You have NEVER SEEN this aquarium I set up! Reacting to my first filmed aquascape!

How are we doing everyone? So this is a little bit of an impromptu filming and videoing because well I've been maintaining the tanks all day I am pretty tired but I have come across the first ever aquarium setup I done on video for what has become Fish Shop Matt for this channel and I've watched the first 10 seconds 15 seconds and I've watched the end 15 seconds to make sure it was all there and it seems like it's all there and we're gonna do a recording of me watching it and you can come and watch along and I expect that none of you will have seen this maybe one or two of you if you were really with me right at the start but it was never posted on here it was posted at other places so yeah I'm gonna sit I'm gonna watch it and I think it proves that anyone can become confident and become a YouTube sort of thing if you just put your mind to it because from what I've seen so far it's fairly fairly cringy now obviously we've hit a fair few cool milestones on the channel recently behind the scenes and in front of the scenes with sort of view counts and things like that ticking up over the years and also the subscriber count actually getting over 100k and I think I've already mentioned it in a few videos and done a video thanking everyone but a huge thank you to everyone who is following along on this absolutely amazing and crazy journey we've still got some amazing and cool stuff to come along but there's actually quite a lot of you that don't subscribe still saying that there's yeah quite a percentage of you subscribers don't mean anything you know it doesn't it's just a number it's sort of yeah it doesn't really mean anything to the world of YouTube but I would like you to subscribe because it is nice because we have received our plaque check that out and it matches the shininess of my tank here so I think I might put it up above there but yeah a hundred thousand plaque has arrived which is so so cool this is not something that I thought would happen anyway let's get the soppy stuff let's not go down that route now I do have to say a big shout out to he done a recent video where he had just hit a hundred thousand and he went and watched his first ever video back and commented on it and joked about it and um yeah it was quite funny he was making discus food and stuff if you don't follow Graham go and check him out because he is so good at what he does and so funny um but this sort of idea came from that and then I was looking back at my first videos and there's a tour around my old shark and a few other bits and pieces I was like yeah we could go and do that but I didn't want to copy what he had just done and then whilst actually trying to clear space on my phone is where this came from I was scrolling through the big videos that were stored on my phone and I'm like what is that that's me ages ago in a uniform in the shop like what is that video clicked on it and I'm like oh my word that's what that is that is the first scape that we ever done and I filmed and yeah wow I can't believe that I have still got it so I'm going to grab my phone out and we are going to watch on there I need my headphones I've put them up there that was absolutely perfect I'm a little bit worried about them picking up on my talking and I didn't want to edit my talking out so hopefully bluetooth is connected we batteries full which is always good the 22 on my phone isn't ideal though so we'll get this playing I'm going to pop it up here for all of you and I'm going to pause it and I'm going to live through the cringiness and the thousand ums but I bet I say because I remember back when I first started filming it was always a thing of like um um um and that's before I got confident in talking to camera and I don't know how you describe it you just get used to it you just get used to the flow and the commenting and talking and things but it does show that like with enough perseverance and enough thought and I'm really sad I love researching things I have spent hours looking into how to film and how to do this and how to do that I'm still awful at it still really bad at it but you can become something so if you've ever got any thoughts of becoming a youtuber as it were have a go crack on try it because you never know where it will lead you now let's find this film uh somewhere in here there it is I'm already hating my face on it hang on let's rewind it let's hit play and let's see how this goes right here we go so a few of you have messaged me and asked me what I do with my scapes and how I scape aquariums um I do a lot of dry run displays I do very few wet run displays in the shop because of how busy we are the plan is to get a lot more done over the next few weeks but my I suppose my hand has been forced a little bit um with some fish that have been dropped off to me by a very good friend of mine um possibly one of the rarest fish I've ever kept in this shop um you know so okay so we're already like 28 seconds into this video it's not a long video to be fair I don't know how I managed to squeeze an update and escape and all of it into this shorter time like I guess I just wasn't focusing on it but you know once I realized that you all wanted the information that's the whole point of this channel is the education and the information and there's a lot of you that watch this channel and I hope that there's a few thousand of you that