it is what my daughter wanted so my daughter Gamer Girl came to me and she says she wants her
first aquarium I'm totally honored but we don't have a lot of space in this house and the only
place we could put it can only fit a 15 gallon cube aka the Fluval Flex now I personally hate
aquarium kits so I'm thinking I want to do some modifications to it except that I'm a terrible
DIYer like I'm literally mechanically challenged so let's talk about how badly I messed things up
hi I'm Irene from Girl Talks Fish and first of all I just want to say I'm the type of girl who
likes to only buy Aqueon aquariums from the Petco dollar per gallon sale so imagine my horror when I
found out how much cube-shaped aquariums are like I have no idea why this is so but basically the
only 15 gallon cube I could find locally was the Fluval Flex 15 and it comes at the low low price
of a hundred and eighty dollars so if I mess this tank up Gamer Girl's not getting an aquarium for
a long while let's just put it that way as for the reason why I don't like aquarium kits I've
used them in the past and I really don't like it when they put that filter compartment on the
side because I just find that the little filters they provide tend to break down over time and I
personally like using sponge filters and then plus that filter compartment is totally taking
up space in the main tank so my 15 gallon tank is essentially a 12 gallon yeah that compartment has
to go the good news is it's actually really easy to cut through the silicone that attaches those
I think it's acrylic walls to the glass I just use some extra strong upholstery thread it's just type
of sewing thread and I wound it around my fingers like floss and then just slid through it and I was
able to cut through them pretty successfully there will be leftover silicone on the glass but I was
able to kind of slice it off using a razor blade however bad news is that last remaining residue
just would not come off no matter what I did and because I got the Black version of the kit they
use black silicone so it's not like you can't see it it's like completely obvious and very annoying
like maybe I should have gotten the white version of the kit so they would have used clear silicone
but at this point I avoided the warranty so all we can do is keep moving forward [Music]
the next task is to tackle this honeycomb pattern vinyl sticker some kind of design they put all
along the back of the aquarium partially on the sides where the filter compartment was as
well as all along the top so that it would hide any mineral deposits that dried up there when
the water evaporates yeah I don't want anything blocking my view on an aquarium like it should
look like I'm staring into a slice of Nature and then having something blocking that view kind of
destroys the illusion unfortunately at least for me I had a really hard time getting this honeycomb
pattern off like I tried different tools I tried my six inch razor blade I tried a two inch one
I tried an algae scraper and none of them seem to work very quickly so all I could do was basically
crouch over this aquarium with a sore back slowly picking it off and it took hours plus it created
at this very fine dust everywhere so I probably should have been wearing a mask but eventually I
was able to scratch all of it off the next day I saw the aquarium in sunlight and I just could not
stand that black residue from the silicone it was driving me insane so this is where I made
my first and biggest mistake if you Google how do you take off silicone residue you'll get answers
like vinegar rubbing alcohol acetone I have all of these chemicals so I basically put a little bit on
a cotton ball tried rubbing it and none of them worked and then because I'm an inexperienced DIY
or I think to myself hmm what gets off sticky residue I know Goo Gone now I know I know Goo
Gone is incredibly toxic to animals and I was just thinking to myself though maybe I could use Dawn
dish soap to wash it off sufficiently so that it would get rid of all the toxicness I mean they
use Dawn soap to clean those ocean animals like the you know birds and whatnot that get covered
during oil spills and it seems perfectly safe to them so that's kind of what I was baking on
so I put a little Goo Gone on the cotton ball I swipe it once on the residue line and it doesn't
do anything but then once I take the razor blade in combination with the Goo Gone it finally comes
off and I'm able to remove all the traces of it and then after that I watched it really really
well with Dawn dish soap I rinse it out once and then I just installed everything [Music]
I'm gonna save all the details of the installation itself for a future video but essentially let's
talk about what happened after I filled this thing up with water so it was still bothering me in the
back of my head like ah is the Goo Gone really gone obviously nothing is showing up when I use
water test strips on it because it's just not that kind of toxin that would be detected by it
the plants seem to be doing okay in the water so at this point it's probably time to try a single
animal and unfortunately for Sunstreaker the mystery snail he happened to be at the front
of this tank so I didn't even need a fish net I was able to just grab him out and plop them
in the 15 gallon everything looks great so far you know he is upside down he writes himself he
crawls on top of a colorful skull his antennae are all long extended I see him uh fall off the
skull one more time but I'm like well he just ride it himself so I go and leave to brush my
teeth for the night because it's kind of late but 30 to 45 minutes later I was like you know what I
should check on him again and he is still upside down and I'm like oh I guess I freak out I panic
I completely scoop him out of the tank and I put him back in the 20 gallon and I'm like what have I
done that whole night I just feel insanely guilty and I'm literally praying to God pleading for the
snail's life but I'm also thinking to myself I have just poisoned my entire aquarium full of
substrate and decor and plants and how am I gonna clean up this mess the next morning sun streakers
alive praise the Lord and I've also come up with a plan so I think the problem is Dawn dish soap
is actually pretty thick substance what I should have done was scrub down the walls rinse the tank
two to three more times of scrubbing down the walls again flushing with water empty out and
again and again but I didn't I only rinsed it out once so here's what I do so now I go back
in the aquarium doesn't have any animals I use an algae scrubber and I just go to town on the walls
I'm like scrubbing the walls really hard and I do a 100% water change then I have this like
ancient jar of activated carbon and what activated carbon is meant for is chemical filtration it's
meant for taking toxins and impurities and other things out of the water so I put some of it in a
filter media bag and by the way I've never used this stuff before and apparently you're supposed
to rinse it thoroughly because it absolutely put black dust over everything I grabbed my
trusty hang on back filter that I haven't used in years I put the activated carbon filter media
bag in there I get some Purigen which is a chemical filtration resin It's a brand new
bag as well as this Fluval Flex 15 happened to come with a small bag of activated carbon
as well so all three bags go into the hangout back filter and then I turn it on maximum flow
I'm not sure how long it takes for chemical filtration to work so I ended up having it
run for a little over a week and then I did the same thing again where I scrubbed the
walls again with an algae scrubber did a 100% water change and then I figured I'd try again
like last time Sunstreaker seems pretty happy and healthy at first I keep checking on them
every hour kind of throughout the night before my bedtime and then the next morning I go and
I'm like he's in a really weird position but I've also seen mystery snails sleep in weird
positions so I don't know what do you guys think what does he look like he's doing is he okay
oh okay it's been 48 hours later and it looks like he's doing okay like he ate uh an entire half of a
fish wafer all by himself as well as several Crab Cuisine pellets and he's like moving all over the
tank so I think we are safe what a relief lesson learned Goo Gone is obviously bad activated carbon
is a lifesaver I looked online for some homemade recipes of Goo Gone that were maybe less toxic and
some people mentioned using some kind of vegetable oil just because oily things tend to remove sticky
residues pretty easily um Mr. Gamer, my husband, mentioned he actually hasn't used Goo Gone in
forever he actually uses lighter fluid so I I don't know what you think I mean it is a
glass aquarium would you guys try it I will put a playlist here up in the future so you can follow
along with this kid tank build and see what other silly and dumb mistakes that I make hopefully not
otherwise take time to enjoy your aquariums and I'll see you in the next video [Music]