they say the one one of the best ways to remove a band-aid is to just rip it off so i'm going to
start today's video off and doing just that i'm taking back the 2 000 gallon aquarium
see over like over 10 years ago i started building aquariums for fresh water stingrays
literally building big tanks just so i can keep fresh water stingrays heck every big tank i did
was either for a stingray or an asian arowana so imagine the excitement that i had when i came up
with the idea one day one morning woke up and i thought i'm going to rip down my old dilapidated
garage and i'm going to put up a new building and dedicate it to an aquariums and within it
i'm going to have a 2 000 gallon aquarium that was the feature that was the most exciting thing
for me mind you i also mentioned we'd have a bunch of other big tanks that we'd stock uh
every month and by the time we got to the last one we could circle back to the first
one and restock it rescape it just so we could continuously introduce each other to new fish
and continue educating and inspiring you guys on different ideas and setups and we did just
that and that started in march of 2017 the 2000 gallon aquarium took me three months to build
and after the third month i believe it was like in in like july i think we started in april
may june july yeah so three months we added the stingrays into it finally
and that's where they stayed that was their tank i built that specifically for my asian arowana
and my freshwater stingrays my three black diamond stingrays i could never have imagined
or even thought or planned that the gallery over the next three years would become what it did
and gain the popularity and the attention and inspire so many millions of people i but i always
regretted one thing and that was simply well of course the obvious we should have went bigger
but based on bylaws and restrictions this is the biggest i'm i'm able to go up on this property
i wish i could have had you guys come here so three years into the gallery it was early 2020
like january february-ish i started planning out and going over the ideas of a public
aquarium but gallery hobbyist style mind you i do everything myself from the video the planning
the editing uh building everything i do myself no help from anybody whatsoever i do not recommend it
but i wanted to bring a bunch of pieces of the current gallery
to the public so i was able to purchase a 700 gallon aquarium for my local fish store one fish
two fish in dartmouth nova scotia kind of local it's an hour away i'm in toronto nova scotia
but i thought let's put the stingrays in there for like a year get everybody used to seeing this tank
and the raise and then we'll bring it in public and you guys can come see these rays that you've
watched to grow for like the last six years five six years what happened one year later i announced
the fact that we were doing a public aquarium i found the location everything was fantastic signed
the contracts deposits invested a lot of money into equipment and things that i was going to need
and all of that fell through of course not from my nothing on my part we were three months in
um and due to some breaches in the contract it set me back two years i was going to stay
in there for two years paying bills well we can't even move anywhere any ahead in anything
bottom line is i already made that video go ahead and watch it i'm not going to keep talking about
it but in the lead up to that and in those three months i was kind of consolidating everything the
rays were in the 700 and they were in there for a year i started kind of systematically shutting
down tanks and you guys seen that you're like yo you only have like four or five tanks running
because i was taking all the fish and putting them in the 2 000 gallon aquarium what's easier tearing
down one tank or tearing down 15 tanks i wanted to move the 40 gallon breeders there i want to use
the 120s and i i wanted to do a bunch of things and all of a sudden nothing happened meanwhile
i'm stuck with the 2 000 gallon aquarium that is and was absolutely stunning but we all know it was
a mismatch and just a mix of and a mash of random fish in there and although awesome i mean you take
a 2 000 gallon tank you put a lot of any type of fish in it it's going to be pretty cool but
if i had to do that over i certainly wouldn't have jammed all those different types of fish in there
anyways now that we're back to scratch and you know back to the original aquarium gallery i
always felt like it's becoming less and less my hobby and i'm i'm doing things that i don't i
wouldn't typically want to do or do and it makes it really hard to be excited about something that
this wasn't the plan and now i have to pick up the pieces so i've just started
i've decided to start over not over but like the 180s those are cool they're gonna stay
but the two thousand gallon aquarium i want it back i took out all the fish they're all in a
120 and 180 right now just for now we're they're not going anywhere but the 2000 gallon aquarium
is getting its stingrays back so i drained the tank took out all the decorations removed all
the fish did a really good cleaning of it and then if you guys remember with my bare bottom
tanks that i've done for years upon years but recently been buckling under the pressure to
add in decorations with fish that don't require it that only ends up killing them or damaging them or
hurting them or causing issues i'm just going to set it up the way i truly know what they need and
i decided we're going to tile the tank first foremost because the white is a little bit
bright so i did tile the tank with porcelain tiles cut them besides whatever i needed to do
and the tank is now switched back over to freshwater stingrays now what's going to happen
with that 700 gallon aquarium well okay so the members of the channel the only fins don't ruin it
for anybody else they they are weeks ahead i'm not i don't want to upset anybody for not knowing but
it's it's probably going to be the best tank out here
even the 2 2 000 gallon aquarium is my favorite the 700 and what's going to happen to that is
it's different and i can't wait to show you guys
and it's almost done i'm way ahead i know that the videos have been here and there inspires but
um i had to get everything out of the way i had i had to just pull this band-aid off and tell
you guys look i'm taking the 2000 gallon back i'm putting the fish in it that was meant to be
the the public aquarium never happened and that's why the 700 was bought that's why i
had it here for a year i wanted it to store it at the store but that's why it's here that's
why you put the raise in it so then we could bring it all there eventually and you could
everything was consolidated in 2000. so i'm picking the pieces up and i'm putting them
back exactly as i want them and i think you guys are going to absolutely love it
there's too much to talk about in the next video we're going to move the raise over and i'll show
you everything else that's going on and then we're probably going to jump right into that 700. so if
you're not subscribed to this channel yet you want to see that highly suggest you do you're
going to hear about it one way or the other it is that awesome i'll see you guys in the next video