I have hopefully saved from either giving up on fish keeping or even saved the fish's lives as crazy as it sounds that's my ultimate goal for this channel is to make it you know accessible and seeing this in this format of like um this is the rarest fish um and it's just funny it's just really weird to see where I came from and where I started and how awkward I was on camera and this was after I'd appeared on MD fish tanks videos I don't know a hundred times probably and I am not ever gonna go back and try and find the first times and neither should you um because they are truly truly you know back in the start of it it was like 10 second little clips of me going oh yeah this is a neon tetra and it comes from this river or blah blah blah so there's not much of me but oh my word this is awkward and I'm already on about 10 ums which is amazing and one thing actually a dry run tank and a wet run tank when you're working in the shop is probably fairly self-explanatory but I will explain it in the fact that it's where you would have like a dry display so we used to set up all of our aquariums in the shop with um aquascapes I don't like using the word aquascapes because it is aquascape is a very um I don't know I don't know what it is I set up aquariums and I have fun setting up aquariums am I an aquascaper not really in my mind but aquascaping is just for me putting rocks and wood and plants in and making something look pretty so anyway um but we used to do wet runs and dry runs so dry runs would be where you've just got it wood and rock and plastic plants to make the tank look appealing the amount of times we would sell those tanks people would be like I just want all that wood and rock please not the plastic plants or buy real plants we used to sell them a lot and then wet runs before I met MD wet run aquariums in the shop where you've actually got fish in them were very few and far between to be honest but having them in the shop actually changed the shop massively and if any shops are watching now I would be a hundred percent if I was ever going to run a shop again I would have more wet displays than not anything else but I would have a lot of wet displays because that is what entices people and shows people what you can do the amount of times that I wouldn't have a display tank but you've got I don't know 500 tanks full of fish but anyway yeah that's the difference between wet run and dry run and I'm this is where I got to I paused it here because this is I don't want to live through this to be honest I sort of don't want to go through this but here we go I'll be that'll come later though because I can't put it in tonight but I've got this little scaper 90 that I'm gonna have a bit of a play with this evening um I've got some stratum from blue bull I've got this really wicked bit of bogwood well it's actually corbo catfish root um that I'm gonna be using not too sure what rocks but you know I've got all of this to play with marines have gone off wow I'm just gonna stop it there because that is when the marines were in the shop like the saltwater system so that's going back yeah wow that was just as we had moved everything to build the aquascaping area with all the rocks and the wood so that's crazy to see that because that is yeah that's so long ago I'm gonna I'll find a date for this because this must be this must be 2022 I guess it's a long time ago well it's not that long ago but it feels like ages so yeah I'm gonna have a bit of play I'll record it I'll probably cut some of this waffling and um yeah we'll see what we get okay so I've just done this on a time-lapse most of it that obviously the start there I'm you know I'm happy with this this camera as well this phone as well so the phone that I was filming this on I had no tripods no microphones no nothing at that point not a single thing I didn't even think this was going to be a thing this went on to like I set up like fish shot mat social media channels just a couple of them just to post photos and stuff and that's where it started and this went on there so these videos went or this video this is the only one I've done this video went on to there and this phone was propped up against a piece of wood on the wood stand so I sort of had my camera propped there and it's quite funny because like Graham Aquarium Adventures when I watched his video about sort of looking back at his first video his um discus food video I think it was he had his camera phone like propped up in a cupboard with the door open and I think he said like he had a baked bean tin sat on it so it was like counterweighting it and he said oh I thought that looked so professional like I thought that was like oh it was amazing and it's the same with this I'm looking at this I'm like oh I thought that that was great footage but all I've done is like spread it out and you can see I put pebbles in there at first I don't discuss that at all I put pebbles in there and then I remember going that looks awful and it probably looks awful when I get to the end but then I've obviously swapped it for layer stone so you know that's what I've learned is actually being open and honest and talking you all through the the mistakes and the oh I was going to use this but now I'm going to use this and so on so on so it's quite cool and then yeah we're putting layer stone in there now so uh I can't even remember what this finishes up like really if I'm honest well that was really