Rescaping my Lake Malawi Cichlid Tank with Plants

this skatee that I've had in my Lake maloi African cichlid tank has been the same since day do when I got these African cichlids they were really really tiny and they've obviously grown a lot bigger I'd like to them to have a little bit more room to swim around you know they don't need as much of this rock I do have a lot of embuna like rock dwelling African cichlids in here but I think that they could do with just rock maybe in the middle and then having a lot more open swimming space for some of the peacocks and the haps that I've got in here the other thing too is you might be able to notice that there is a lot of Blackbeard a in this tank this tank has also gone through a lot of AE phases but at the moment it's kind of like this really dark green color and some areas are black so what I want to focus on as well is maybe removing some of the really badly covered rocks instead of having two islands what I want to do is I want to have one main island in the middle of the tank and then hopefully some plants on it too now that I've got my tank rack in the garage I just want to see if I can reduce my maintenance a little bit and if I can get plants growing in these tanks that's going to help a lot with that just to keep nitrates down so that's my plan for this tank I'm actually going to be So Satisfied scraping this algae off it's going to be so good I just have to be careful I don't accidentally take any of my bristle noses out come on buddy you're stuck on there yeah heavy I'm actually pretty impressed though by the lack of poo that's under these I'm actually really happy happy to see that I wasn't sure if I was going to lift that up and get a bunch of Gunk this would be the rock I would be the most worried about would be harboring a lot of waste but I do my best with the wave maker to actually use that to blow out like in between the crevices since I can't lift this to see if I can get a bunch of this out but as you can see there's still a lot from The Rock on the end that tends to stay under there it's like a little wellp of fish poo over there see I already like that a lot more actually with them having way more swimming space I think that looks really good so here is all our Rock let's focus on this one first so let's see how easy it is to get this off with a razor blade you can see probably here how it becomes almost just like this hard stuff see like it doesn't have that flowy hairy effect that it has like when it's in the tank okay I got a plan this stuff is specifically called hydrogen peroxide side and this is the 3% one which I believe you would have to look into it yourself just to make sure but I believe this is the type that you can dilute with water and add directly to the tank as well but oh that's lovely but people said they had more success actually just using a pipet and directly putting this on the algae and killing it I guess we can just yeah we'll just pip it straight up put it on our algae and hopefully burn our algae to shreds let's open this up wonder what it smells like smells like it would sting your knows if you smell it too closely let's just basically pop some up in here now this is bleach so I don't want to get it on anything that's not the rock let's add some here and you'll see it just starts to make a bubble I can hear it too can you hear that it's definitely making it easier to get off and so say spending all this time scraping it off like this I reckon now that we know that this works let's go around and let's just put it drip it onto all of our bits of algae covered rock and then I reckon what we could try and do is just maybe blast it with the hose or something and just rub it off once it's all dyed cuz it seems like it's going to be really easy to get off once it's dead hopefully if we can get this sorted out we can make room for green algae instead like a nice green algee I think that it's actually dissolving the algae as it's killing it because I can see bits of holy Rock appearing that weren't there before all right and yes this tank here is not a Vibe right now this tank needs some sorting out too I have been letting it go cuz I know the troph is really like the aie and as they were growing you know I just wanted them to have a lot of access to that it's just not super appealing to look at it looks like my tank is like nuclear reactive or something with that color green in there so we need to sort that out because I cleaned that algae off the glass only like a week and a half ago I want to have that window open cuz I like the sunlight for my plants and just for Laya as well I think it's just good for her to have a bit of natural sunlight coming through there if I can try and dull them down a little bit as I D those ones down too that will help I was kind of just hoping that it would balance itself out but I think we might need to intervene a little bit I quickly discovered I was a bit ambitious and this Blackbeard algae was way harder to scrub off than I had initially thought I had to end up going back outside and I just did another round of trying to bleach it as much as possible and then washing it and scrubbing it a bit outside with the hose and then that was pretty much as good as I could do and yes I have a random sauce pan of biom media just sitting out here and this which isn't from like 2 weeks ago and my plants that I bought for the garage as was watching these I did think about how much bacteria like beneficial bacteria I'm going to be killing off doing this so I just need to be really careful as you do anytime that you're doing something that could kill off some of your bacteria colony in your tank you just want to be mindful because we don't want to kill off too much beneficial bacteria and crash our cycle in our tank and also just when