New Saltwater Fish and Acclimation Process - Fish Room Update Ep. 1

Alrighty, so today we're back inside the Denny's Aquarium saltwater fish room and we will be taking a look at my 40 gallon shallow reef tank because we bought some new fish. I've been asking for your suggestions for a long time now and today I finally pulled the trigger and bought some fish for this awesome low-tech setup. We will also check out the frag tank right over there and I have something very special for this soft coral aquarium so stay tuned as we unpack these fish and get them acclimated to this aquarium. Now some of you may have known this already but this is actually my bedroom. I sleep right over there every night so it is true I don't sleep anywhere else and I'm feeling a bit lonely. I have these two clownfish over here another pair of clownfish there and two small damselfish over here but that's it. I wanted more fish and also these corals all consume a ton of nutrients so I've always been lacking nitrates and phosphates which the corals need in order to grow. So I was thinking about adding a few more fish to in theory just make the tank more dirty because that's what my corals needed. I've been experiencing some good growth with a lot of these corals especially these soft corals but it can always be better right? So I thought it was a good idea to just take you along with me as we get these fish acclimated to the tank. Just very simple I'm using my iPhone to film this and I just want to showcase everything to you. It's a bit of a different video style for me that you're that you might be used to but I hope you enjoy it. So we have these bags and I'm still not revealing anything and I still don't know how many I bought because they are inside these colored bags which are basically there's some type of plastic in there that will probably keep them warmer for a longer period of time. And then inside we have the fish two stigmatura blennies. They are great algae eaters because I have an algae problem in my 40 gallon tank which we'll check out in a minute. Next up we have let's see a royal grama. This is such a nice fish the front of it is purple as you can see and the back of the fish is yellow or orange and it's just perfectly cut in two. It's a really weird fish but I like it. The third bag oh we're putting this one back because we're saving the best for last. This goes into the soft coral aquarium but that requires a different acclimation container. So let's see what else we got we're now up to two three three fish. So in here I have three more fish so we bought a total of six fish. These are chromis damselfish. I want to add to the two other ones I have. I started off with three but unfortunately one of them died so they like to be in groups so I bought three more so now I have five of them. And I hope my clownfish stop abusing them so much. Like these clownfish over here they are super aggressive they always chase after the damselfish here. You saw it and they probably get stressed out. Here the other one is hiding right over there it's pretty stressed and if it doesn't work out I'll probably just remove these clownfish and put them inside my frag tank over there. I think that will be the last option for it because just keeping two clownfish in this tank is a bit boring no? I want to keep more of them and if only these fish are a problem I'll just have to find something else for them. All right I can't just put these fish right into the aquarium so what I'll do is I'll grab a container and release all the fish into there because they came from the same fish store the same fish rack and I want to acclimate them to the water parameters of my own aquarium and of course the temperature. They haven't been in the bag for too long the fish store is about three minutes from my home it's called Frank's Deer and Shop in Spijkens in the Netherlands and yeah I think the temperature is still pretty similar but just to be sure I want to be very careful when acclimating them. And maybe you're wondering Danny where do you keep all your mess? Where are all the fish containers and tubes and maintenance equipment? Well let me show you. In here I have a reefbot lab. In there I have a big mess of cables for all the equipment I have on here. The power heads, two lighting, the lighting for this awesome sign it was made by Aquatic Dreams from Austin, Texas. It has a copper finish, no a smoky copper finish to it and it really looks amazing with the spotlight I added to it. And of course I can change the lead colors behind it to any color or any shade of color I like but more on that later. Down here I have four cans. This one just has RO water in it to add to the tank when the water evaporates. It's just on the dosing pump I don't know it it doesn't dose enough but it's just like I have a dosing tube holder for four. The fifth tube you can see is for the reefbot lab but just yeah it feels useless to just use three of them. So for the time being I added a container of RO water. I think it doses about 500 milliliters a day or something and the evaporation is about one liter every day but I'm not too sure. So I still have to do it manually every week. Then I have three other containers. It has magnesium, alkalinity and calcium. It automatically