I'M BRINGING BACK THE EXPERIMENTS!! And I Need Your Help

today's video is an exciting one because this is going to be start of a new series of episodes in the twins scape experiments and side by-side comparisons I basically started doing this two three years ago we tested aquasol versus dirt we tested CO2 versus no CO2 a bunch of other things I took a little bit of a break but you guys asked me to bring it back so now we're going to start again today we're going to start with another very controversial topic water changes [Music] so when it comes to water changes I've always been a firm believer that they are necessary even in my studio I do water changes every week or every two weeks but zero water changes requirements is a very hot topic and I was kind of curious about it as well so a couple months ago I set up a Dutch style Nano and I did absolutely zero water changes and the result kind of surprised me I had a little bit of allergy issues in the beginning but overall this tank did really well actually right now I haven't done any water changes and it's been I don't know 3 4 months maybe 5 months even T is still doing really good still thriving So the plan for today is set up two tanks just like before they're going to be identical setups with the same soft fate the same plants same Hardscape same filtration as well and in one thing we're going to do zero water changes and in the other thing we're going to do regular water changes and then just see what happens the whole point of this experiment or this sideb side comparison is just to have some fun we're not going to take things too seriously but I'm just curious to see things side by [Music] side now when I move to the new studio I got rid of the old experiment tanks they were just simple 5 gallon rimless Optic White Tanks they were pretty old prettyy scratched up so I decided for the new season to upgrade to some new tanks and I landed on the daa system Aqua 30 [Music] so this is a really nice high quality 30 cm Optic White Allin one Cube so it has a filtration compartment in the bank uh the intake sits here on the left side and then on the right side we have the outlow actually comes with a USB pump um has a little stand pipe so that you just connect to the outlow here and basically that's it there is some filter meter here but it's basically just black sponges so I'll probably also add some ceramic media and yeah let's just set it up [Music] okay that's a little USB pump installed next up I want to work on the filtration in the back like I said it only comes with some sponges so I want to like upgrade it a little bit so I went through my supplies and I found two bags of ceramic media so I have one for each tank just going to give this a quick wash add it to a media bag and then we can add it in as well okay let's see if this fits in there oh easy plenty enough space then each thing is also going to get a little bag of activated carbon and then in this first compartment here I'm just going to add a little bit of white filter floss just to help polish the water so basically we will have the water coming in here first through the fine filter floss then through the black sponges then the ceramic media and then the carbon and I'm back into the return okay filtration all taken care of so the next thing we need for this tank is a light and for that I actually have the chiros a series it's actually quite an old light and funny story this was the first led light I bought when I started aquascaping so it's just a really basic um yeah gray metallic LED strip but these things are actually pretty powerful now the reason I chose this actually pretty old light is because the tank is sort of white I mean this clear glass but it has this white yeah Frosty background so I didn't want to have a black LED light and there's very little white LED light LED lights on the market but this one is sort of yeah silverish so I think it will look nice in combination with the the tank so basically the only reason I chose this light is purely for [Music] Aesthetics here we go light installed as well and I think that does look very nice I think it's a nice combination like this one thing I forgot to mention is the tank also comes with a little uh glass cover for the filing compartment and just to be clear none of the things that you see here are sponsored everything is just bought and paid with my own money so that's the first tank let's get the other one set up as well here we go both tanks next to each other I think I need a little bit of a bigger work surface but for now we're want to try to make it work so both are set up exactly the same way I'll show you the filtration compartment see so this one also has the carbon and the ceramic media filter floss and everything and this one you guys already saw so the only thing missing right now is little rubber met underneath the tank Unfortunately they don't come with this dual system 30 so I just bought two separately but uh we'll add them later so I think we're ready to set up these tanks of course it's an experiment but I still want these TS to look nice so we're going to just make a nice simple acos scape in here uh let's start with the substrate first so for the substrate I want to keep things quite simple both things are just going to get the same amount of Aqua soil I'm using the aqua soil from D plants but before I put this in I want to use the Ada substrate adors on the bottom I've been using those on all my tanks recently and they just kind