Creating A Giant No Filter Vase Aquarium Step by step Aquascape Tutorial

Welcome back everybody, I hope you're doing well. Today we're making a very large planted no filter vase. I'm excited, hope you guys are excited as well. Let's get started. So I've actually made a no filter planted vase two years ago and that was kind of my first experience with no filter aquariums. So it was just a very simple setup, we had a vase, we had a light and that was all the technical equipment. The plants were doing the filtration and every so often I would just do a water change and a little bit of maintenance. It was very easy to care for, we also had a thriving colony of cherry shrimp and I really got a lot of enjoyment out of that setup. I think it was also one of the most viewed videos on my channel right now. So at some point I got rid of it but I always told myself like I want to do something like that again but maybe on a slightly larger scale. Yeah so a few weeks ago I went to my local garden center to look for something slightly bigger and somehow I came home with this behemoth. So this thing measures 40 centimeters tall and it's 28 centimeters across so it holds roughly 25 liters. Yeah I think that's roughly six or seven US gallons. So that's a 35 liter tank right there so you can kind of see the yeah the scale. It's a it's a pretty big vase. So they had a lot of these things in my local garden center but I chose this one because it has relatively thick glass. I think this is maybe three or four millimeters something like that and the base is relatively thick as well. So sometimes you know these glass vases can be very thin and fragile because you know normally a vase you would only fill up to about here because the rest will be just flowers or a bouquet or something like that you know. But I made sure that this one is quite big. Yeah I think this is a good vessel for our our new no filter scape. Okay first thing I want to do is cut out a little foam mat for this vase. So I have these foam mats underneath all my things and they're just a bit of a security measure. You can imagine once this vase is filled up with water and rocks and gravel it's quite heavy. And if you have like a tiny object sitting underneath this vase that can become a pressure point and actually can actually break the glass. So we want to of course prevent that from happening. So just a little foam mat this costs absolutely nothing. I'm just going to cut out the circle that's it. Okay that's our foam mat done. Now we need a light. This was a bit tricky because of the round corners you know not every chrome light fits on there. But I think I found something good. I recently got a few new products from Dennerle. They've also sent me this trocar style two 8 watts. So this is for tanks from 30 to 60 liters 1280 lumens and it's 6500 kelvin. So it's a nice daylight. So let's see if this fits on this vase. Here we go that's the light. It's quite big but it's perfect for this vase because it has this sort of like a clip on the back. It's a little bit flexible as well. So we should be able to clamp this on top of the vase. Here we go. Boom we have light. Here we go that's our light installed. Looking good. It's quite bright. It's quite powerful. Maybe a bit too powerful actually for a low-tech setup. But we can always just use a bunch of floating plants to dim the light a bit. Let's move on let's go make a nice hardscape. I've already been playing around with the hardscape these past few days. So I know exactly what we're going to make today. I have a couple of really nice pieces of wood. This stuff right here is called endwood. It's a product from strideways. And I've already used this piece once before in my no filter guppy aquarium. I'll overlay a clip so you guys can see how that looked. And I really like this wood because it's very easy to work with. I mean this stuff doesn't lose any tannins. It doesn't grow any mold like some other types of wood do. Red marlwood for example. And yeah it has some really nice lines. So I have three pieces of this. Two big ones and one small one. And then I also have three big rocks. This is called a relief stone. It's basically lava rock but it's a bit more dense and it has a bit more character than your regular black lava rock. So yeah really good stuff. Let me show you guys what I have in mind. So this is basically what I had in mind. I think it looks pretty good. I like all the curves that we have going on here. So I would like to have some cosmetic sand in the foreground here. Then in the background we can fill in with aquasol and substrate and make that a good biological filter. Because we're not going to have any filtration here. And then we can just add in a load of plants. I think it's going to look pretty good. Now these pieces would have been outside so they're a bit wet. But I'm pretty sure that they are still going to float up to the surface. So I'm just going to glue everything down just to be safe. And as always I'm going to use my cotton pads for that. So for anyone who hasn't seen this method yet I always like to use these cotton pads. Kind of pull them apart and then just take little pieces like that. Kind of push them together. And then with my tweezers I'll grab them and then I'll wedge them in between the two points that I want to connect. So here in front for example the piece of wood and the rocks are touching each other. So I'm going to wedge it in between there. You can see that it's tightly wedged in between the rock and the wood. So now we take some liquid type