there's going to be changes to the environment and the ecosystem in the tank that can stress fish a little bit so because I am going to be taking out a substantial amount probably by doing this with this rock I just want to be careful especially if I'm thinking about cleaning my filters as well so what I might do tomorrow is just clean one filter just to be on the safer side all right I think that will do I just recommend not getting a Blackbeard AE outbreak in your tank in the first place cuz what do these guys do when they get old they do absolutely nothing look at him pretending to eat it now incredibly after all that work this is still how it looks it's definitely better and it'll be less fuzzy once it goes in the water but it's not perfect so this algae was extremely hard to kill and to get off so this is a type of really easy to care for plant and it just needs to be attached to some Driftwood or some rocks so it's got a little thing called a rhin that's here you can't really see it too much on these cuz they're quite tiny ones but that actually has to be always above soil so these just do best if you just attach them to stuff and make sure that it's not covered up so we're just going to attach them on here you can either get aquarium glue or you can just use something like fishing line to attach them on so then what will happen is over time little Roots will grow and then eventually it'll just be holding on itself I thinking if we just use these two they'll look quite cool this will be our main one and then this can be a little one it'll be easiest to tie it in maybe just somewhere like here I think that should look quite cool and then maybe we can just put the other little one maybe here there's something kind of funny about using fishing line in a fish tank to give my fish some plants it's like come full circle I have actually just used normal I think like cotton string to do this before it worked fine too but I'm just using the fishing line cuz I had it on hand and also it's nice and clear so the dries out very quickly so I want to get that in ASAP and just cut the little ends [Music] off that'll do the trick I don't know if that's going to stay should be fine we can say we tried so we have some good news and some bad news the good news is that they are not eating the anubus which is awesome so you can see that it's still all intact now the bad news is this one was not attached good enough and it just came off but they're not showing any interest in it or eating it so that is good but I was having a look at this tank I was just sitting here and I was eating my lunch and I was seeing how they were interacting and everything and what I would like to do is I actually do want to put a little bit more holy Rock in just over that end and just make it like one big area where they can go in between and I think it'll look really nice once we fill it out with a nubius because I'm just worried that they don't have enough little crevices and stuff especially just for the embuna in here this one here the zebra embuna is kind of being a little bit bossy to the other ones and I just want to make sure they've all got a little home I cleaned this tank so this tank is looking all nice and beautiful as well what I'm actually going to do is thankfully I just spoke to Finn from Atlas aquariums and they've got some anubus left over so what I'm going to do is I'm going to race over there now we're going to get a bunch of anubus to fill out the holy Rock here because I think that it would be better just to add it all now I mean I'm just going to end up adding it later anyway and I think it'll be easier for it to balance itself out properly having more plants in there from the GetGo let's go do that you might not be able to tell but I did dim the lights alsoo a little bit so just on both tanks they're maybe like 20% less bright so hopefully that'll help a little bit with Alie too but let's get going to Atlas and get this anubus we'll see you soon Lea bye we're just going to take out these anubius for the first time ever exactly how many's in a dozen yeah so Wilson's making fun of me because he told me that there was a dozen and then Finn told me there's 15 and I roasted Wilson because I thought a dozen was six so I thought he got it really wrong but actually turns out that I'm the dumb one it doesn't is not doesn't is 12 I will admit my flaws and also Wilson just put these all back in there and then took them all out again just for this video Behind the Scenes behind the scenes first so organic all right woohoo got out nubius thank you oh it's expensive pleco in there a snowball pleo see no there VI I see him I see him what is have a look at these guys so these are called tiger loaches cuz they're stripy and we haven't had them in Australia until very recently I think someone actually commented on one of my videos one time saying have I seen tiger loaches before and I said I actually haven't I don't think we even have them in Australia and that wasn't that long ago so this is my first time seeing them here so these guys are at Atlas aquariums if you're local come and check them out I would totally get them if the time's right cuz I love loaches like how cool would it be I would actually love to set up just a Loach tank and have as many types of you know different loaches that I could get I think that would be really cool we need to get cuz I need to clean my K filters and I need to get rid of that Blackbeard aie and we need to get all that anubus on the tank too so I will see you at home this is going to be to come we'll come and do a proper tour here with a good camera and everything when this is done but they're setting up I think it's going to be mainly salt water and like large salt water fish and stuff out here so that's to come so stay tuned for