The Nano Forest: ALL IN ONE Aquarium Kit (Aquascape Tutorial)

What's going on beautiful people? I've got a bit of an issue with one of my tanks. It's healthy but I'm not getting many babies. So this is my Endler Aquarium. You can see there's lots of really nice adults and you can see there's some babies dotted around. So that's brilliant. They're all breeding and they're all doing well. Now the problem I've got is that this is about the third, maybe fourth batch of babies that these fish have produced and I'm not seeing any growing. They're like getting to a size and then that's it. A new batch of babies appears. Now either the adults are still trying to eat them, which doesn't look like it when I go up to the tank, or there's something else. I'm not sure what it could be. The filter intake at the back there has got a little hang on the back filter. It's got a sponge around it so they can't go in there. So I don't really know what it is. Maybe there isn't enough food in the tank for them. So the idea I've got is I'm going to build another tank so I can scoop out any new babies and it just becomes a nursery tank. I can keep a close eye on them. I can feed them regularly, you know, the right amount. Baby fish kind of need more frequent feeding than larger fish. Larger fish have fat reserves, babies don't. So it's like food gone, food gone, food gone. So yeah, I think it's more than likely just the frequency of feeding. Now I could just up it in this tank, of course I could, but where is the fun in that? I want to make another tank basically. So down next to the end of the tank here, we have got my electric blue Akara tank, which I'm trying to get to breed. I've got a plan for that. But next to them, I've got another tank here sitting empty. It's tiny. Well, not too tiny. I mean, it's plenty big enough for what we want it for. I accidentally made a mistake with the previous scape that was in there. Put too much algaecide in, went away and come back and I'd burnt all the plants because it's such low volume. You have to adjust things like algaecide accordingly. So yeah, I messed that one up. There's no livestock in there so it wasn't an issue and that's why I put extra in. But it's a great little tank. It's the Superfish Scaper Cube thingy. I don't know exactly the name. I'll put it up. But it's 20 centimetres by 20 centimetres by 20 centimetres. It's got a nice little Superfish light. That's cute. There we go. And then it's got a tiny little hang on the back filter as well. More than does the job in this small little aquarium. I really, really like doing little aquariums like this because it's just fun. You don't have to have tons of hardscape and you can fill it up nice and quick. Pull the water down. Don't need tons of plants. But yeah, it's going to be good. I mean, I say it doesn't need loads of plants. We know damn well there will be loads of plants. Now obviously that tank is already set up but I thought it'd be good to show you, you know, what to look for in the shops. This is how it arrives. I think it's really good. A couple of bits of cardboard above and below. It also includes the sponge mat. You've got the black background as well which you can just tape to the back area. Have I done that? No, I didn't. I kept this one clear. But yeah, if you want to have a black background you can. You can stick this on. You can put like one of those limo tint things on. You can paint it black. Whatever you want. So yeah, you obviously get that filter. Hang on the back. 50 it is. So I think that's rated for, yeah, 0 to 50 litres. I don't know why you'd have 0 litres. Scaper Cube LED 15. So 15 watt. These are really good. All of the scaper lights grow plants so, so well like you wouldn't believe. So I already know that that's awesome. You get a plant fertilizer as well and some thingies. Instructions I guess. But yeah, you get exactly what you need. The tank, the filter, the light and you're away. Now funnily enough, smaller tanks like this one here are actually a lot harder to scape than larger ones. When you've got a larger one like the eight foot behind it, you can just pick out any pieces of wood and kind of put them together for whatever shape you want. But in a smaller tank, you need the wood to be the right size straight away, which means you've got to be a bit more selective with what goes inside. Now I'm always getting in trouble with my wife because she says you do not need any more hard scapes. So I have got a pretty good selection. But because Kate's never scaped a tank yet, she's actually interested in giving it a go. That will be the first time ever in like six years of me doing this hobby that she's shown an interest in that. But anyway, because she's never done it, she doesn't really understand that like you can, you need the perfect piece sometimes. And the more of a selection you've got, the more chances of picking that perfect piece. Now I know a lot of you are not going to have a selection like what I've got here. I've built this up over the last six years. But that's why it's important to go in the dojo area in the shop if they've got one. If they haven't, just put some pieces on the floor about the size of your tank. Because once you've left the shop, you can't get any more pieces. So just build it up in the shop, find that perfect shape you want, and then you know you're sorted. And every time you go to