super glue and we basically saturate that entire cotton piece with the super glue. And if you need a really strong bond you can take a little bit of baking soda. Just sprinkle a little bit of that baking soda on top of the cotton pad. Then apply some more glue and then you have a super strong bond like nothing is going to move there anymore. Of course this will kind of alter the water parameters a little bit as well. So it might raise the water hardness a little bit. So if you're using a lot of this just make sure you do an extra water change or something. Okay we're done gluing. I basically just repeated that process about five or six times and now everything is just completely stuck together. Nothing's going to move anymore. So now we can move on to the substrate. So I have a few things I want to use. First of all Wetland Ionian Black. This is basically just crushed black lava rock and this will be a good home for beneficial bacteria which is something we definitely need a lot of in a no filter setup. Then I have some leftover fruval stratum. So this aquasol contains some nutrients as well. Then in the foreground, so basically that area, I want to have some nice cosmetic sand. So I've got some real sand, tigris. In my first no filter phase I had some cosmetic sand in the foreground as well. One issue that kept coming back is that the aquasol would start rolling forward and start mixing with the sand. That just looks very unsightly. So I have some small gaps here in underneath the rocks and on the sides. So I'm going to close those gaps with a little bit of filter wool. And this you might see it in the beginning but after a while that will get dirty and it'll get dark and we're not going to see it anymore. Okay there's all the gaps closed. Yeah it just looks a little bit odd right now but by the end of this video none of that will be visible anymore. Now we can move on to the substrate. I'll first fill in the layer of crushed lava rock. Then I'll top that with the fluorostratum. And I might do the sand straight away. Maybe I will save it for later. Okay that's the substrate layer in. Let's take a look from the top. So we have quite a thick substrate layer. I think in the back it's almost like 10 centimeters. That's good you know. Especially in these no filter tanks you want to have quite a thick substrate layer because the substrate will do a lot of the filtration for you. And also it's quite a high vase you know. It's 40 centimeters. So if you have a higher substrate then the stems will be closer to the light as well. And you will not have these like bare stems with without any leaves. So a thick substrate layer. Now let's move on with the cosmetic sand. I've also washed some of these small pebbles. So they look a little bit, they're almost the same color as the black lava rock. So they will match nicely and give a nice contrast in the white sand. All right then. I think that's the hardscape done. A little look from the top. Nice. Yeah the sand really brought it together. The small little pebbles as well. Some nice details. Most of the white filter floss has already been covered up as well. So now we just need to figure out which plants we want to use. And as always we have a beautiful healthy selection of plants kindly provided by Dennerle Plants. So we have some nice in vitro giant moss. I have a crypt here. The crypt wendetii broadleaf. Some Bucephalandra of course. Bucerambu brown. And they have a new plant here. The Anubias Nana Jade. This is a jade green Anubias. Really really beautiful. Yeah the color is not really showing but it's a really interesting color. And then here we have some water sprite. We have some liliopsis. We have some myriophyllum and a few other plants. I'm going to start with this. Probably end up using a lot more than this but let's just start with this. Okay so plants are all prepared. But I do have some doubts about the Anubias Jade. The jade green. The leaves are quite big and I think it's going to kind of ruin the sense of scale that we have going on right here. For example I was thinking maybe somewhere over here inside that gap for example you know. I know it's quite big you know. It just yeah it's a beautiful plant. I just don't think it really fits in this particular layout. Over here in this aquarium I have some really small Anubias. Look at that. I think that will actually work much better in this cape. Okay I'm going to start in the center area here. There's a lava rock underneath it so I just need to check where I can actually plant him. So here's a rock. Here's a rock. This part here is all empty. We have a rock again. So there's not really a lot of space but we can make it work. So the first plant to go in there will be the Blyxa Japonica. I've been using this a lot lately and it really is one of my favorite plants. Then on the left side I'm going to plant a Myriophyllum Guyana. So this is a very small very delicate stem plant. But it's really beautiful. It doesn't grow too fast either so it should be relatively low maintenance as well. So it's good. Then in front of the Guyana I'm going to plant Linophylla Vietnam. This is another small and slow growing stem plant. And just in front of that I'm going to plant one bunch of the Cryptowendigia Broadleaf. I've not used this Crypto a whole lot but I feel like because it's in vitro it stays relatively small as well. So it should work in that position. I'm gonna wedge another one over there. The roots will eventually find their way into the substrate. Then I'm going to use a little bit of this