(upbeat music)
(rock smashing)
- What are you supposed to bring to a meeting?
(laughter)
You wanna do a big tank, show 'em,
Show 'em what you're gonna work with, alright?
Let's do it.
Yeah, my whole thoughts is in Newport,
my destiny is to be in Newport.
My name is Dustin Wunderlich
from this room, I will change the world.
If I could have any job in the world, what would it be?
I have the perfect job for me.
My goal is to help people through my service.
I strive to be the best in the world
at what I enjoy doing.
Stop right there.
(record scratch)
Rewind the tape.
(rewinding)
Let's get in a time machine,
and go back into 1993 and ask this
young, beautiful, bowl-cutted boy
what he thinks about the fact
that by the time he turns 38 years old,
he's going to have set up a 900-gallon aquarium
at a public aquarium?
(upbeat music)
What's up, fish tank people?
Dustin's fishtanks bringing it to you,
talking about the biggest,
and in my opinion,
the best aquarium that I've ever done.
How's everybody doing?
I hope you're doing well.
In today's video, we're gonna talk about
the 900 gallon aquarium,
the first of five that I'm setting up
at the Newport Aquarium.
We're gonna talk about the plan.
We're gonna talk about the substrate.
We're gonna talk about the hardscape.
We're gonna talk about the lighting.
If you like this kind of video, hit the subscribe button
and you'll get more videos like this.
So the Newport Aquarium hits me up to talk about
redoing their Mekong River tank,
the first of five aquariums that I'm going to do
with those fine folks up there.
Naturally, they hit me up when I'm in the middle
of the biggest project of my life.
Regardless, when opportunity comes, you have to be ready.
It's better to be ready
for an opportunity that doesn't come,
than to have an opportunity come and not be ready.
I am ready for this,
and we are going to talk about the plan.
Folks, I've done a five gallon,
I've done a 10 gallon, I've done a 15 gallon,
I've done a 20 gallon, I've done a 30 gallon,
I've done a 40 gallon, I've done a 55, I've done a 75,
and recently I'm just gonna say,
I slayed a 125 gallon for a customer.
But folks, your boy D has never done a 900 gallon aquarium.
I like quotes, and here's a good one.
For every hour you spend planning, you save four hours.
Here is the approach that I am taking
to the 900 gallon aquarium.
This is the plan.
The plan is to do what I do best, okay?
I stay in my line.
I don't keep Cichlids, I don't do salt,
heck I hardly keep any fish these days, alright.
I'm getting paid to do what I do and what I do best.
First things first, let's talk about the substrate.
The simple goal of this tank
is to make a massive, lush aquarium
that requires minimal maintenance.
Rumor has it plants absorb four to 400 times
more nutrients through their roots
than through their stems and leaves,
you all know where this is going.
We're gonna talk about substrate,
but I wanna unpack something here
as a lesson with how this tank was
before I got my dirty D hands on it.
This is a place where I am not maintaining this tank,
it's also not easy to get in and out of.
I want to show you this tank before I got my hands on it,
so we can learn a lesson of
what we're not gonna do when I set it up.
This is a tank full of Cyrpspiralis,
this is also the Rio Negro tank,
you can look at both of these aquariums
and you can tell that there is
no nutrients going on at the subterranean,
if there is it's very minimal.
I happen to know Crypspiralis extremely well,
while it is a heavy root feeder
it can grow in basically anything,
it's one of the heartiest cryps around,
we also sell it, okay.
The Crypspiralis can basically grow without nutrients,
but this is a discussion.
But Dustin I don't wanna put dirt in my tank,
it'll make a mess.
Look, putting dirt in the bottom of a 900 gallon aquarium
certainly is something that needs to be discussed,
particularly because I'm gonna try to set it and forget it,
so we had to dialogue about how the plant growth
would be better and exponentially better
with the dirt in the bottom of this aquarium.
Keep in mind I'm not the one maintaining it,
so it did have to be discussed of what to do
and what not to do once dirt is under the substrate.
After all, getting in and out of this aquarium
to clean it should something go wrong,
could be just a little bit more difficult
than your average five or 10 gallon aquarium,
so there was a discussion between myself and the Newport
about dirting it prior.
Yeah, this actually helps me because this is the rim, right?
So what I wanted to do was build this up right here,
so like when you walk up
that's where your eye is greeted with the gravel,
so this is actually beneficial.
We're gonna need a lot of gravel to get up to that height.
When in doubt get more pea gravel
and then we'll decorate on top
'cause we're gonna have so much plant mass in here.
There's also more reason to use dirt here,
which actually correlates back to lighting.
We're lighting 48 inches deep, this is deep
and for every unit of measure you go
away from a light source,
you exponentially lose light.