doses it to the aquarium to supply the SPS and LPS corals. Basically every coral that has a calcified base with enough supplements in order to grow their skeletons and maintain them in good condition and it's been working out pretty well. Then we have these drawers and they are a mess. Here is where I keep all my equipment. You have airline tubing which we'll be using to drip acclimate these fish. We have a gravel vacuum, a normal hose, this thing to clean the glass, a flipper to scrape off the algae. We even have a small toolbox over here and a frag rack, some duct tape. You always need duct tape so perfect time for this. I mean perfect drawer for this. And we have some foam to pack up some corals if we want to sell them to other hobbyists. Just a random lid for a container. I could use the container right now for the drip acclimation process but I have no idea where it is. And then more mess. Frag haulers, equipment from before I upgraded everything. Some bottles which I don't use like liquid veggie. It's probably past its due date, yeah. January 2023. We're currently almost in December of 2023 so might as well just take it out already. Put it aside because I'm not feeding that to the fish anymore. Some alcohol, no idea why it's in there. Some frag plugs. I could even build a small new cabinet with it. This is some nitrates. I used to dose a bit of nitrates to get the nutrient levels up but I stopped doing that a long time ago because now I'm just feeding more and today we're adding new fish. Same with this. It's all past its due date. I'm such a terrible reef keeper. Let's close it. So in the other dressers for the soft coral tank and the frag tank they are both the same. I took out the bottoms of the drawers and just not sure if you can see it. More mess. Same dosing equipment. This thing to dust off the lamps because a lot of dust collects on top of there and I don't like that look. Just more mess but we still haven't found a container. A suitable container to acclimate these fish so we need to travel to the behind the scenes of the Denny's Aquarium's fish room. In here I have everything I may need for my fish tanks. I have new dosing pumps that I will be installing very very soon. The Ecotech Versas. Heard great things about them and GoCreef Supplies sent them to me recently. We have some algae management which I have never opened but great to have on hand right? Let's check. Oh 1023. Also past its date. You should throw it away. Aquaforest Power Elixir. Just amino acids and vitamins. I haven't been dosing this in ages. I could still use it if I wanted to but I don't see the point in it right now. More food and even more food that I don't use because I use a mixture of just pellets and dry foods and I feed that to my fish. Then we have some Fritz Aquatics, the channel sponsor. Thank you so much Fritz for sending me all these goodies. We'll be using it on my aquariums. This again is a precautionary product. In case I ever have problems with my aquarium I can just grab it from here and save the problem immediately. Here we have more mess. The old ecosystems I build, the jars, they are still here. You haven't seen it in ages but let's check it out actually. So this is the salt water version I made at a local beach. There's still some mold in there, dead leaves. But I'm not sure if there's any other life in there right now. The funny thing is with these things, usually during the winter they will just die off if they are inside. But then when you put them either outside or close to a window during these summer months, it will come back to life. It's crazy. You can see that one, it has been underneath here, barely any light for probably six months now. And there's still some freshwater duckweed in there. So my freshwater people know what that is. It is basically the equivalent of salt water, I'd say, Sinean palytoas, which is also a problem in my tank. But 10 times worse. As you can see it's still alive. And the funny thing is if you look back at the older videos where I set this one up, it didn't have any... Well, maybe it had some of it. But it died back and then it came back and now there's so many in there. But that also probably means that there is some other microscopic life in there. So maybe we'll do an update on that soon. But again, still no containers. So I'll probably just have to use this empty aquarium which I once took with me to a TV set where we showcased a pair of clownfish and Matjes Bittenbinder, he's a biology teacher, I think. He talked about how clownfish can actually change sex during their life. Okay, so let's just put this spotlight down there so we have some more light so we can actually see what we're doing when we release these fish into that aquarium over there. And man, I really have to sort that out once we're done with this all. So I had to change the lighting schedule really quick because filming with blue light from reef tanks really sucks. It just looks so bad on camera. Just put this right here. Man, that's a big tank. And then we grab our fish. We go inside the cabinet, grab ourselves a rusty pair of scissors and we just slowly release them into this aquarium. Don't worry, they are underwater. They are on their sides because of course there isn't enough