My Worst Aquarium Ever (Can I Fix It?)

yo what's going on serpa squad tanner here i've been really busy with a lot of intensive projects lately and i've just been going really hard so i figured you know what i'm gonna slow things back this week i'll do a little update on some of the things that are going on here in the animal room show you some things outside with the pond i got a lot of cool stuff to show you in this one but before then i gotta go and run some errands so let me do that real quick and i'll meet you back here in just a moment i'm really trying to be proactive on the pond this year my wife and i actually started redoing the mulch the other day and that's a lot sooner than we did it last year but i didn't have enough said to pick up some more of that and then i also got an additional plant you can never have too many right a quick look inside the pond it's doing quite well other than being absolutely swamped with algae right now it's not really too big of an issue and i'm actually getting something later on in the week to address that not sure if we'll have a chance to do it in this video or not if not we'll do it in a future upload but that'll be pretty cool address that real quick and overall though it's looking really nice all the plants are starting to come back really strong as you guys know i use primarily perennials so that they come back year after year i don't have to waste money and they look better each year that they come back and this is our little ecosystem you know it attracts all the birds all the wildlife we got wellington the frog who came back i actually got a really funny video of him eating not too long ago i'll put it up on screen hopefully you guys enjoy that but all of the plants they're really coming back strong which i love to see it's almost made now so it's really whenever it starts to get into peak season june and july that's really when it's looking at strongest and even in august but i got to get a few more plants in here that one that i got today it's a salvia it's cold because it has some nice flowers on it they stay fairly long and attract a lot of pollinators and that's one of the things that i like to do here is get a lot of plants that attract pollinators since they're kind of on the decline worldwide so try to help them out a little bit i'm going to dig up a hole here put those catfish in there that passed away a couple months back unfortunately so we'll put them there and we'll put that plant over top of them that's a little commemorative piece and also to serve a function and i actually got to put more more that mulch i was going gonna say moss but more that mulch back here just get a really nice look and uh yeah so that's what's going on i'm gonna get to work i've got an adequate hole dug here and then i've got the fish definitely sad to have had them go that way especially since i don't really know what happened they were also quite large and definitely my favorite fish in that pond so definitely sad but you know it's just part of the hobby and i always like to put plants over top of them i think it's just a nice a nice little scent sentiment uh nice way to commemorate them and show appreciation for the joy they bring us in our lives last year i used brown mulch but i decided to go with black this year to get a little more contrast a lot of the exterior on our house and different things around here are brown so kind of just mesh together so using this i feel like we could get a little bit more contrast with everything and i like the look of it too all right so there it is looking good i got everything all mulched and in fact i might also go here and replace these rocks with mulch as well and just leave a little embankment over here but that's what we got outside let's head in i picked up something else i think is pretty cool a few prints of the kids and that my friends is one more thing that i'm just slowly but surely doing to try to get this house looking like a home not gonna lie it was they're going at it the toads my neighbors gotta hate me we've got an absolutely regal photo of henry what a handsome lad we've got napoleon do that like and subscribe thing fire belly toad had to get wellington on there he's definitely a favorite around these parts we've got dean and last but not least pancake and moving into the animal room one of the first things i wanted to show you was the progress on the stream tank here i'm actually super surprised with how quickly it's grown in i knew that it would do well i just didn't expect it to happen this quickly i think it's only been set up for about two months and it's i mean it's looking really strong look at all those ferns the moss all the functionality of the setup works really well too and unfortunately i still don't have it stocked i imagine salamanders to be in here to be honest unfortunately though i can't seem to find any captive bred specimens so i might end up just putting millipedes or something of that nature in here not entirely sure you guys could definitely let me know but all in all i'm really liking the progress of it now something else over here that's unfortunate but expected is that we lost leaf the ghost praying mantis we had him for about four months or so or maybe he's closer to five but it was a pretty decent run the males unfortunately don't live quite as long as the females so i think by the point that we got him he had already lived about half of his life and then we had him for the remainder as you can see he went through all of the cycles he's got his wings and it was just a really cool and fun pet to have my wife actually took to him surprisingly well at first she was not really about them but it turns out that she likes praying mantises so we're definitely gonna have to get another one here shortly not the same kind but as you can see i preserved them and i attached them onto this stick with a little bit of super glue and i suppose that as i get more i could attach them onto this stick to make kind of like a little diorama type of piece could be pretty neat but i got to get a container to actually put over top of this so that way it's sealed up a little bit better than just being out to the elements but i think it was a really cool thing to have if you got a little bit of extra space you want a cool oddity pet to have around i would definitely recommend a prank mantis easy to care for a lot of fun enough of the sad content though let's look at the animals now as far as pancake and flapjack are concerned the surname toads here they're doing very well their tank overall is doing quite well too there's a little bit of molding on the driftwood but i've been doing more frequent water changes to get that addressed the toads themselves they're spending quite a lot of time together which is pretty cool and the male's actually been doing a clicking