stressful um I didn't realize the transitions are quite dizzying as well I'm not I'm not a fan of that sorry if that's freaking any of you out but that flashy transition is uh pretty mental let's see what we say about my first bit of scaping this small in years like probably a good eight years nine years I haven't scaped a small tank be kind but I'm all right with it I let those my plants but yeah I'm yeah yeah I'm okay with it I'm okay so I've gone that bit of wood is the gnarliest bit of corbeau root that I've ever seen in my life sorry my hand's shaking because I might have just dropped a rock on it so you know but yeah that is the gnarliest bit of corbeau root and then these little bits around here are some really cool layer stone that we've got in so yeah um yeah so I don't remember dropping a rock on my hand I reckon that was me telling a slight oh maybe I did I can't really remember but I think that might be me saying that because I was probably really nervous I was filming this after hours in the shop so this was like I don't know maybe eight nine o'clock at night sat in the shop on my own like yeah pitch black outside probably a little bit freaky we used to do fish deliveries but generally not on your own so yeah you always had to set up someone that you were gonna phone so like Katie would have been my like point of call for this just in case I tripped over and hurt myself but yeah it's um it's definitely interesting looking back at it and seeing I've not changed though oh look at my plants like that is definitely me that's 100% me and I'm still the same now so that's quite funny to see that that I've not changed like oh a squirrel um yeah I don't mind this so far though that layer stone's looking good in the front like I've actually escaped thousands and thousands hundreds of tanks in the shops over the years been part of building you know big displays in some of the shops um you know so I was um I don't know am I going to start that again has it given it to me that's terrible I'm not going to say I nearly said um again so I was part of that I've escaped hundreds of chromes so but definitely filming them is different filming them is 100% a different thought process and like once you get to sort of getting into it really badly like every rock placement you'll be filming from a slightly different angle and you know you're trying to the tripod and the camera up over the top of the tank so that you can see what's going on in there and yeah there's lots of different things that you do not think about until you're there until you're doing it and yeah it's weird looking back on this because again I didn't have a tripod so I've just set that camera phone up there so that I can watch everything I'm doing um yeah crikey I've come a long way and it is quite interesting to see how much I've changed with how much I've learned and you know we're off to we're off to a YouTube event in London um as I'm filming this next week I think or the week after uh yeah in a week or two's time so we're off to this big YouTube event in the middle of London and we've been invited to that and like going from here to there is amazing I would honestly say to any of you that is out there looking at this and thinking I really like I don't know cars or I really like crochet or I really like cooking I don't know why I'm going for all C's but um I just go and do it post on a social media platform once every couple of days and start posting and see what traction you can pick up and then start having a look at filming it honestly it could change your world and change your life and I must say a thank you to everyone who follows me along because it has changed what I do you know we're not I'm not driving around in fancy cars and Ferraris and you know you do not make millions from YouTube unless you've got astronomical views but if I can help my hobby succeed and I can help people succeed in it and also have a roof over my house no yeah roof over my head that's what I meant and my family's head I'm happy like that is the ultimate goal I could help what 10 people a day working in the shop when I was in there you know every customer would take maybe 20 minutes half an hour you've got loads of other jobs to do so yeah maybe help 10 people a day whereas on the internet I'm recording things about the nitrogen cycle or whatever and it can help people for years and years to come and if you've got a similar hobby where you know you can help people get into it and enjoy it and have a little bit of stress relief or I don't know get really good at riding mountain bikes or whatever go and do it it's just amazing um it's a really good feeling when people message you and you're like I couldn't do this and now I've got this amazing tank anyway um I digress this is sort of a chat about everything but this is really cool to watch where I've come from um it's really awesome I'm okay with it I'm okay with it so I'm gonna fill it I'm gonna see how cloudy it is possibly gonna then plant it a quick transition I was like fill up done bang back on um that was quite interesting I liked that I'm fairly happy with it yeah I like that looking nice I was gonna plant that up tonight but I've just realized plants coming on Friday so I think I'm gonna plant out Friday so it's actually Saturday morning Friday these transitions are giving me whiplash to be honest so we've gone from it being whatever night that was that I was filming the first bit to