that I am home and way later than I expected it's already past 5:00 and the Sun is going to go down in like 45 minutes so I want to get this kister filter cleaned really quickly I've got my bag of anubus to add into the tank as well that we just picked up from Atlas we need to drain the tank anyway to get some of that remaining black bed algae off and to attach out new is a little bit easier and when we drain the tank we can use that water to clean out the kister filter to drain our tank I'm just going to put my pond pump in connected to this hose that goes outside it will run out very heavily just here but what I can do is this little thing here I've just got this which I can turn and restrict the flow and what happens is when I restrict that flow a lot it increases the pressure so then it goes through all of these sprinklers that I've got set up through the garden it did just rain recently so the garden doesn't really need it but it's good way to water the garden and also just slow down the tank draining too there a rock I really like actually where's the step ladder let's be safe this big rock I think it's really pretty and then I'm going to move these to the side so have to make sure there's no fish under that and then get this big chunky Rock okay let's just leave it at that for now because we can always change it later that just gives us a little bit of an extra area to add some more plants as well and gives more of that middle kind of Island but still room to swim around and then on the top as well they can swim around the back too but I think that'll do for now let's just go get this filter done and then we can add in our anubias too there we go okay it's a little bit dirty so going to pull it out try to remember back out just like that like that see all that Gunk and stuff that's what we just want to wash off so we're kind of against the clock at the moment so I've just gone ahead and I've filled up that kister filter I've put it back in let's just pray that it starts with no issues since we undid the pump and everything because that's always a little bit risky you know sometimes they struggle to start even on good days just because they have they're very sensitive to make sure that they stop but if they pick up on anything like substrate or sand in the impeller they tend to not turn on so let's just hope that works thank you to Jack from Mad aquariums about two years ago I think he gave me this glue and I haven't had to use it cuz I don't really have planted aquariums until now but this is going to be or maybe I have used it looks like it might have been open no I don't think so um hopefully it doesn't have a use by date I don't think it does uh but this is going to make it so much easier to put our plants in so it's especially when you've got heaps like this to be able to just glue them on instead of tie them on is going to be a treat so let's lay our pants out so I think we've got something around 15 or a dozen anubus here that we're going to be able to glue on all over the place it's going to look really awesome and hopefully they continue to not eat them all right so that's all of our a little anubus here so let's start adding them in I know I said that I was going to try and kill some more Blackbeard algae but honestly this rock is not as badly affected so our efforts to remove it we're not the best so I don't think it's really worth bothering doing that and hopefully these will take out plenty of nutrients these little anubius so I've just cut a little hole in the side of this because the lid was kind of glued on cuz I have apparently used it before I don't know for what or why but let's just get these glued on I'm going to try not to glue too much on the roof roots or the rhin Zone cuz that needs to be able to breathe so I'll just put it on the kind of like side side of the plant and stick it on in sorry guys I don't mean to scare you it's just some plant I'm just going to place them randomly around all right I might just move to the other side to make sure I balance it out enough it seems to be working to just put the glue on it and and then to splash some water over the top when it's sitting where you want it to and the water just helps to activate the glue and I'm just trying not to cover the whole rhin so when I do that this is way faster than if I had to tie all of this I'm so glad I had this glue all right let's go to the middle maybe some of the front there and then some there and that should be pretty good and I do find with this type of thing it's good to not think too much about it because you just drive yourself I think if you overthink it same even with like placing rocks and stuff that's something I learned is just putting stuff where it feels natural or just naturally Falls and that just helps I just wanted to look like a little Oasis kind of island in the middle we got two pieces left maybe just one down there and then one in there and we should be good to go and so would you look at this the girl who said that she didn't want plants look at me now yeah things change oh and we got a free one that one that fell off last night we can attach that somewhere too where should we put this one maybe down the front here I'm just going to let it seal itself up there and then next time I want to use it I'll just cut a little slit again um got just a little bit of glue on my hands all righty we are filling up and I've added in my decorator and my buffer as well to help raise the ph and the KH and all the fishies looking awesome I'm actually loving the look of the plants in here I think it looks really really cool and so hopefully these anubus will out compete the Blackbeard AE cuz they're all nice and healthy they're going to have plenty of light plenty of nutrients I noticed a particular buildup of Blackbeard algae