New Client Aquascape + Update from the Aquarium Gardens Aquascaping Showroom.

Look at that, look how stunning that is with those fish darting around the tank there. Now this won't be staying in the showroom any longer than a couple of days. Hi everyone, welcome back to the Aquarium Garden showroom. It's the end of the day after another busy Saturday here and as I always do, I'd like to give an update on the aquariums, the aquascapes here. I think it's been a couple of months since I did my last update and there's been a few changes so let's dive right in because the first change is Ty's aquascape here. Now this has been set up for a couple of months now and it's really settled in quite well. It's had a trim look this week so you can see all the stems have been trimmed and it's looking really good, really really nice indeed. The colour from the Rotala last week was amazing, this is Rotala Blood Red here. As it's been trimmed it's just going to grow back and hopefully we'll get a lovely, some more deeper reds in a couple of weeks. I'm really really fond of this scape, it's classic nature aquarium style with colour, small textures, the wood in the middle there but very heavily planted. It's quite stable now as well because the amount of plants that are in there and it's been running a couple of months now, it runs really smoothly now. We've got some fish in there as well, here are the Ilaki Tetras or Reed Tetras and these are beautiful. We've had a lot of comments on these recently, people asking what these fish are, where do you get them from. The answer to that question is that I don't come across them quite that often but I saw them the other day in the fish shop and just had to get them. They're all pretty much fully grown as well, this is about as big as they get but I don't know if you can see it on camera but you do get this kind of bluey, very faint, subtle blue on the main body of them as well as their eyes, their little black and white tails as well. So a lovely, subtle, delicate, dainty fish that I'm really really fond of. It's a good choice I think for this tank because it doesn't take away from the colour of the plants. There's a lot of bright reds and obviously a lot of green and the fish don't stand out or take away from the colour that the plants are offering so it really just gives a nice bit of silver movement amongst the plants and I think it's a great choice. Powered by the Twinstar 600S this aquarium is so you know the kind of original almost LED lights, certainly one of the first LEDs that we started selling and we're on version four of this light at the moment so Twinstar very renowned and well known for excellent lights for plant growth and the colour rendition so we're a big fan of those. There's going to be some updates soon from a newer version but I'll give more details out about that as and when that's released but it will largely remain unchanged but there will be some improvements to it. So anything else I can say about this tank, it is an Eheim Aquarium, a ClearScape 73, the 73 litres, it's 60 long, 35 high and 35 centimetres front to back and it's got the light screen on there as well from Life Aqua, Life Aqua light screen to finish it off. The next change I wanted to talk about was this tank here, now this won't be staying in the showroom any longer than a couple of days because this is actually for a client that I've planted up today actually so it's kind of a new service we're offering, we have done it before in the past but we're hoping to do it a lot more in the future and basically we can hard scape and plant a tank for you to take home anywhere up to 60 litres because it gets a little bit difficult transporting aquariums that are fully scaped bigger than that, this sort of size. Now this is a 60 litre aquarium, it's actually a Superfish 60 cube so it's 40 by 40 by 40 centimetres and yeah the client sent a few pictures in of scapes that he liked and we have basically based it on that for him and we've got, so I'll run through the materials, we've got the dark redmoor or black redmoor wood here, there's about three large pieces and a couple of smaller pieces, we've got the grey mountain stone here, we've also used some geo stone as well, you can actually use those stones together, they work quite well, same colour, just different varying textures on them but this piece here in particular, I had to put this at the front because look at the cracks and the detail on that, so it's kind of this perimeter here of rocks going around the front and around the side here and behind all that is soil, you can't really see it actually because it's fully planted but there is soil behind there and the rocks and the gravel and the filter wall that are poked between the rocks is holding all that soil behind in the corner there and of course as you saw I planted some some things in the soil there, some cryptolansi, some hydrocotylecephala, hydrocotyle tripartita japan back there as well and some smaller crypts and things in the mid-ground between the rocks here which are also going into the soil as well. Now on the wood we were very much going by the pictures the client sent in and the pictures that he sent in featured bulbitis a lot so that's our main fern on the wood here, I've also added bulbitis deformis here which is actually a form of bulbitis that's like a miniature fern and it can grow out of the water quite well as well so I've attached it up here with some glue and covered it with some moss and the the foliage will be out of the water and the roots will be underwater so it's really quite a nice option, you can grow this underwater as well but it needs high co2 and high lighting, can be quite a difficult tricky plant, growing it out of the water absolutely no problem. And then moving around the tank we've got various Bucephalandra, this is Bucephalandra thea right here, got some Bucephalandra thea green, that's that one down there, we've got some Anubias minicoin in the centre there, a Christmas moss which you might might have spotted on various branches, the grassy one at the front here that's Eriocaulon Vietnam, also got a bit around the side here and then next to that is the Anubias coffee folia so a larger texture, larger shaped sized leaf and then anything else that I can spot, oh the Java fern windlover put a little bit further down just to continue the ferns down