water for them to swim freely right now. But they are okay, trust me. The two blennies. I've had these blennies before and they are great algae eaters. They always had round bellies but for some reason, I'm not sure when this happened exactly, but they just disappeared. I never found them. I didn't find them on the floor, behind the cabinet, which I actually clean every now and then. Because trust me, it gets dirty. There's salt stains and dust and other aquarium matter behind it and it's disgusting. So make sure you clean behind your tanks every now and then. And the last fish, the royal grandma. I think this is a pretty cool selection of fish. They're also pretty easy fish to keep, pretty hardy and yeah, they're just fun. They don't get too big. All righty, so here we have the fish. Well actually, I should probably turn on the flash so you can actually see them. Because they're hiding here behind the side that's covered with black foil. Check this out. Now these fish are often considered to be very boring and annoying, because they are pretty active inside the aquarium. But just look at the colors, they are amazing. Let's check out these here. They're hiding in the corner. One royal grandma, that one on the right side and one and two blennies. They are such fun fish. They are amazing. You'll see when they are in the tank. For now, we need to install the drip acclimator, which is basically just an airline tubing that I have right over here on the bed. So the reason the corals all look yellow or brownish right now, is because I turned off all the blue led lights inside these units over here. Because it sucks when filming. So right now I only have warm white and cool white on at 100%. So that's why it looks disgusting like this. So first step, we put this in here. We grab ourselves a flipper or any other magnet cleaner, doesn't really matter. You put it on here. You grab the other side and put it on there. Now if you have a scraper on it, like I do, it's probably the best, because it just fits in there perfectly. And you make sure it stays over there. And then you have to be very quick, because you don't want to taste any salt water. It's disgusting. That's enough. It's flowing way too fast. So we just tie a simple knot like that. And the tighter the knot is, the slower it will get. So now it's still kind of just flowing. That's it. Now it's dripping. You see? I'm going to tie it a little bit. This is exactly what I want. It's not too fast, not too slow. And I just keep it in there and we'll check out some aquariums. So I will drip acclimate these for about 15 to 20 minutes. That's the time frame I like to go for. You could go up to an hour, but I don't want to put them in here for too long. I want them just kind of used to my water and then go into their forever home. The 40 gallon. Let's check it out. And let's check out that tank over there. And the frag tank over there. So soft coral tank. Two very old nemos or clownfish. Let's actually sit down on my bed. And I'm just going to film with this white light on. A lot of tanks on Instagram and even on my channel are always using filters for the best coloration. But I'm just using white light. It's okay. My eyes hate bright blue lighting and it's also bad for your vision. So white light is the way to go. Here we have some macroalgae. It's a gorgonia actually. A lot of tasia or glass anemones. Last week I had March over from Canada from Fragbox TV and we were filming my fish room talking about all the tanks. And then I wanted to explain to him and to his viewers that I'm growing some of these in here and it's on purpose. So don't come at me for being a terrible reef keeper because I have a ton of them in here. Like it doesn't mean you're a terrible reef keeper because they are basically in every aquarium. But you can manage to keep the population down by introducing natural predators or using chemical solutions for it. But I'm just letting it take over so I can test all the methods and see what works best for your aquarium. But like I said we were talking we were just chatting went to this aquarium and I was like so in this aquarium I'm growing out some of these Aiptasia and well actually all the Aiptasia were gone. I couldn't find any of them left not even some tissue but now about a week later they are all back. I have no idea why they were all gone but I'm kind of happy they are back because that would have been pretty disappointing. I've been teasing it for some time now that like I said I'm growing these on purpose so I know they are in there. Please don't comment it. I'm taking care of it later. Stay tuned. And they were all gone and I was like people are not going to believe me when I say that they just all disappeared but that was really what happened. But now they're back. And then the 40 gallon also doing great. I recently tested out something over here to get rid of all this Zinnia and I later want to try it for the and more Zinnia and more Zinnia and even more Zinnia. Like I added a small piece of it when I started my tank and it's been the worst decision of my life. But here we have an algae problem. Nowhere else in the tank you will see algae. Well of course you will see some curling algae and maybe some other small types of algae on