the shop, pick up one or two pieces, your favorite bits that are there, if there are any, and then you steadily build the collection as you go. So this size tank, I'm sort of limited to this shelf here. This is where I keep the sort of small to medium sized stuff. I've also got a load of these little nano branches as well, which could come into play at some point for detail. I do want something that's like, I don't know, something like that looks quite cool, but not on its own, with something else as well. But before we add in any hardscape, I find it so much easier if we've got a substrate system in first. If we build up a layer at the bottom, it means that anything we put in can sort of get stuck rather than sliding all over the glass. So to make a substrate system, these are all the components that I use. And this one is Nutribase, which is a great product. It really does bump start the cycling process and just gets the plants growing quickly, minimizes algae. It's got calcium, iron, callium, magnesium, and it's also got dormant bacteria as well. So that's awesome stuff. If you can't get hold of that because it's not available in your country, it'll still work with everything else. It can just take a little bit longer to get things running smoothly. I just find that this speeds the whole process up. Then I've got a little bit of gravel. This is just to make sure that everything's mixed in together. There's like gaps between things, stops sludge, stops it all getting compacted down into some toxic waste. And then on top of that, I've got pond soil or lily soil. It's sometimes known as, it's basically like normal compost, but it's had some of the organics floated off. So what you're left with is just a bit less nutrients. It's not quite as harsh, I find. And yeah, it just doesn't leach into the water as well, which is great. And then I cap everything off with just the sand, whatever sand you want. Make sure it's not too coarse. Like that's about perfect. I would say that grain size. Now the reason the compost works so well is as it's breaking down in the substrate layer, it's generating its own CO2. All right. Not as much as injected CO2, but any increase in CO2 in the water column is going to be beneficial. It just works so well. So I'm going to pour everything into the tank. You don't have to do it like this. You can put it into a bucket and that first, but I'm an idiot. I'll just be careful not to scratch the glass. So that's NutriBase, gravel. Let me just see what level we're at with that. Okay, pretty good so far. And then the soil as well. Now I don't want a huge amount, just a nice sprinkling in and amongst it all. And that should be plenty. And then just like mix it all together. Try my best not to scratch the edge of the glass. You won't see it, but it's never a nice feeling when you do that, is it? Because I might at a later stage want to do a tank with a low substrate, just a dusting. So yeah, don't do what I'm doing basically. Just do it in a bucket. And then I always think it looks a bit nicer just to pull any of the ugly stuff away from the edges. Obviously we're viewing from this angle that I'm showing you now. So I want to make that edge look the best. And then also I want to escape from this corner coming that way. And then we can pour our sand in, in those front sections. And it should keep everything, you know, further back. So you can't see it. Come up about an inch and then just follow that back, capping everything else. Now the good thing is if any of the substrate system underneath like peeks through the sand a bit, it's not a problem. Like it won't hurt the water quality. It won't cause any algae. Obviously you want to avoid it, but if it happens, you know, it's not the end of the world. And there we go. Perfect start. You know, we've got the filter inlet nearly at the surface. I have got a sleeve to go over that just to make sure no babies can get sucked up. They shouldn't do, but there's no point taking the risk. And now we can put a hardscape in and it's going to stay where we want it to. So now as we place our wood in, we want to get it to be an interesting shape. And sometimes having it just peeking over the top like that can just make it feel a little bit bigger. Now I like that so far, but that on its own for me is a little bit boring. So we want a few more pieces in there. Plus it can allow us to attach different plants to us as well. Plants that aren't going to be in the substrate system. So we've got another smaller piece here as well. Well, not that much smaller, actually. It can sit nicely. Maybe something like, yeah, that'll work. Like that. Bring the light over. So something like that would definitely work. We can place some more plants at the back, a little bit more wood if you want. Might just try another look though, with more chunky wood. Sometimes the first thing you try isn't always the best option. So I might try a different look. That works. You can definitely go with that. But I have got a really big piece here. I don't know if it's going to work, but it looks so good. It might just be a one sort of one piece in the whole system. If I can get a bit more angle on it. Oh, that looks awesome. I think just turning it slightly will show off this front area a lot better. Like that. The only thing is it's a little bit straight. So I'm thinking if I add one more element to