BUILDING A RAINBOWFISH AQUARIUM IN MY LOCAL FISH STORE! Full Step by Step Tutorial

In today's video we're back in my local fish shop Hames. I'm going to show you exactly how I made this beautiful 150 centimeter cram for some really nice fish that I've never kept before. Super excited, let's get started. So if you're a regular viewer of the channel then you will know that we built an entire aquascaping gallery inside the store. We currently have like four large tanks, Oasis Capeline 90, Oasis Capeline 100, a four foot tank and a two meter cram. We have a few nanos and soon we're going to make a shallow on top over here. Now today we're actually not going to be working in the gallery. We're going to be working in the store because we're not setting up a rimless tank. We are setting up a framed aquarium. Like what's the correct term? Is it a framed? Is it a rimmed aquarium? I'm not sure. But yeah this is the tank that we're going to be setting up. An Aquatlantis, Aquatlantis Planet Ultra 150. So it's actually a decent sized tank. So 150 centimeters from left to right. I think that's five foot and the height is 60. And then the most interesting part is the width because it's only 40 centimeters. So it's quite a narrow tank. A bit of a challenge to turn it into a nice aquascape but I'm excited. Yeah interesting dimensions. It's going to be quite a challenge to create some depth in a tank with only 40 centimeters width. But I'm definitely up for it. So yeah tank is from Aquatlantis which is a Portuguese brand. We want to use the just the the stock light. But I think we're going to upgrade the filter because normally these tanks come with a internal filter. It's quite big. So I think we're going to upgrade it to an Oase Biomaster. Probably going to use CO2 as well. We have a CO2 regulator Pro from Chihiros. Okay so as always I have pretty much complete freedom to do whatever I want with this aquarium. The only thing the owners have asked me is to make it relatively low maintenance. You know all the tanks in the aquascaping gallery they're all high tech. They all have quite fast growing plants. They have a carpet as well. I mean in this one this tank is quite high. So a carpet in here might not be the best idea. Either no carpet or a carpet that doesn't require frequent trimming you know. Besides that we can just use a bunch of grits and some ferns. So that was just a quick introduction into the project. I think we're ready to get started. Let's go find some substrate some hardscape and then we can start building. Okay so first things first let's pick out a substrate. Normally I always use aqua soil but I think for this tank we're not going to do that. I think we're just going to use a like a nutrient-rich base layer and either cap that with a gravel or just a nice cosmetic sand. So in terms of the base layer we either have the Deponit mix from Dennerle or this Humalit Pro which I've never used before. I have used this one before with good results. So yeah that's the logical option. I think I'm going to take a big one. Then to cap the base layer we're just going to use a nice sand or gravel. I was actually looking at this stuff right here. Ground nature. I think I've used this one before in a small tank and I think it's what they've used in this tank on display here. So it's just a nice sand with you know small gravel. It looks very natural in my opinion so I quite like it. Now I like to use a lot of nutrients in the substrate so I'm gonna take a bag of these flourish tabs as well. Okay so I have one large and one medium sized bucket of the Deponit mix and two bags of this sand and gravel mix. I think it's a good place to start. I mean we can always add more sand if necessary because it's such a narrow tank so we definitely need a bit of a slope. But uh yeah let's just start with this. Flourish tabs as well. So let's get the substrate in. Here we go. Base layer in. Root tabs in as well. So now we can cover everything with the top layer. Okay so that's two bags in. You can kind of see the color difference. That's the top layer. That's the bottom layer. And as you can see we definitely need a bit more. I forgot how much substrate you need for a five foot tank. Okay I think that's the substrate layer done for now. I think we should move on to the hardscape. Maybe once the hardscape is done we can add a little bit more substrate in the background just to add some more height. Yeah let's go find some nice wood and some nice rocks. So if you've never seen a video of this store before I think they have one of the best hardscape collections of Dutch stores that I know. So this area over here is all different kind of rocks. This side is wood. Over here we have a lot more wood. And if we walk all the way to the back here this is basically the hardscape for like really big tanks you know. So lots of big pieces of driftwood which probably could fit in a five foot tank. But because our tank is so narrow I think these are just a bit too big. They recently received a batch of new wood that I've actually never heard of before. It's this stuff over here. It's called Zambia wood. That's some really nice pieces. There's a lot of detail on it as well. It's not too big you know. So a few of these pieces together I think could look nice in that five foot tank. Then in terms of the rocks because we have quite a light substrate I'm thinking of using these darker sort of like lava rock. They call it Kuroi dark rock. It's basically just lava but some of these pieces have really nice texture on it as well. So yeah the Zambia wood with the Kuroi rock. I think that's gonna be it. Okay I have a whole cart full of the Zambia woods. We have a good selection. That box below that is the the lava rocks. So let's get the wood in first. I'm thinking of making a bit of a triangular composition like this because from this side like this is basically like the main walkway you know. So I think a triangular composition coming down low should look nice. Then you can also view the ground nicely from the long side over here. So I think this piece over here is probably my favorite because it has a really nice curve to it. So this could be somewhere towards the end maybe. But yeah I'm