of help to Kickstart the acir and to avoid any weird issues during the startup phase so we have buar 100 we have clear super and we have teraline BC and this little jars come with a small measuring spoon so every tank is just going to get one spoon of each [Music] additive okay there's see substate additives done equal amounts in both thingss no cheating here so now we can go in with the aquo I'm going to use a jug so both tanks are just going to get probably like two full jugs of Aqua [Music] soil here we go 2 L in one tank 2 L in the other tank and I think that's a good amount nice thin layer in front a little bit of a slope towards the back as well so I think it's good okay also want to make a really simple heartscape in both things so I have two pieces of dragon wood or honeycomb wood and I have three pieces of yamaya stone so let's see if we can just make a very simple heart [Music] skape here we go just a really simple Hardscape two pieces of wood three rocks I didn't really like the first composition that I made with the wood pointing out to both sides so going for a bit more of a triangle composition did the same on the other side and I think they look quite similar right doesn't really matter um that just have to yeah be set up in the exact same way hardcap can be a little bit different as long as it doesn't you know change up the flow or anything of the uh the cram so I think we're good I'm going to just glue everything down with my usual um cotton pad and liquid superglue method and then we can start planting [Music] okay guys Hardscape is done it's glued everything is pretty much secure so nothing should float anymore so we can now move on to planting now actually for this project I didn't buy any plants but I did recently set up quite a few new T in the gallery here so I have some plants left over it's a bit of a random mix I have some dwarf haass some anubus some IO cowon some Pina so it's just a bit of a random mix of plants in here but should still look pretty good I'm just going to quickly going to prepare them and then we can start [Music] planting here we go plants all prepared we have two trays so one for each tank I think I'm just going do a quick time lapse so if you want to know which plants I've used I'll leave a list in the video [Music] description yeah both things are planted looking good quite happy with the end result already and next up I'm going to move the things to the new place in the studio which is going to be on the Shelf we're going to fill them both up with water and then we'll talk a little bit more about how this experiment is going to go [Applause] [Music] yeah both tanks are up and running and I think it looks really good I really like how they stand next to each other looks really good on the Shelf as well I'm sure some people are wondering like hey there's very little very little space between the the glass and the Shelf but this is a drawer and I can actually remove it if F to do some maintenance so super easy so I fill both T up with water and I'm always using our o water in all my T so I had to remineralize try to make sure that both T are sort of at the same TD level after that I've installed the CO2 system also try to make sure that both tanks get the same amount of CO2 and just to make sure I've also added the drop Checkers of course they're still blue right now but hopefully they'll be green in a few hours then I've also added some floating plants in this case I'm using the svenia Minima and this will just help kind of diffuse the light a little bit and soak up some excess nutrients so we're now basically ready to start with our experiment so one tank is going to get water changes and one tank I'm just going to leave alone so we have to determine now which one is going to be I think I think I'm going to leave this one alone because this one is sort of closest to my water chain system so let's just write up with pen uh WC and then yeah and then this one no water changes water changes so I'm thinking for this one just frequent water changes I mean yeah today is Thursday I'm actually going on a little trip on Sunday so I'll make sure to do one tomorrow make sure to do one on Saturday and and then I'll come back on Wednesday and just see how the thing goes from there but just make sure at least at least two water changes per week preferably especially in the first month and then this one not going to get any water changes and then I'm thinking how long we should run this experiment for i' say at least a month and then at a month we can determine if we need to yeah prolong it or not and basically in this first month I'm just curious to see yeah differences in plant growth differences in algae growth I'm sure the one the tank that's going to have no water change will of course have more nutrients available so we could get faster plant growth but we also could get way more algae issues so yeah I think those are the two main factors and besides that I'm just curious to see what's going to happen so let the experiment begin so that is it guys we have officially started the new season of the twins scape series let me know in the comments if you're excited and also let me know what kind of other experiments you would like to see that's it for now thanks for watching see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: MJ Aquascaping

Views: 13,672

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Id: b5gH-Wv0h4M

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 08 2024