now it being I was gonna do it on a Friday and now it's a Saturday night so I probably I probably put a fair few hours into this video because if you think like that first video would have been a couple of hours condensed down into two minutes and then yeah that's crazy to think that I smashed hours and hours of footage into four minutes 30 seconds which is crazy um that is proper proper mental don't know why I planted this full up as well like I would normally have planted this empty and then food up from there but I think again when you're filming and you're doing things in front of camera your brain turns to mush no matter how well you know the subject like I have been working in the industry for 20 years I know so much and I you still get it where you're like uh I think that's right like because once you're in front of a camera it does you get panicky about people seeing it and you have to research yourself like you will never know everything you need well no no that's not right you will never know everything about fish keeping anyone who says that they are this like I'm an expert and I know everything there is to know you know they don't they don't because there is there was just so many specialities and so many little bits and pieces you know from blackwater tanks to reef tanks to aquascapes and planted aquariums and co2 you just can't know I'm very much a generalist I have kept a lot of everything I have kept loads of different species loads of different styles of tanks and I'm sort of a generalist of everything and yeah it's quite it's quite interesting once you get in front of a camera it does make you sort of doubt yourself and doubt what you're talking about and yeah it's so funny so so funny listening to this I might have had the day off but it was okay so I'm going to plant it today it's cleared up nicely that's a lie I never had days off I always used to work like ridiculous amount I did have days off I live so close to the shop like five minutes away even on my days off I'll just pop in and see how the new fish are doing or I'll just pop in and check that plant delivery's turned up I was awful awful for working more than I should have um and that's why I'm quite lucky actually once you have a family once you have a small boy and not well yeah once you have a child it could be a girl but once you have children and you know a wife or husband at home it definitely changes your perspective on things it's looking all right hand is still shaking quite badly that's still on fire um I've actually brought plants in from home and a plant that we can't order which is guppy grass which one of our customers have actually kept into us so I brought some plants in I'm going to steal some out of the planted tank we're going to get it planted we're going to see what it looks like probably in the next 15 minutes so again hand shaking I have awful here goes story time I've probably that maybe this is over sharing I don't know who knows but maybe this is just a nice chat maybe we can do this again about other subjects my hands shake regularly MD hated me when I was on the camera because I shake I shake that is because I spent way too long riding BMXs mountain bikes trials bikes and then a little bit of skateboarding a little bit of snowboarding and I smashed my hands and wrists constantly and so like every now and again I'll get it where I'll be holding the camera and I can just see my hand so I do apologize for my shaky hands where I'm saying oh I'm tired oh I dropped a rock on it it's all just my hands and wrists and then are broken and I feel quite uh not embarrassed by it but like self-conscious I guess especially when you're trying to hold a camera um guppy grass as well I need to get some guppy grass from Sean at Tropic Area Zoo because I think that's where that guppy grass came from and I haven't seen it in a shop I haven't seen it for sale from a company so yeah I better get on because we're we're running out of battery here Sunday morning and yesterday we got all the fish in there we used biological media from one of our filters all mature wharfs are off of the system um so yeah everything was ready to go straight away now I did say at the start that they were quite a rare fish they're probably the rarest fish I've ever kept I'm gonna pause that there again so whiplash we're gonna do the planning today it's Sunday what I really didn't know what I was doing with this but it's quite funny that's quite interesting I'll tell you as well one interesting thing about filming fish tanks certainly I don't know about other hobbies because you can probably do like chest mounted cameras and stuff for like hobbies with your hands and things um but certainly with aquariums and I know that I've been talking to um actually loads of people essentially this the scapegoat podcast group that I talk to so Adam Seven Fish Tanks uh Adam AH Aquatics Jay from Hooked Aquatics and then my local lads Alex B Aquatics who is also the Practical Fishkeeping Magazine editor and also Ems from Somerset Shrimp Shack I've been talking to them we've got group chat and the amount of them that have messaged into the group chat going oh I've just filmed and like it's 30 minutes of my back or my elbow because once you're in the aquarium and you're working in the aquarium and your camera's here everything is the back of your elbow or the back of your back or the door opening everything is sort of so difficult so like when