gonna keep the the tags on for now in case I don't end up using this piece. So we're just gonna do some bit of just rough layout scaping. Yeah so I think this is kind of like the rough idea. So all the wood is kind of pointing in that direction but some of them are pointing down some of them are going up. We do need a little bit more height because there's still a bit of a gap between the the top of the aquarium and the highest point of the wood. So I think I'm just gonna raise some of them with some rocks. It's taking everything out the box and kind of just laid it on the floor here. Some of these are really nice. Like the texture on this is really good. This is a bit different. See it has a lot bigger holes. So this one's probably my least favorite. But look at this guys. This looks really good right? Okay guys I spent about 30 to 45 minutes playing around with the wooden rocks and I think this is almost the final result. We like how it looks. Like I said mostly the wood is pointing in this direction. There's one on the right that's going the other way. Just kind of balance it out. There's a small one pointing in that direction as well. I think the next step is to start removing all the tags from the wooden rocks. I also want to add in one more bag of sand in the in the background. Just kind of build up the height a little bit more. Yeah I like where this is going. Okay so I added one more bag of that sand and gravel mix. So in total we have 40 kilos of sand and gravel in here. It might be a bit hard to see on camera but now we have a nice slope towards the back. It really did help with the sense of depth. I've also added one more rock over here and another one in the back over there. Just to kind of make it a bit more interesting. Also over here to break up the line a little bit you know. So I think the next step is to start gluing everything together. You know guys that's one thing that I do like about these frame diagrams that they kind of hide the substrate a little bit. So you don't have this thick substrate layer right against the front glass. It just looks a lot nicer in my opinion. Okay so I brought my own glue collection. So we have the famous cotton pads. I've got some liquid super glue in here. I have some gel super glue as well. So let's get to work. Okay roughly 15 minutes later and I think everything is nice and secure. The only thing I wasn't really sure about was this piece right here because it doesn't really have a lot of connections to glue it. So I just placed a rock on top. I think I'm just going to leave it there because it actually doesn't look too bad. Yeah I think we are now pretty much ready for planting. So I placed an order a couple days ago. Just arrived. Let me show you what we got. So I basically just ordered a bunch of different crypts. So we have the crypt Balancea. Perfect for the background. Crypt Navelli. A nice bright green one for the mid ground. And I also have this one. This is the Crypto Retro Spiralis. I think it's similar to the Balancea but it's already a bit bigger. So I think we're just going to mix the Balancea and the Retro Spiralis because they're really nice boosts as well. The green one and the red one. This is the Crypt Valkyrie because it'll be nice in the mid ground as well. You see some Trident Java Fern. I'm actually not sure how to order this but I can definitely use it. So I'm just going to quickly prepare all these plants and then we can add them in. Looking forward to see this one planted. One eternity later all the plants are prepared. Okay so I'm going to start with the foreground because that's the most work. For that I have the Philanthium tendrilum or Echinodorus tendrilus. So quite a easy carpeting plant as well and also easy in terms of maintenance. Okay guys we are officially done planting. I still have a few empty gaps. So for example underneath the wood over there a little bit of a gap over here. So I could add a few more pots but I don't know. I think it's fine. I'm really happy with the end result. So you kind of have to envision that the background is going to grow a lot taller. A lot of tape shape plants that will start laying on the water surface and just go with the flow you know. Go with the flow. It is now quarter past four. I think we started at 10 o'clock so not a bad day's work. Yeah I think we're done for today. Now we just have to wait for the tank to clear up, to cycle and then in a few weeks we can come back add in the fish. But you guys are going to see that the next few clips anyway. Boom. YouTube magic. One month has passed. The tank is actually looking surprisingly good after just four weeks. As you can see we have a bag floating in the tank as well. So soon we're gonna add in some fish. So the foreground the Philanthium tendrilum has absolutely exploded. It doesn't really fit in the low maintenance theme that we were going for but I think it looks really good though. We've also added a small skimmer just to keep the surface nice and clean you know. Background plant looks absolutely amazing. That's the Pogastemon octopus. I kind of just add this one in to just help with the startup you know. A few fast growing plants during startup period is always good. We might remove it at some point if we get sick of the fast growth but for now I think it looks really good. Really cool from the top down view as well. Oh I see we have a few pieces of duckweed. I might have to remove those. And I really like this as well. I love the side view. I think it looks really cool. Okay now let's talk about the fish. Let's see if you guys can guess what they are. Give you a few few seconds to think about it. These are forktail blue eye rainbows. I've always wanted to keep them but they're quite active swimmers. They need a lot of space. So I thought this is a good size tank. I think it's perfect for some rainbow fish. So the bag's been floating for a while. So these guys can go straight in. Really interesting fish. Beautiful bright yellow fins. Very long body as well. They do get a little bit bigger. I think they will grow five six centimeters. So they will grow a little bit bigger. We might add a few more fish at some point but this is just a good place to start you know.