it, somewhere down here. Not that way. Somewhere like that. Can add a bit more to it. How's that looking? Yeah, that looks a little bit more interesting. Kind of want to even deeper down. Push it right into the gravel. I think the overall effect there is a lot better. The problem is I'm hiding a lot of planting area. So I think I can bring it upright a little bit and still keep the same effect. There we go. Put it back a little bit and we should be able to plant down in this section here and get stems growing up so that they sort of gently come over a little. I think that will work really well. Plus, once we've got some rocks in, it's going to look a lot better too. So the negative space is a bit weird at the moment. But again, there'll be plants there, there'll be plants the other side. I can also creep some in that middle section. So yeah, it should turn out good. If not, we can just change it. But I'll put some rocks in now to try and tie it all in. We've got some nice little rounded sort of pebbles here. Oh, I just smacked the glass. I think they'll do really well. The contrast in between the sand, the wood, just going to place them in roughly how I think they should go. I'm creating deliberate crevices and stuff for plants to go and areas for like anubias and that can sit. Decent size on this side underneath that piece of wood. It's got some nice orangey hues on it as well. You see how that sort of ties it all in nicely because obviously it's viewed from this angle. It's all going to that back corner and coming forwards as well. The rocks have sort of pointed them in that way. I didn't overthink it because you can get rocks to fall however they fall in nature and it always looks good in nature, right? So it's going to look good in our tank. The plants are the thing that makes it look amazing anyway. They grow where they want. They're the real secret to all of this. Whatever we do, if we've got healthy plants, it always looks good. And there's a good little tip there because quite a lot of people who've sent me pictures before have been like, what do you think of my hardscape? And I can see they've got the right idea. It's just that it's very small in the middle of a big tank. And it's like, if you've just got something the same but bigger, it always looks good. Like you'd think that piece of wood is too big for this small tank. But as soon as you put it in there, even the one piece with those rocks around it, it's going to look good once the plants will start growing in. So oversize your hardscape. If you're not confident in creating structures and things, just oversize it, put it in. It'll always look good. Okay, now the fun can begin. We can start bringing this tank to life with the plants. And you've kind of got two options here. Either you can go with big plants and a few of them and get that minimalist sort of contemporary look, I suppose, which works really, really well. Or if you want to go for more detail, you need to use smaller plants, lots of them broken up, placed sort of everywhere. And that gives you a more fine detail look. It just depends what you want to go for. And the larger plant look is easier and it requires less overall plants. I think I want to go for the detail on this one. So I've picked out some initial plants that I want to use. I've got halanthium tenelum, two pots of that. That stays nice and small and compact and spreads nicely as well. Yeah, look, you can see it here in the ecosystem tank. Look at how small it stays. That's what I want, that finer detail, not having to trim it or anything, just let it go. And it just looks beautiful and natural. I've got liliopsis because it just adds a little bit more height in the mid ground section. I've got some moss here as well, which I haven't used any moss in the tank for quite a long time, so that'll be good. And then I've gone for bulbitis, this one here. I might have to cut off some of the longer prongs, but I like that compact look in the middle bit. I really like the colour of bulbitis as well, so a lot more of a natural look. Sometimes jiva ferns can be a little bit vibrant and I think this will suit the rest of the tank a little bit better. Right, let's get the plants prepped. So there's all the foreground plants in. Gone for a very green vibe there, but now I want to put the bulbitis in this middle area as the focal point. Yeah, look at how good that looks. I've trimmed off a couple of the really long prongs or prongs, is it? I'm not sure, but that will look really good in there. It won't touch the glass and it won't take up too much space. I'm thinking right inside this area and luckily there's a little pinch point there, so I can just place it in without having to put glue in. Although I haven't actually glued this wood in yet, so probably need to do that. Yeah, that looks perfect. Just what I was going for, like a real forest vibe. Just realised I haven't misted the plants at all yet, because they are starting to dry out a bit. You've got to keep doing this, just to make sure that they're all good. Okay, next up I want to put a little bit of detail on this front bit here. So I've got some boosts and then I feel like this section in the middle here needs something as well. So I've got Bucephalandra Faeae, that one. Look how good that looks. And I've got some Anubias bonsai, so the smallest Anubias. It's quite, it's grown massively since