the rocks like this greenish stuff. It's algae but nothing like this. It's green hair algae and it's only growing on my mangrove trees. I almost fell there. And I have no idea why it's on there. So I hope the Stigmatura blennies that we have over there. There. There they are. I hope they will take care of it and just eat it. Another thing I noticed on these mangroves is bubble algae. Let's see if we can find some right now. Yeah right over there. So that those pearls you see they are called bubble algae and they can spread across the entire tank as well. I've had some problems with it before in this tank. I added some emerald crabs and they took care of the problem and there's still one arrow crab in here. But it's not eating that because it's in the flow of the mp40. No not the mp40 the mp10. And it's very hard to reach. It could probably climb from this crawl onto the roots and just work its way over there. But I'm not sure why it isn't doing it. Probably because of the flow it just gets knocked off all the time. So last resort is the Stigmatura blennies. I got some new frags from a store in France called Receive at Home. I visited them in October of this year. Filmed a cool fish store tour. They have a big coral farm, a fish nursery, they are breeding shrimp. Was an amazing place and I can't wait to show you the full tour. I recorded so much stuff it's going to take a while to edit. Look through all the footage and make something awesome for you guys. And they even gave me more corals. They were also at vivarium in... When was this? Right after I got back from Florida. And they gave me more pieces over here and this is pretty fun because I'm kind of revealing it to you guys right now but the white leds don't work with the colors. Like these corals are just amazing under some blue leds. So you'll have to wait for that. Really you don't want to miss it so be sure you are subscribed to this channel and make sure you don't miss it because man that's been a holy grail coral for me as well. I also got a lot of zoanthids from a store in Belgium called Just Corals. They gave them to me for free and I want to build out a new zoanthids garden. I'm kind of still thinking about if I want to add a new zoanthids garden in here. In there because it's the soft coral aquarium and zoanthids are soft coral. Or if I want to build it in here. I've been contemplating and contemplating and working out some ideas for this tank. I'm still not really sure what to do with it. I have some pretty cool ideas. I even considered when March was here from Fragbox to put it right underneath the skylight and just let the sunlight shine on it and don't use a little led light at all. So that might be an option as well but I'm not sure if that will look good over there next to these. Might look a little bit cramped because with the wide angle lens my room looks pretty big but you can see it's a small tripod. My room is so tiny so I don't want to make it look cramped. I want it to look good so I might just keep it over there and work out a different idea. Why is my camera acting weird? It's back now. So maybe we'll just go for something else. I want to hear your suggestions on this. So for those of you that are wondering what I feed my fish it is a mixture of different fish foods actually. Let's open it up. I believe I put in here some foods from... We have to do it with one hand so... I put in some fish fruits from a brand called Vitalis. It's distributed within the European Union but also in the United States so you can get some as well. It's based on a lot of natural products. It smells disgusting to humans but the fish absolutely love it and most of the time I feed these fish once a day but sometimes like today they've been fed like three times already and they still are eating it. Okay let's check out these fish. Well actually let's put this back because we need to save some for this next trick that I'm going to show you. So these fish have been drivaclimating for about 20 minutes now while I've been talking. Did you guys hear that? These clownfish are going nuts. I'm pretty sure if I turn on my light... Actually yeah they spilled water everywhere. They are so annoying. See they keep going nuts for this food. It's amazing and I'm not even paid to say that. Like really they do not sponsor my channel. I'm not paid for it. I didn't get this for free. I bought it with my own money and this is really my honest opinion. But okay these fish have been in here for about 20 minutes now and it's time to put them inside the aquarium. So we take out this stuff. Here they even spilled on the wall back there. So that's why I clean it every now and then because these fish are pigs. They are dirty. Okay back to business. We take this out and we take out the scraper with one hand if it's possible. I'm keeping the tube inside my mouth right now and the salt doesn't taste great. It's great salt but it doesn't taste great. Okay put this. My finger's stuck. Well this is great. So now we need a fish net to catch these fish out of their acclimation tank and put them inside their new home. I put them on my bed for now because it's just easier. And now we carefully, slowly. I want to get them all at once but of course that's not going to work. What are