You can get away with slightly less lighting,
as long as your plants are well fed.
So I'm banking on the fact
that the plants in this aquarium
are not gonna be able to get as much light
down to them because they're not getting
as much light down to the bottoms,
where they eat at their root,
I'm gonna make sure they have a smorgasbord of food,
readily available for them down there.
And as we transition to light,
we want to talk about lighting that can reach
all the way down deep
and there's only one option for a tank this deep for me
and that is a Reef Brite metal halide.
Why do you think that street lights
for so many years were metal halides?
It's because a metal halide's light travels the furthest,
it penetrates the deepest,
but it's not just the fact that
it can penetrate the deepest,
it's actual spectral composition, if you will,
what kinda light it's giving off
is best for the type of plants
we're trying to put in here.
I get real technical with lighting in my webinars,
there'll be a link in the bottom of this,
you can sign up to join one of those.
100 percent free, but it's outside the scope of this video.
Now, with this, we're going to use
three 400 watt metal halides.
Now that might sound like a lot of watts to you
if you wanna use the ol' watts per gallon.
That's 1200 watts over 900 gallons,
it's actually not that much lighting,
not to mention this lighting
has to get all the way down to the bottom
of the 900, okay.
This is not lighting your average 55 gallon aquarium.
So riddle me this folks,
drop me a comment on what you think
if you had the opportunity to do a 900 gallon aquarium,
what kind of lighting would you use and why?
Please leave me a note in the comments.
We've talked about substrate,
we've talked about lighting
and now we're quickly, going to talk about filtration.
Then we're gonna move on from the mechanics
of this aquarium to the fun part,
to the design part.
We're gonna talk about the hardscape.
Originally I was gonna do it
like one way and have this be off,
but I think I'm gonna kinda canyon this
and do a side here and a side here
and then the big tree in the middle
and I can use that funky driftwood that I brought with me,
kinda down in here and kinda play,
but this is actually gonna be pretty,
once I get this all built up,
I'm tryin' to go this high.
The filtration on this 900 gallon aquarium
is of minimal concern for me.
This system along with probably 20 other aquariums
about the same size are all equipped
with massive filtration.
These folks are in the water business,
they boast the tagline a million gallons of fun
and I'm not the least concerned
about the filtration of these aquariums,
but the same husbandry that they use
at the Newport Aquarium can be applied
to your own aquarium.
Here's the lesson that I learned from Jeff.
Jeff has a rule and he says,
you want the water to turn over
four times the volume of the tank per hour.
This is a 900 gallon aquarium,
so you all can do the math nine times four,
we're gonna turn the volume of water
over in this aquarium 3600 gallons in one hour.
Note they are using a sand filter here as well,
which I'm not used to using,
but should remove most of the debris from this aquarium.
I also would like to point out
that on the filtration of this aquarium,
it has an entire bio-chamber
that I believe is over a decade old.
Plenty of biological bacteria
and finally look at these pipes,
look at these valves, look around this place.
I am not the least concerned about maintenance, husbandry
or just how they get water in and out of it.
This is what these folks do,
they have all of these systems
equipped for the easiest maintenance possible.
Now it's time for the fun part.
Let's talk about design.
I am fortunate enough to have been asked
to do this tank because apparently they like my style.
I always consider myself more of a mouth
than an aqua-scaper, but apparently my creative flow
has been on point enough that it caught their eye.
So why not give it to 'em?
Here's what I'm thinking with this tank,
in the words of the sensei Mr. Oliver Knott,
he says big tank needs big rocks.
It's time to go rock shopping.
They're in Cincinnati, I'm in Lexingtion
and while I could've just said,
hey go pick out a bunch of rocks,
the problem is that if I am designing this aquarium,
I need to pick out the rocks myself.
Going to a rock yard with professionals
to fill up a 900 gallon aquarium on somebody else's dime
was like Christmas for me.
Coincidentally this was done right around Christmas.
The issue however we have with aqua-scaping
a 900 gallon and four foot tall aquarium
is that of scale.
You see you can't go putting a bunch of small rocks
into a 900 gallon aquarium.
A foot in diameter rock might seem large in your 75,
but a perspective and a scale thing in a 900,
it's merely a mid-ground, foreground rock.
Big tank needs big rocks.
The problem is that rocks that fit the design I want
are also rocks that I'm gonna have to manhandle
down into this aquarium,
not to mention I have to take some of the big rocks
that don't look too great
and break them up with a sledgehammer
to make 'em work appropriately
in the mid and foreground.
Time to do this.
(upbeat music)
Ah these are awesome rocks.
(rock smashing)
It's time to tear up a 900 gallon aquarium folks.
Biggest tank I've ever done, comin' at you.