just along the back here and down that end originally when we had rock that was all the way almost to the very end so I'm thinking that's because that was areas where there was buildup of nutrients cuz of a lack of water flow so if we just get the wav maker really pushing that water as much as possible around the tank to to help with float I think that that should be good the other thing too that gave me some confidence to put plants in here is Dustin's fish tanks on Instagram I saw him just riding the point home all of the time that plants actually like hard water since you do see a lot of people talking about low PH with plants and I guess that's cuz of CO2 levels but apparently they do just fine with minerals in the water too so woohoooo we will come back when it's nice and full up I just turned the wav maker on and what I've done is I've moved it down here just to try and get the flow circulating down there and around and it seems to be working really really well the fish like the flow that's really cute swimming against it because I can see all the debris that was floating around in the water that hopefully outfit just will suck up when they're on you can see it it's actually in a circular motion so it's going around the back of the tank and then back back to the front which is a really good sign that we've got some good flow and I can even see it moving some of the anubia seves a little bit throughout this back area what I may possibly consider too is getting a wave maker for this end here just to create some extra flow I Googled just about the flourish and I saw a lot of people saying that it melted their anubius and apparently see doesn't recommend using it as an alga side so what I'm going to do is just to be on the safe side I'm not going to put any flourish in there especially cuz the Tank's being through so much already I think I'm just going to leave it and I'm just going to see how it goes I'm going to keep a really Keen Eye on these an nubus if I do see any signs of Blackbeard algae growing on them I'm going to try to get onto it straight away and just kind of play it by ear see what we need to do to really get that Blackbeard AE Down cast your birds below do you think that my anubias are going to live or do you think that the queen of killing plants is going to kill these plants or maybe I've changed maybe where is where's my food who knows maybe I'm going to be able to keep these ones alive our filter started back up and everything so that yep it's definitely working which is amazing our tank is cleared up quite a bit it's looking beautiful at the moment let's hope that it stays that way and our anubia stay nice and healthy let me give you a little closeup look of how it all looks it's all stayed nice and good and glued down everything I think it looks really really beautiful we have one little stray leaf that was already off before I don't know what happened with that hey did that make my Wave Maker no no my wave Maker's working but I should probably do something about that so it doesn't get jammed but it's all looking really beautiful and so far they're not paying any interest now I'm going to fix up all my cables and everything that light is running down cuz I just undid the zip tie for my UVC some people may have seen that I had the green killing machine internal ultraviolet clarifiers in the tank the pump might be broken I'm not sure I'm pretty sure it's broken on my other one but the pumps aren't too expensive so I've ordered two new pumps I've also got two new lights on the way too because I looked into the one that flal does and it's only like 6 Watts I think whereas these Green killing machine ones I've got a 24 watts each and even with that I don't know if the water makes a difference but I know that I needed two of them to match this tank and the flal ones we don't really have them too available in Australia and they're kind of expensive and if ID have to get two of them that would cost me like over $500 I'm pretty sure so I thought it's going to be cheaper to just keep my green killing machine ones which I know awesome quality I mean yeah they look a little bit gunky and heavy in there but I don't mind you'll see once I get the new pumps and new lights I'll show you guys guys if you think this looks clear now wait until you see it with the ultraviolet clarifiers because it makes a huge difference the puren makes it beautiful but even right now you may not notice it but it has a little bit of a green tinge even right now but once you add a UVC and all these Green killing machine ones they take out any algae that's in the water and it looks really beautiful so I will definitely show you when we get that and of course you'll be seeing an update at some point on these plants too and how they've gone I'm going to say that that's a job well done make sure you drop below your top plant caring tips as well and if you're enjoying my content and you haven't yet I would love for you to subscribe to my channel as well it really makes a big difference when you do that in terms of YouTube recommending the videos and everything but that's it for this video and I'll see you guys in the next one bye

Channel: Kaity's Cichlids

Views: 40,163

Keywords: african cichlids, aquascape, aquascape for african cichlids, scaping my tank, hardscape, planted African cichlid tank, scaping my aquarium, aquascape for cichlids with plants, adding plants to an african cichlid tank, lake Malawi tank with plants, lake Malawi cichlids, lake malawi aquarium with plants, lake malawi setup, hardscape with plants, Anubias with african cichlids, Anubias with Malawi cichlids, can you keep plants with african cichlids, african cichlid hardscape, cichlids

Id: b7u-n4EHbcQ

Length: 23min 33sec (1413 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024