Dramatic Aquatics - Shop under construction....

Well, here we are in a shop that is not mine. This one is being set up by a friend of mine in a place called Lanchester in the northeast of England. It's actually in a polytunnel which is going to get insulated and it's quite some size. I have to apologise to Andy who's setting this up because a few weeks ago I did come down whilst he was setting it up but the footage I took was absolutely terrible and by the time I got it edited they'd done so much more I thought I might as well wait until they got pretty much set up. to come back down and do another video so here it is this is dramatic aquatics and we're going to have a look around here early this morning we recognize this fella i've used that in one of my videos i'm actually donating that for their plant tank they're going to do something special with that put like some sort of vortex or whirlpool or something in it have the water coming over the outside there's a lot of good ideas on show here anyway you can see we've got led lights Shining through the glass here. I've also got it along the back of the tank as well and they change colour. Give a really flashy effect. This is finished off to a really high standard. Easy access. Just a really nice looking system. We've got three lots of tanks with a sump underneath. What's going to happen is going to be some sort of screen go on the roof and then the artist is going to paint it. Absolutely. We've got the 4mm Corex board. We're going to stick that up in place. The artist is going to come in down. He's going to give us what looks like you're in a big aquarium, so we're having manta rays up on the top of the shark, a pirate ship, we've got a turtle on the side where the bar's coming down on the roof, which you can see over there, the polystyrene wasn't still up. We're going to have a shark actually baiting this boat. It looks like it's coming out this way. Right. We're going to be baiting the boat, so really, really good. I've got a lot of room for dry stock. We've got the floating shelves, we've got nine of these in total. Polystyrene we've been using just to keep the sun out for the temperature in here. So how many tanks are in here altogether now? 152 tanks to start with. We've still got the big tank which is to go in the middle. And where we're standing now, there is a five foot octagon plant tank coming in. And then on the top of it, thanks to a very special friend who recorded my camera there, Ponguru, we're going to have a bio on the top which is going to have a whirlpool in there and it's going to be overflowing down into the big pond. When it comes to the thickness of the fish tanks from what we've looked, we could have had a weir in the back. But that means extra work times 152 weirs, it means plastic pipes and we did a great deal with the plumb centre and we're actually getting the chrome fittings which are a shower trap and we're getting those for reasonably about the same amount as it would cost for the fish stuff but it just gives a higher class of finish. So we've got the chrome there, we've got the LED lights coming out, we're going to get the ceiling done, the floors getting done. The theory behind it is we want to be gallery stroke aquatic shop instead of an aquatic shop. We're really, really going to try and get that feel. And over here, we've got a big tank to go in here. This is going to be great. This one's due in. I think next week we're going to have to wait for the artists to finish doing the ceiling first. Right. 2.9 metres long, 4 foot wide. We'll have lungfish, catfish, stingrays, anything big, arowanas, can all go into this tank. It's going to be tall as well, that one, isn't it? It's going to be 28 inches high, and then we've got the top of the one as well. Right. So underneath each one of these systems is a sump. And you can see by the amount of dividers that are in here, it's going to go up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. Water's going to spend a long time in that sump. And they're actually quite deep as well, aren't they? Quite far back. Is that two foot? They are. They're two foot wide. These ones over here because, again, the floor's uneven. So these ones are only 13 inches tall. Yeah. The bigger ones they're 18 inches tall but again they go back two foot and they're six foot long as well yeah then we've got 55 watt uvs to put on there for the water going back up and into the system and this is what's going to be used inside the sumps in there we've got some filter socks what a filter sock is it's basically just a very fine sock which hangs over the side of your sump so your return comes in here pours water in and it collects all the muck So when that one's clogged, you'd just take it out the sump and swap it for a clean one. You'd clean this one out and return it. You'd just use them in rotation. They're an excellent idea. A reasonably new idea, but very, very effective. Pretty much does away with the need for any foams. That would be all your mechanical filtration. Now by way of an experiment, I've brought 20 kilos of BioHome Maxi Ultimate, the big red one down, And I've also brought 25 kilos of pumice down as well. The idea behind that is, in the discus tanks and cichlid tanks and so on, South American, that's going to go in the sump. In the African cichlid sump, that's going to go in. The pumice raises the pH. It's got a specific pH of about 8, so it's perfect for Malawi tanks and also live bearer tanks, koi, goldfish, that sort of thing. It's a very, very good filtration media. It's a lot cheaper than bio-foam as well. But it does have that advantage, or disadvantage, of raising the pH, so it's not suitable for the likes of discus, tetras, all of your South American stuff, most of the Asian fish. That would be best suited to bio-foam. The other sumps in the shop are going to get filled with alpha grog, so there will be a similar bio load in each one of the systems and what I'm hoping is over the next few months as the fish get stocked and the tanks mature and the filters mature, I want to test to see how the nitrate comes down, hopefully in the tanks with the bio-foam and the pumice compared to the alpha grog. So that's why I brought that down to test that. That'll be an ongoing experiment. So this one here, this one here in the corner is going to be for Discus? This system is going to be for the Discus. For all Discus? Well, the stuff and acidic stuff as well, but we're hoping to get these two. Doing with the aquatic plants and all of the different minerals, so we'll be trying at least a few of the one on this side and we'll try the DL... Deer? Deerling? These two bigger tanks, they're going to be planted out, like a planted discus tank. So you're going to try two different types of aquatic soil in there, are you? Absolutely, yeah. So we'll pick one for this side, we'll have a different substrate for this side, and then we'll decorate and plant it out, and we'll just see how they go. That'll be good to compare. You can plant it out with the same plants, can't you? Absolutely. That's what it's all about. It's all about trying new stuff, you know, the way that we've got the filtration going. The way that we're doing the lights, the ceiling, everything, it's all just about doing things in a different way. Using shower traps for the plumbing, again it's doing things in a different way but it just makes it so much more pleasurable on the eye. And with the LED's, we make the feature out of the glasses instead of trying to hide it. Exactly. I mean this is, these are the raw tanks, they've just been put in, ready to be plumbed in and fitted with the covers and so on, but you can see even there, Everything's finished off to a good standard. And that's what it looks like when it gets finished. That's really, really smart. With these big sumps in, you're going to have exceptionally healthy water in these systems. Good quality fish. Now obviously I've just come down when the shop is pretty well on in its development. But if you want to see it being developed from scratch, check out Andy's channel. It's called Dramatic Aquatics. I'll put the link in the video description. Thanks very much for watching this video. And I'm sure from Andy, thank you very much for watching his videos as well. Thank you very much. See you soon. Thank you, Richard. No worries.