plants they can get fertilizer from the water column some people
worry about the bubbles that appear from the substrate but i'm not really concerned about it
i've got an air stone or a sponge filter excuse me and so it seems to do a good job of
surface agitation and making sure i have enough oxygen in the tank now this dwarf aquarium lily
is a hungry hungry beast and so i will find that sometimes the leaves start getting holes in
them in them and so i'll have to feed extra root tabs in the middle of the month i basically like
to do a ring of root tabs all around the base just to give it as much nutrients as possible
all right i haven't really cleaned my sponge filter in a while so now i'm going to remove it
and wring it out in the sink you can do it in kind of old tank water just to keep things safe but
i've got two sponge filters in here so i kind of alternate i'm not really as concerned about the
chlorine getting to it and i can like easily just rinse this or ring this out over a house
plant if i really want it to get that extra nutrients but it tends to smell like fish poop
so i'm just gonna clean and sink really quickly now i think we are finally ready to start changing
water so first thing i got to determine is how much water to change so i've got my nifty difty
aquarium crop test strips i don't typically use the ammonia one unless there's like
something wrong with my fish but this one the multi-test strips it's got a nitrate levels
that i take a look at and yeah i just measured it it was pretty much zero ppm which means i've been
doing a very poor job of fertilizing this tank and amazingly they're still doing pretty well
i use this 50 foot python no spill water change system because well i basically need it
to reach my tank all the way out to my backyard i like to basically have the fish water directly go
there yes there is an ugly giant brown spot spots in the backyard because our dog has been peeing
everywhere and so you know putting some fish water on it helps dilute that ph a little bit
technically since there are zero nitrates i don't really need to do a water change but you know it's
been a while and i definitely need to top it off so with this long of a siphon i actually need to
quote unquote kind of scoop it start it twice so let me show you how i do it so first
you're going to have it at an angle like this until the siphon starts and then you will point it
down once it starts suctioning so first i dip it down let the water enter the tube lift it out and
as the water drains down before it leaves the tube completely i fill it up again since the tube is so
long i actually have to do this twice so pull it out of the water as the water is sinking into the
tube quickly plunge it still at this upward angle and then now that oh there's a little fry in there
go go go so what i can do is i'm actually pinching this so that i can let this fry out go shoo
come on there you go okay now that the fry is out i am going to unkink the hose but the siphon is
not lost let me try to i don't typically gravel back actually because eco-complete substrate is
pretty good at hiding debris and stuff and i actually want kind of the nice
nutrients but sometimes i'll vacuum up a little bit near the front just because it's more obvious
during filming excuse me no go away excuse me i'm not worried about sucking up the fry they're
actually pretty strong so but yeah after that i just kind of leave the hose hanging somewhere
and then i just yeah there you go and i don't really vacuum the substrate just
let all those good nutrients get down into the eco-complete
in the meanwhile while the water is draining i'm just going to hook up this little
doodad thing that came with the python no spill water change system and then get that water warm
whoops i drained a little more water that i was planning on but all you have to do
to stop the siphon is basically lift the tube out of the water and that's it
and then now i'm just going to basically leave the hose in the tank i'm going to kind of aim it
toward that back wall here because we're going to connect the other end go to the backyard connect
the other end to the sink and then now clean water is going to flow back into the tank and it's going
to spray on that back wall so that it won't kind of ruin my substrate or aquascape as much and then
i rush back here and add some dechlorinator this is nice because it's got the pump head on it so
basically one squirt for every 10 gallons you know what one more for good luck i don't know if you
can see but i actually have a temper controller right here so i can see what temperature the
water is and whether i need to kind of adjust the temperature at the sink or not and the water is
almost the top so i'm going to go rush and turn it off all you have to do when you run over the
sink is basically switch over that valve so that now water is once again pouring into
the sink instead of into the tank and now i'm going to wind it up and drain it all the way
it is getting hot in here i turned off the ac so you guys could hear my lovely
voice but let's wrap this up okay now it is time about fertilizer this is the all-in-one
liquid fertilizer so it basically feeds the plants that feed from the water column and so for easy
green it's about one pump per 10 gallons but i need may need more because again i'm
injecting co2 into this tank the other thing i have to dose is seachem equilibrium for minerals
because my water is super soft so i'm going to add about i don't know half a tablespoon
it was looking pretty good but i've got a lot of lye bears in here and a lot of plants that
definitely suffer when i don't add some minerals in there and i like to add it in the back where
the sponge filter is just because that's kind of where the greatest water flow is and it'll help it
dissolve faster this stuff will definitely especially since i'm adding it in great quantities
it'll definitely make my water cloudy tomorrow but i'm not really concerned about that step
seven is wiping everything down with this acrylic and glass cleaner stuff that's safe for aquariums
so i like to just get you know paper towel or microfiber cloth spritz it a few times and then
just like yeah wipe down all the smudges and water drips everywhere as well don't forget the top
too there's a lot of dust that collects and then you want to make sure your light is fairly clear
fairly clear as well getting through that glass and then
underneath the glass if you have green algae slime on the lid then you want to clean that off as well
i don't have that problem anymore because if you saw my video i put a kind of a rectangle plastic
square on top of my sponge filter so it doesn't splash on the lid anymore and no more sludge
you may have thought that was the last step but actually step number eight is recording
everything i did in my excel spreadsheet i know it seems super nerdy but when you're trying to
balance an aquarium it's pretty difficult and so i like to record down like what my light levels are
my nutrient levels are what did i measure with the water test kit that i just used and that way i can
keep track of everything make little adjustments as needed and it's worked really well for me
based on the data i've collected over the years i found out that in the past i tended to have
really high heavy bile loads in my aquariums which means i had a lot of fish making a lot
of fish poop that would cause the nitrogen levels especially the nitrates to become very high so i
would have to do huge water changes every single week and then i couldn't add a lot of fertilizer
and so then my plants were failing as well because they weren't getting like all the nutrients they
needed from the fish waste however now that i've added co2 injection it's great you clearly saw i
had like zero nitrates i can go much longer in between water changes but now the plants
are going crazy and so i still end up having to do tank maintenance to prune them and make sure
that they're not shading out some of the smaller plants that haven't gotten as well established yet
i'm a busy busy person so at the end of a hard day of work the last thing i want to do is a
ton of tank maintenance but i want to basically do as little of that as possible so i can spend
more time staring at my fish relaxing enjoying the beauty of basically having
a slice of nature in my own home plus i may have started binging on attack on titan and
so i'm trying to hurry up and finish that series before anybody ruins the ending for me
bottom line i'm just gonna turn down my co2 even more so it's a bare trickle and just gonna give
my plants that little bit of boost they need to grow without growing too fast if you don't have
time to do a deep clean like i did today check out this quick five minute water change i did
on my betta tank take time to enjoy your aquariums and i'll see in the next video