you're filming you're here now you guys don't want to see my back you want to see the shots and you want to see the actual fish tank but once you're in and you're sort of forgetting about yourself and you're actually you know getting to work in the aquarium you forget that the camera's behind you and then all of a sudden it is like 15 minutes of the back of your elbow and it is quite funny to watch and seeing me planting up there that was like a good I don't know that would have probably been a good 10 minutes of me just with my back in front of the fish tank possibly why I sped it up and Saturday is only 25 seconds long because well maybe I just literally was the back of my head and the back of my back so sounds like we're getting the fish in in this next bit here's how it's looking this morning not too bad I've used a few little crips in the front um just because they're easy to keep I don't want anything too high maintenance in there now I don't know if we're going to be able to see the little guys but these little chappies here are and I'll get it wrong but they're tequila split fins is the uh common name and they're a endangered species that we've managed to get 20 of from Tropiquaria Zoo um so yeah go follow Tropiquaria Zoo because they're doing some amazing work but you might have seen them on the BBC um now obviously if you followed my channel for quite some time you'll know that uh I've worked with Tropiquaria Zoo a lot on you know building a pond for Bode the Lynx um so you can go and watch those videos on the channel if you want me and Alex B built a tank for wild guppies uh what else have I done with them oh we've done the um extinct live bearers so a relative of these little live bearers that are in this video uh I cannot remember for the life of me what they are called nope not gonna remember it but I'll link them all down in the uh video actually I should probably make a Tropiquaria Zoo playlist that'd be a good idea so fast forward what was I going to say tequila split fins that was it so we've done loads of videos at the zoo and the funny thing is with these fish here is they they are endangered and there is big things about reintroducing them into the wild so there's breeding projects there's um they're called the guardians of the river and essentially they're in the area that these fish are from and they're clearing up the rivers they're taking you know bottles and tires and uh just all that generic rubbish and stuff that ends up in a river that pollutes it and causes problems so these fish were proper endangered and now they're being introduced back into the wild and Sean at Tropiquaria Zoo does all the goodies does all these live bearers all these amazing fish and breeds them all and the cool thing is with these ones is Sean has a pond not sure I've got a shot of it anywhere that I've got saved but I'll have a look and see if I've got a shot of it if not go and watch one of my Tropiquaria Zoo video tours and you'll see the pond he's got a pond in the main tropical house so there's reptiles and there's lizards and frogs and snakes and all sorts living in this big tropical house inside and there's this big pond that used to be like a tortoise enclosure and he'd done it as this wildlife barrier loads of valleys loads of plants and there is like no word of a lie like a million of these tequila split fins living in that pond like you just lean over it and it's like whoosh they all disappear and uh yeah so to be included in projects like that I've known Sean and I've worked with Tropiquaria Zoo in the shop for years but from I don't know how to describe it it's all down to you all following me along and allowing me to go and build a pond for a lynx you know we spent seven days building that pond um I filmed most of it I didn't didn't do a lot of the building but I want to thank you all for helping me to have those things and that's why I want to bring you along on as many as I can because it's amazing that I've been given this opportunity to help endangered species to help local zoos build ponds and to help them with fundraising and just all of this cool stuff so yeah huge huge thank you you know Sean does an amazing work in the aquarium and all of the staff at Tropiquaria Zoo do such great work and it's just nice to be able to highlight it I think it's just one of the things I like if I've got this platform now I like to be able to highlight things that are going on but uh let's we've got 30 seconds left to go I've probably talked too much to be honest but because Chester Zoo has been reintroducing them into the wild so yeah they're really cool little fish we're looking forward to them growing up but yeah we'll see how it grows in in a couple of weeks what does this say so these fish will be on loan from Tropiquaria Zoo for the next few months be sure to visit them or keep up to date through zoogeneticus zoogeneticus zoogeneticus I can't say that zoogeneticus I can't say that tequila split fin live bear or the tequila split fin because there is a few split fin live bearers I believe um I think this is like a week or so later where the plants have grown up a bit um and we did have lots of babies from these like even though it was only like a a 60-ish litre aquarium a 90 centimetre no 90 litre aquarium isn't it 60 centimetres 90 litres we had loads of babies from these fish and if you want to get involved actually in this another um organisation I guess that is sort