I put, received it actually, but still looks great. There's so much there and that'll look good in that section. Just because otherwise we're going to get a ton of light hitting the wood and we'll definitely get algae and that kind of thing. Whereas this continues to grow, you can trim off bits you need to, the shrimp will get at it as well. Yeah, I'm just going to put a little bit of super glue gel on this area here. Then I can push the boosts on the rhizome area or also where we've still got a little bit of the rock wall, that can go right on it. Sort of push it in a little bit. So it's tucked. Hold it there for 10 seconds or so. And then when you let go, it should stay like that. Oh yes, it adds a completely different colour. So good. It's just adding that forestry vibe, exactly what I wanted. Now as beautiful as it is, I think this one piece might be too big for that section. Yeah, it kind of just takes over everything. The light will be more forwards like that. It does look beautiful though. I'm going to split it in half though and put one either side of the wood. Here we go. Look, I've already got some glue on the base of it. Get it in there a little bit. Yeah, that's better. You can still see the nice wood den. Then one in this other side as well. There we go. It's like a forest floor right at the base of a tree stump. Love that. I'm going to keep all the wood on top on show. I'm going to fill it up now and then I'm going to put some stems in that side which will kind of try and loop over and I think that will be enough planting. Well, I think that looks amazing. Now I haven't added the moss because I just think there's enough there. If I'm going to put it anywhere, it would be on the wood which means it would hide the wood or on the rocks. Well, I want to see those as well because otherwise, you're not going to have any hardscape left. Now we've got that big area at the side that's completely open which you could do. You could keep that like that but I feel it looks a bit odd. It just needs a little pop of color there and a fast-growing plant as well just to help with the startup process because nothing in here is really fast-growing and it will really help just to have those nutrients being absorbed quite quickly. And one of the best things in having a small aquarium like this is how cheap it is to do everything inside. So we've got two pieces of wood there, a few rocks and then I've used four pots and two of the easy grow lab-grown plants as well. So six plants and that's the result you can get. So I'd also suggest getting two pots of stems as well but I'm actually going to pinch some out of this tank here because it's grown nice and vibrant and big and it's going to be cutting down soon anyway so I'll take mine from there. And we don't actually need too many in here at all. So I just want them creeping over the top a little bit. Stay in there you. Just like that coming around to the side and even if I plant them right in the back area they're going to naturally try and creep forward for the light as well. That looks so good. I'm going to struggle to get down for this one. There we go. I got it. Now what's good about planting into the sand as well is that it really does grip stems nicely. Sometimes gravels, the stem will just float back up out really easy but sand grips a lot better. I've just got a couple of stems of Rotala Welichii as well. Just a little variation of colour. I think that looks lovely. Then another one just in front of it. These plants have got a few snails on as well which is great. I absolutely love snails in a planted aquarium. They go hand in hand. Look at that. And I just want one more fast growing plant. There it is. That's the one I want right here. Oh this has clumped together quite a lot. Hydrocotyle tripetita. That's the one just for some little fine details. So yeah again this is nice and fast growing and what I want to do is kind of interlace it into all the other plants here. Eventually it's going to grow all amongst it all. Am I going to be able to do this? I think I will. Ultimately it's just going to go wherever it wants. To start with if I lock it all in and it'll just keep going. It really does give a completely natural vibe then as well. A bit fiddly but it's worth it. Get a bit down in this lower section as well. Wrap it around. It really stands out in the boost. Yeah like that. A bit down in the base as well. This is all going to grow in and go everywhere and it's easy to remove as well if you want because you just grab the pieces that are a bit too much and it just comes off all together. Here's a really good example actually. So look at all the boost we've got down there and how the hydrocotyle tripetita. Hydrocotyle japan. That's just what I call it. Look how it interlaces different sizes and if I want I could just grab a load of that and just pull it out and just reveal all the boost again but I just like the way it just creeps look everywhere. Just goes wherever it wants. Adds like an aged feel to it. Mature. Right it's now the next day and as you can see still looking pretty good. There's a little bit of dusting in the water but obviously the filter isn't on or anything yet. I just ran out of time. It's the end of the day so I had to leave. So we can now put the filter on and get it really really clear and I had a parcel arrive with these little spongy thingies in