sound so i haven't seen amplexus or anything like that i'm not sure if they're trying to breed but i don't know if we can even have a successful breeding operation in here based on the research that i've gathered at least there needs to be a lot more height to this tank so upwards of three to four feet if i understand correctly and that might be something that we'll have to address long term is to get them in a setup that's taller than this just to sort of replicate that sort of thing because i definitely would like to breed them i think that's a pretty cool feature of them but also just for sustainability within the hobby and stuff like that i guess we'll see what happens and moving on over to houdini's newfavarium i'm really pleased with how it's turned out in theory everything should have turned out fine but you never know really what is going to happen until you get things moving and you actually do it but as you can see all the plants have established quite well this pothos has really taken root and i can't wait till it just overgrows a lot of this setup all of the snake plants and everything else they're doing really well and he actually digs through the setup quite frequently and something that's cool with that is as i said in the setup video the way that i did the substrate is it actually will retain his burrows and so when i lift up the water bowl for example underneath there you can see all of his burrows and the ways that he digs so my guess is that when he goes underground he's actually using the same tunnels all the time because like when he's under there you can't see him moving underneath there which is pretty cool so i love to see that he uses every inch of the space he goes over in here he's typically digging over in here he basks up there goes up here explores all of the background goes under the leaf litter and i realize that he's just kind of chilling out right now but i pretty much just turned on the lights for him so he's not really in peak mode yet it's usually after the lights have been on for a couple hours that's when he's really sort of exploring his lair it's cool to see and a great example that you can keep snakes in a beautiful setup i think it's beautiful at least i realized that it's not everybody's cup of tea but he likes it and i like it as well so that's all that matters and moving up we of course have the geckos we've got delilah back under this fern just hanging out looking nice we've got cynthia oh she's back here i didn't realize that her tail was kind of poking up there but you can see her hand right there she's doing her thing and then of course we got my man henry just hanging out looking regal he's actually typically not out during the day none of them are actually but i just turned the lights on they weren't on the regular cycle usually though he'll be right back in there so i'd imagine that here shortly he's gonna go hide away back there until the lights shut off for the night overall the tanks are doing quite well most of the plants have established nicely and are starting to fill in the space of course you have a little bit of die off that's to be expected i'm really pleased with these new setups it's cool to have all the geckos together and actually i love having the geckos and the snake in a single cohesive unit it's like a little reptile rack i love how it looks and it's cool to finally have all four of these animals in their forever homes i know that i have said that before but i really have no intentions on moving them again i think this is a really nice long-term solution but one of the other things i wanted to talk about while we're over here is the puffer fish tank at first glance you might be thinking to yourself wow that looks like it's doing quite well i suppose for now that could be the case but things could change here if we take a closer look you'll see that everything is just covered with algae there's a little bit of cyanobacteria and overall i'm just having a real challenge getting this tank dialed in now there are a couple of factors at play here first and foremost is probably what and how the puffer fish eat they're primarily eating live and frozen foods such as blood worms brine shrimp that sort of thing they're picky eaters so they'll pretty much only eat a select few things and it just so happens that the way that they eat which is quite messy leaves behind some debris and if i'm not in there constantly doing water changes then it tends to create an imbalance in the tank if the tank is filled with enough vegetation that's established that really shouldn't be an issue at all but with this tank when i set it up there was a little bit of acclimation die off with the plants that sort of thing it's to be expected in my case the vegetation really wasn't established and as it was doing that it was melting back and creating more waste so it just really couldn't close in the gap and i was doing frequent water changes of course but probably not enough to really offset that sort of thing that was going on and in addition to that i was having issues with the timer on the light to where the light was staying on much longer than it really needed to be upwards of 18 hours a day which is three times what i normally do even on my established tanks so it was just creating a whole mess of things and even now i'm still trying to get it dialed in here this is what it looked like a couple weeks back completely terrible easily my worst aquarium ever and so i had to clean all that out replant it do that kind of thing and with all that said i'm really in a predicament i'm not sure if i want to keep trying to dial in this tank and get it to a point to where it is established and well balanced for these fish or if want to start up a completely new tank in some ways i think it would be easier if i set up another tank let it season on its own before putting in the fish then move them to it and then you know just do something else with this tank completely but i'm not sure if i want to do that i would love to use this scape the one that i have set up now because it's already all there and it would make things easier but i'm not opposed to starting over again either it's up in there i really don't know what i'm going to do let me know what you would do if you were in my shoes would you try to get this thing balanced in or would you just start over again from scratch i'm curious to know and that's going to do it for this one serpa squad because i gotta get back to work let me know what you thought about the video down in the comments and i'll see you next time take care and peace [Music] you

Channel: SerpaDesign

Views: 74,591

Rating: 4.946878 out of 5

Keywords: aquarium, fish tank, aquascape, pond, vivarium, animal room, fish room

Id: 0nL38Ee1sBQ

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Sat May 01 2021