of close to my heart and again I've sort of done videos with them and been to some of their auctions it's the British Live Bearer Association so if you want to be part of like not necessarily breeding projects like this but if you want to get your hands on some rare or endangered live bearers or even some of the more rarer different live bearers then the British Live Bearer Association is a great place to start so I think you can find them on different social media channels and things I'll try and link their website there'll be a lot of links in the description but I'll link their website down in the description as well and again it's given me the opportunity to talk to people like that and like going into 2026 we have got some amazing projects lined up with um I can't give many of it away to be honest with you um more ponds for more zoos hopefully um possibly some setups for in more endangered fish and endangered inverts um what else can I give away oh some talks at fish clubs around the country so there's a couple of clubs three or four that I'm in talks with at the moment we're trying to work out dates where I can go up and and obviously the problem is like this is now my livelihood so I need to I can't just go and burn 300 quid spending three weeks traveling around the country visiting different um sort of clubs and things like that I have to be I have to have a vague business mind which is weird and horrible but you know it doesn't earn us millions it gets us by so I do have to make sure that I can actually fund these things but yeah we are going to a different few different fish clubs and things so watch out for them on my channels on social media channels because I'll be showing off where we're going what we're doing um and then even into I'm even thinking now you know you'll have shows like aqua um and different ones hopefully coming up next year and fish fate we might be going to that's still yet to be seen there will be an announcement on why I might um watch this space on that we've got 14 seconds left let's finish this 14 seconds and see how this tank looked wow that was a uh brief end to be honest with you um it's probably good actually to be fair because one funny thing about youtube is for me I like watching the cinematic piece at the end of a video so when you get all the cool shots of the fish swimming around and how they're interacting with the scape and um you know how they're doing maybe a week or two weeks later whatever whatever however it has been filmed I like that bit that last few minutes is the coolest bit for me interestingly looking at retention rates which is the graph where people click off of your videos your video will go through and like you know setting up the tank it's clicking along you know you're installing the filter yeah still going along and it goes along and then it gets to the point where you show off the tank at the end of a video and this is a weird bit of insight and it might be interesting it might not be but when it gets to that bit after the first maybe 20 seconds once the majority of people have seen that tank oh yeah I know what that looks like now like it literally the retention rate goes and having that last piece of footage for me where it just sort of drops off and it's music and all that actually doesn't really work that well for the channel and actually means people click off 30 seconds earlier maybe two minutes earlier than I would want them to I'd want them to finish the video and see what the tank looks like so it's really weird and that's why I've started talking in my outros and actually giving you information about how this plant has done and how that plant has done because then there's a bit of an educational element to the end of the video whilst I'm overlaying the footage and I've just realised it's really late and this tank is slowly going off but yeah that is really cool to see that tank and see how far I've come and I can see how I made it four minutes now it's like four days of work and I made it into a four minute 30 second video I don't even know if it is up on still social media platforms you might be able to find it in places I hope you've enjoyed this it's been a bit of a weird one I don't know why one of my dogs is trying to get up on the sofa it's been a different one these lights are going out because I can see them slowly dimming as we are talking and yeah I just want to say a massive thank you to all of you for following along if you haven't subscribed yet but you watch some of my content be lovely if you would go and subscribe because it means nothing to the channel as in monetary gain or anything like that it's just a nice number to have hitting that hundred thousand you know I was chatting to Graham from Aquarium Adventures about it hitting those milestones is is nothing really but it's nice it makes you feel good it's very strange um so yeah no thank you so much to all of you I don't know what else to say bit of a weird one looking back at where I started and how the video started maybe I'll have a look at some of those early other videos as well and just see you know moving from setting up a 90 litre aquarium in my old shop to having a 600 litre community aquarium in my house that we're going to be adding fish to in the next couple of weeks so watch out for that yeah anyway much love to you all I'll finish it the same way I finished that one much love and as always hopefully see you in the next one