Giant Moss to cover up those last bits of white filter floss. I've just applied a little bit of super glue to the moss. And then I'm just gonna press it in there. Then the in vitro Bucephalandra. I'm actually going to glue them to some of these smaller hooks like I've already used in the foreground here. And then I can just place them on top of there and just kind of move them around wherever I like. Yeah I think we're almost there. I've planted the water spider behind the wood. I think that looks nice. And on the right side I've planted some of the Lilyopsis. I think we have a little bit more space in between there for one stem plant. So we should grab something red. I have some crazy red Rotala orange juice in this tank. So I think I'm gonna take a few stems of that and plant that in the vase as well. Okay I think that's our XXL vase planted. All done. I'm really happy with the end result. I think it's gonna look amazing. I like that we still kept most of the hardscape visible. Yeah let's uh let's fill it up. So the vase has been up and running for three weeks now. It's definitely grown in a bit. It's looking good. So it's ready for some inheritance. I'm thinking we should definitely get some shrimp. But maybe some fish as well. I mean it's a vase but it's still quite big. I mean it's 25 liters. So I think it's big enough for some small fish. But I'm just not really sure what to get yet. So I'm in my local fish shop. Hames. And I mean in terms of shrimp we are definitely spoiled for choice. So they have loads of red Reillys. They've got the blue ones. They've got orange ones. We've got some really nice crystal reds. Yellow shrimp. Crystal blacks. And the red ones as well. And here they have the green jades. So they have loads of options. Water is slightly murky here. I think they just did some maintenance. But yeah which one should we go for? I already have the orange ones. I already have the blue ones. And I have the red ones as well. But I think I'm actually leaning more towards the red ones. Because they will definitely pop in that vase you know. And then in terms of fish they have small chili rasboras. So these guys are really nice. They could definitely be a good option for the vase. I was also looking at these guys. It's a bit hard to see but these are called emerald rasboras. So slightly different than the galaxies. But still a very nice fish. Maybe just a bit too big for the vase. I'm not sure. Yeah I think I'm going to go for the red cherry shrimp. I already have some at home. But these guys are just better colored. They just look nicer. And they will definitely stand out in the vase. And a small group of the chili rasboras as well. I think that's just a really nice combination. We're back home. So we've got eight of the chili rasboras. And I've got ten of the red cherry shrimp. Super exciting. Fun fact the cherry shrimp are actually bigger than the chili rasboras. Yeah they've been acclimating for a little bit. And we're going to release them soon. I'm sure some people are wondering like Mark how on earth are you going to do maintenance on this vase. Because it's quite tall. And I'm not lying. That was actually something I kind of overlooked as well. I knew that I wanted to place the vase on the shelf. But kind of forgot that there would be limited space on top. It's actually it's actually fine. I mean doing water changes is easy. I've also got a little algae magnet here on the side. So that's also going to make maintenance easier. So really the only difficult thing will be trimming plants. But it's a no filter setup. The plants are growing quite slowly. So it should be fine. Oh by the way we actually already have some fish in the vase. Two days ago I added two otocinclus just to kind of help with the algae cleanup. Not like there was any algae. But just to make sure the tank stays nice and clean you know. The only thing I'm having doubts about is the cosmetic sand. Because as you can see there's already some fish poop and snail poop visible. So that's not very attractive. But if it starts to bother me then I can always swap to some gravel or something. Yeah fish and shrimp are acclimated. So let's release them. Caught all the cherry shrimp. So let's release them first. I think I saw a few buried as well. So that's nice. Should have some babies soon. They're really super red. They're big as well. It's gonna be fun to see because the vase sort of has a magnifying effect. So the piece of wood in the middle for example looks much bigger right now. So I think the shrimp will look much bigger as well. That's cool. Yeah I think going for the red cherry shrimp. I mean even though they're quite standard and basic. They're still very nice and they will definitely stand out in here. I mean we mostly have green plants. We do have the red stems on the side there. But they're just not as vibrant red anymore as when I first planted them. So these cherry shrimp are definitely going to stand out. Really happy with that. Okay here come the chile rasboras. I've moved the camera closer because these guys are tiny. Literally half the size of the cherry shrimp. Here you go guys. Welcome to your new home. It's going to be quite difficult to get a good focus on these chile rasboras. They're so small. They're very pale right now as well. But last weekend I was in the UK at Horizon Aquatics and they had a display tank there with some chile rasboras as well. And they were super super red. Never seen chile rasboras that vibrant red before. But it would be nice if these guys can get the same color.