through the scape and then we've got Cryptocoryne albida brown, this little brown and narrow leaf crypt there, just dropping around in the rocks. I think that's more or less it for the plants overall and this is a non-co2 aquarium, we have discussed co2 with the client which he might add co2 later on, of course if you do add co2 you can then have a wider variety of plants, perhaps some more colour and some more difficult smaller finer texture plants such as carpeting plants for example that you could use and you may want to upgrade the light if you use co2 as well because of course if you are using co2 you'll be able to use a stronger more colourful light that can grow your plants much better so it gives you more options but this is designed to be a low-tech low light nano cube for a better actually, so we've got a spin glass pipe that we can use on here with an external filter and it'll be for his better. So really enjoyed making this actually, as you might not be surprised any chance to scape a tank and I will grab that opportunity, so it took me overall I'd say probably three to four hours throughout this week in between doing other jobs including running the shop and things but I kind of did it throughout the week in between other jobs so it's quite it's something nice to take my time over this week and really make something special for the client so this is what we can do for you if you're brand new to the hobby or even if you're experienced and just want someone else to scape for you and give you some ideas or get you started with your scape it's a great option to come down and say hey I want a tank that's you know maybe a 30 centimeter cube a 60p or something I would like you to scape it send us some pictures and ideas of what you might want the tank to look like we'll do our best to you know put our trust in us to scape it for you and then we transport it home we can pack this tank with bubble wrap seal it over get it safely into your car and a tank of this size no bigger you'll be able to transport home and then crack on from there and it's now the client can put this is actually going in his office so he can put this straight in his office fill it up and start his journey with aquascaping so do get in touch if you're interested in that that's something that we offer moving around the showroom the ADA 60p here is completely covered in mounds of Monte Carlo and um at Hemianthus Calatrico in East Cuba something just popped into my head it looks a little bit like Teletubbyland you know with the kind of hills and the rolling green hills that's kind of put me off this scape now a little bit I'm going to trim it down and expose some of this beautiful dragonstone we've got here so basically pulling chunks out of this dividing replanting so we can expose more of that rock and get the original layout back it still looks great as it is you know a nice green bomb you know it's it's still lush growth like that it's still lovely to appreciate so but I will be trimming that soon still going nicely the Hyperbar 60 light here you see the color rendition of that light the greens absolutely pop with that light so that's the Skylight Hyperbar very very fond of those lights it's run by an Eheim filter here you go that's a 350T inline co2 the full works on this tank so we've got a nice high-end setup it's an ADA backlight as well the light screen from ADA and yeah that's probably a good couple of months old maybe more now maybe three months old now that tank and moving around the showroom here we've got George's scape the light's just dimming down at the moment it's on a ramp down so it's a little bit dimmer than it normally is and this is George's scape largely filled with crypts now and ferns and all this beautiful hydrocotyle swooping down into the tank the fish are just as lovely and as playful as they always are look at that they just think they're getting fed but yeah they're always out there the fish there these are pentasona barbs and harlequin rasbora I'll feed them after the video because they look very hungry also the Skylight Hyperbar up here this is a 75XL Hyperbar this is the largest that they do suitable for a three foot tank as you can see suspended on one of our Life Aqua suspension bars this is a cabinet stand to attach the cabinet there as you can see moving on to the next 90 centimeter tank adjacent it's actually connected by this bit of wood here me and George farm escape these together at the same time we put this bit of wood over the middle and the plants are just growing beautifully over the top to connect both tanks together it's largely dominated by this hydrocotyle verdicillata but we've also got Anubias gracilis coming through which grows very well out of the water some Hygrophila here which has lovely purple flowers actually a lot of the purple flowers are gone now and what else for more Anubias gracilis we've got Echinodorus parviflorus coming out the back of the tank here there's loads and loads of baby plantlets I'm just going to rest it on there there we go looks nice there so it's creating loads of new plants from those stems coming out of the tank there then diving into the tank we've got a big shoal of Cardinal Tetras always excuse me always a classic because the fish are blue and red and contrast and stand out very well from everything else behind it so a lovely fun fish and then we've got largely green plants in here in fact entirely green in here got the Hemianthus calatricoides Cuba the Christmas moss on the wood there we've got Myriophyllum Guyana we've got a Carpet of Monte Carlo which you can see has been replanted I only did this replanted it last week and now the tank was 15 months old so the carpet got a bit tired over time so what I did briefly I'll just tell you was take out the old Monte Carlo peeled it all the way siphoned out all of the old soil because it was quite old and dirty by then I reapplied more fresh soil tropical soil I used and then I took four or five more pots of the Monte Carlo divided those up into plugs and replanted it into the fresh soil did a big water change afterwards and that is a new carpet freshly done so in a couple of weeks that'll be fully grown in all of these gaps will be filled I'll have a nice fresh carpet that can go for another year again that's if we keep the escape going for another year probably rescape it at some point