that I can now use to cover up the inlet for the filter because if we've got tiny little fish in there then those gaps are big enough. I mean they'd have to swim directly in it but they might do that so yeah I can just cover it up. Now if my calculations were correct this should slot straight over. Oh yes. Absolutely perfect. I love it when something works like that. It fits in there nicely and you can't see it at all so that's perfect. Let's get it started. Now when I last used this filter I made this little rampy thing here out of a plastic bottle. I just cut a strip of it bent over the end and that slots nicely underneath the outlet. Just make sure that it just flicks the water right to the top up here and stops it battering any of the plants down below. It's not essential of course but if you've got like smaller plants near the surface it just trickles it gently over the top and brings it all back downwards again and into the filter. Now to start the filter we have to fill up with water first. Very simple. Just fill the whole up and what that does then is it basically submerges the impeller so the impeller can actually drive against water rather than pure air and that creates the vacuum which sucks the water up and away we go. Yes you can see the water level coming up and once it's cleared out any air that's left around the impeller it pulls it all through. There we go. Fill in the whole reservoir and then we are away. It'll make a little bit of noise to start with just whilst it's clearing that air. Once the air is out then it doesn't make any noise at all. Completely silent. It just works really well and you've got these little cartridges in here as well. You can take them out and clean them which I like but they've also got fine filter pads so they catch tiny particles as well. Really really good these hang on the backs at making the aquarium crystal clear. Lid goes back on. We're done. Now you can adjust the flow if you want as well so there's like a little thingy that you turn here to turn it up or down but although it looks quite fast there it's just where it's flicking on the surface underneath the water it'll be absolutely perfect for the fish. There'll be areas as well that where there's less flow so basically you're going to get fast flow in this front bit and then it's going to dissipate everywhere else so yeah I think that's absolutely perfect no reason to change that. More filtration means a cleaner tank. Now that looks great. I think it looks awesome. I just feel like we're missing something so I just want to put a little pop of red in this section here and I think some hate trial would look good just a few stems just there and then I think that's perfect and I've got loads of them available in my barb tank which are all going crazy now because they want food. I will feed them but yeah I'm just going to trim some off of here only short and then I think they'll work perfectly. It's one of the great things about having already established tanks is just come in when you want and take some snippings and just carry the whole thing on because obviously these are going to regrow again with double the amount I'm trimming off and it's going to look awesome. I've got one there that's slightly less pinky so that'll look good. Yeah I've pinched all the stems together there. I just want to put them in this little gap just like that and then under that rock and then the rock's going to fall on it. There you go. Push it back a little bit because they're being squeezed forward slightly. There we go. You see what I mean though just that little hint there changes the whole tank I think. Four, five stems that was. So everything in the tank is pretty slow growing apart from those five stems and the stems at the side which is just a case of every now and again. You don't have to make those noises but so yeah if this had more stems it would just be overgrown in no time so I think it's the perfect amount. So I obviously think the tank is looking great. I'm just thinking if I can add some more detail that won't make it a pain when coming to maintenance. So I've got this like little stick here. I'm going to place it in the foreground area coming through like roots and if I need to I can just like take it out whenever I need to clean or catch the fish. Here we go. It might not sink. Oh it is. It is kind of sinking but I can lodge it in a little bit in some of the plants and that should hold it in place. There we go. I like that. Yeah. It's amazing what such a small little thing can do just to create a bit more realism. So the tank is looking great. We can put some fish in. I'm going to be doing what's called a fish in cycle. I mean I'm putting tiny tiny fish and the bioload is negligible for fuller plants but basically the filter hasn't been cycled yet so as the fish go in I add in beneficial bacteria. This then colonizes the substrate system all over the plant every surface including in the filter. The right amount of beneficial bacteria just generates for the tank and you're good. You know I always make sure though I'm testing the water for at least a week every single day to make sure we're not seeing any ammonia or nitrite spikes but that's just a standard. You should always do that new fish going into a tank. I think anyway I mean I always do it and even though 99% of the time it's completely fine there's always that one