you thinking? It actually worked. Look at them. And now we quickly go. We will slowly release them into the water. And now something I'm noticing is actually this time they are pretty calm. Like normally whenever I introduce or add anything to the aquarium the clownfish will go nuts and will try to kill it. But this time they're actually pretty calm. And I think that's because I added a few of these fish at once. So now there's a bigger group. There's five of them. That one is lonely. I hope it joins them. And well there's some... He's like checking it out. Like what are you doing in my home? Get out of here. But they have to become nice neighbors. So I'm telling you stop it right now or you'll end up in the frag tank which is half this size of this tank. Not even as cool. Not even close. Soon it will be though because we're turning it into an SBS only thing. So stay tuned. But normally when I add something new I will just throw some food in here and that will distract all the fish. So normally the shy fish will just go into hiding somewhere and they will just enjoy their night in their new home without these stupid clownfish harassing them. So what is next? The royal grandma or the stigmatura blennies? Well we have them all at once actually. So here we go. Enjoy your new home. The royal grandma doesn't want to leave. Let's go there buddy. Alrighty. So exactly as I expected to happen the royal grandma is pretty shy and it just straight went down into the aquarium and is now hiding underneath this rock. The stigmatura blennies are also hiding somewhere. I don't see them and the clownfish are still very calm. It's awesome. There's finally some life inside this aquarium now. But we're not done yet because like I said I am saving the best for last. It's in here. Let's check it out. As you may know Peter the arrow crab, the large spider looking creature I had in there, is no longer inside that aquarium because I gave it to a local hobbyist who had a problem with bristle worms which is Peter's main diet. He took care of my problem so now he lives inside his aquarium to take care of his and maybe he'll come back later on. But until then we have a new inhabitant for the aquarium. You still can't really see it but it looks creepy. So I'm using my hand for this. I don't even know if this is a venomous animal. If it is this will be my last video. Well maybe you won't even see this video. But we have it here. Super calm. There you go. It is a crab and it's a super cool one to be here. It's upside down again. Look at this crab. I have never seen anything like it before. It's called a... In the Netherlands we call it a decorator crab because it decorates its shell with anything it can find. This one has some mushroom corals on top of it but it can also collect fallen off frags or I think there's a small anemone on his leg over there. But they basically just scavenge around the aquarium and put anything they can find on top of their shell. So I don't really want to put it in here because it will probably rip out these beautiful Christmas tree rocks. Not the rocks, the ruckus. If you can't carry that then man I'm scared for it. But it will probably just rip out these beautiful worms. I don't want that to happen or it will just destroy the entire reef. Here we go little buddy. Look at these mushrooms. They're all closed up now. I'm going to take some macro shots of it in a separate container in a few days I think. Maybe upload some reels or YouTube shorts. But for now let me just... It's super stressed so you have to be very careful with crabs and any crustaceans really because if they are stressed they can die easily. They will usually molt but if they get stressed out during the molting process they can actually die. So let me know if you ever had one of these in your aquarium and what your experience with it was. For now I'm giving it a few hours and we'll check back with all these animals and see if they're still doing well. Ask them how they are feeling. I hope they will respond to my questions. They're already looking great but I really hope that one joins them. I thought it was coming. But see you in a few hours. Okay so it's been about two hours now since I added these fish to the aquarium. I turned down the flow pump over there and had to adjust the lighting schedule again because that one already turned off. That one turned off just a few minutes ago. And this one was also slowly dimming because it's late here. It is currently 10 almost 10 p.m so the fish it's time for bed. But as you can see the four damselfish are swimming over here. And there we go the other one joined the group. Doesn't this just look amazing? I've always wanted a well I'm pretty sure you can consider this a schooling fish as they swim together through the reef. Right now they're still a bit stressed of course. But yeah I have no idea where the other fish went. They're probably hiding underneath the somewhere. Maybe you see it on screen somewhere and I don't. That's also possible. Maybe when I look back at this footage I'll spot some. But yeah pretty happy with the way this reef is turning out. There are a few things I want to change. I need to get rid of the remaining over there the palytoas and I want to add more color to the reef.