it's still looking very nice at the moment so I should think at least another six months out of escape definitely the grassy plants are Sagittarius subulata mostly at the back there pretty cool lighting ADA Solo RGB and filtration is the Oase Biomaster moving on to the 1500 has the same lighting except this is the version 2 Solo RGBs now they're set at 69% and that's what it came set as I think it's the same brightness as the old light but you can actually increase this even brighter 100% is very very bright so I'd recommend that for taller tanks I think but we've got it set at specifically at 69% at the moment it seems to be just the right amount for these plants and this size tank now you may have seen this tank a few times before on YouTube and on Instagram it's now about eight months old roughly and we've really utilized the size of the tank in terms of plants and fish so there's a lot of plants in here that we perhaps wouldn't use in smaller tanks such as the Aponogeton these big leaf plants back here the Nymphaea lotus which is they're quite large as well big chunks of bulbitis big crypts and ginormous hardscape as well now the fish they've actually just gone hiding around the back there they'll probably come out if I move away now there what there are is yellowtail congos again a bigger fish than we would normally use in our tanks because this is such a big display we've gone for a slightly bigger fish there they are all behind there I'll actually try and feed them in a minute if I just swing you around here now we've got this new food here this is Vitalis tropical pellets if I get some of those and see if I can get these fish to come out they've been out all day actually and they've suddenly gone really shy so if I put some food in there they may just come out they definitely will come out because they always do when they're feeding them there they are going crazy so congo tetras but different because of the yellowtail version you might be able to see yeah their yellowtail is absolutely beautiful crazy fish lovely fish a lot bigger as you can see than we'd normally use in our aquariums but using this this this tank's full potential here with bigger texture plants and bigger fish look at that look how stunning that is with those fish darting around the tank there feeding time is amazing on this aquarium you know you feed them twice a day and it is a joy every time to feed those fish really really love it moving around conscious this video is already 17 minutes long hopefully you're still watching this is an empty tank as you can see this is an aquascaper 900 that's going to be scaped soon so big news is if you haven't seen already we've got a workshop happening here on the 19th and 20th of July so we'll be closed that weekend for the workshop and if you're lucky enough to have got tickets because they did sell out really quickly we have got very very special guests coming Stephen Chong and Masashi Ono you will have heard those names before if you've been into aquascaping for a while or follow the ILPLC competitions these are very highly skilled aquascapers masters in their field and i'm delighted to have them coming over for the weekend to do two workshops back-to-back we've got Masashi Ono on the Saturday and Stephen Chong will be aquascaping on the Sunday each will have a 900 to do each in their own styles we will be filming it and we will be putting that on YouTube we have a cameraman for it so that will be something to look forward to you will not miss even if you're not coming to the workshop there are only 20 tickets per workshop that have been sold out straight away but even if you're not seeing it in person we'll have a good quality video for you to watch these scapes so yeah as i said super delighted honoured to have them coming over to scape for us in the showroom here but yeah as i said we will be closed that weekend for the workshops that'll be the weekend of the 19th of July so yes to be soon to be scaped this one will also be torn down and scaped as well moving around lastly quickly we still got the Eheim 200 running here with the classic style nature aquarium we've got the Chihiros WRGB running that's going very well Black Neons, Cubotai, Rasbora, Glowlights, Tetras, lovely mix of fish amongst all this Schismatic Lotus and Crips and finally the Aquascaper 1200 they're still going strong the high maintenance aquarium with loads of fast-growing plants really love to try and keep this triangular curve going over here with the maintenance do another trim this week trim every two weeks it doesn't stop but it's worth it look at some very delicate manzanita coming out of the plants out this lush plant growth and the ever popular white cloud mountain minnows they swim around near the surface all day long really and they're really beautiful fish actually lights flickering a little bit i'm trying to get a bit of a close-up there we are lovely fish there's about sort of 50 or so of them in there so i'll leave it at that guys thanks very much for watching again and yeah as i said if you catch us in a couple of months time on youtube we'll have that video of the workshop out as soon as it's made available and it should be a really special one really really special Masashi Ono will be doing an Iwagumi in a classic style and Stephen Chong will be doing his thing in a more modern style with lots of crazy rocks and everything it would just be they're both super super talented scapers and so individual compared to each other as well so it'd be nice to get two completely different styles scaped in one weekend for the showroom so it'll be absolutely brilliant they're great guys as well really really looking forward to meeting them so i'll leave it on that on that note thanks very much for watching please do visit us when you can if you would like to see all these scapes in person and would like some advice the showrooms open monday to friday and saturday as well saturday nine until five monday to friday is nine until four of course you can shop online if you can't get to us and do need some supplies do give us an email or a ring if you need any help with ordering once again enjoy the sunny weather it's absolutely boiling outside so i'm going to go and enjoy the sun and have a and put my feet up for the evening thanks again to everyone who's coming today take care hope to see you too soon bye