time something leached out from the substrate there or something like that and you've got some kind of spike so it's well worth it. And the good news is it looks like we've just had a fresh new batch of babies been born as well and like I say the whole point of doing this is because I keep getting new batches of babies like coming out and then I don't see them growing up so that's why I'm catching them out of this tank because for some reason they're eating them. They must be. There's no other reason. The filter at the back has got like a sponge on it as well so the fish can't go in there so it's a bit of an odd one. I'd expect to see like triple or quadruple the amount of enders that we've got in here now given the amount of times I've seen new babies been born but it's fine we're gonna we're gonna fix that now. I think I'm probably going to put some females in the tank as well just so that I can have them give birth in there then I can remove them at a later date. Well turns out there was way more than I thought and I've definitely not got all of them either but there's a lot there isn't there but that's fine that's exactly what we want get as many as we can out get them grown right up. Now the temperatures of these tanks are matching so I can go ahead and just switch them straight across. There's so many oh that's awesome. I might need to turn the flow down a little bit let's have a little look at the fish see how they're doing. No they seem pretty fine they're whizzing around in it. There's definitely areas they can go where there's not lots of flow. The most flow is going to be literally where those top ones are but you know they'll just they'll just learn to go in or out of it but yeah they look absolutely perfect swimming around at the edges. They look so cute don't they? I don't think Kate's noticed these yet so when she comes in she's going to be like oh my goodness it's so cute. She loves baby fish I mean who doesn't love baby fish? Yeah success! And the good thing about this of course is that I can do extra feeding for these fish like smaller fish need smaller amounts more regularly so I'll probably just come along and just sprinkle a little bit of flake a couple of times maybe three times a day whereas most of my other tanks I probably feed every other day except for the discus they're getting food every day as well. So yeah up the feed on this one get these fish growing and hopefully I get some more beautiful endless. Like I said I was going to take some females like say this one here this is a female and I was going to take them and put them into that tank so they can give birth again but there's so many in there already like this one here look it's just full babies like you can see at the back they've got a dark spot on them and they look a little bit more sort of bloaty. Then we've got our beautiful males as well hoping to get a few more males we've got we've got those two there we've got that one we've got that as a male and we've got this one here as a male that's a male as well oh that is actually a Santa Maria yeah Santa Maria one kind of like a crossbreed I guess but yeah hopefully we get loads more and I am in fact going to turn it down a little bit there isn't actually any need for it to be going that fast there we go just dropped it down now to sort of like a little trickle yeah it's a little bit more chill they don't need that much filtration I mean the plants can be filtering more than anything or using nutrients should we say at least but oh it's gorgeous love them and let's give the widdle baby some food I've just got a bit of flake obviously the flake pieces are quite large so just take a tiny little piece there look to my fingertips and literally sort of grind it all up and then some of the bits are bigger and that's that's enough like it'll get sort of battered underwater as time goes by look in there picking out the small pieces little cuties obviously the fish are just they're way too small at the moment to know like what coloration but you can sort of see there's some more sort of grey and some are more kind of like a yellowy tone so I don't know what that indicates but maybe that's male female you know some of them look a little bit more plump than others as well but I'm looking forward to seeing the colors come through I'm not sure how long it takes let me google it so yeah google has spoken apparently it takes a couple of months for the babies to show colors and judging by the size of these here I'm going to say probably a week maybe they're swimming quite well they don't look like fresh newborn ones fresh newborn ones are like really teeny tiny and don't they swim but like kind of anywhere so yeah hopefully we get some really nice colored males and some nice females I mean even the females in the tank there showed good coloration on their on their fins so even the females should be good so yeah the idea of this one was a nice simple setup that anyone can do you know a really quality kit aquarium you can buy and make it look absolutely beautiful for not a huge amount of cost now I would say with this size tank you could definitely put a better in there you can put shrimp in there I've opted to use it as kind of like a nursery but there's many options even a snail tank as well if you wanted but anyway that is it for this one I hope you've enjoyed it and I'll see you on the next video