Cleaning and water changes on all my Fish Tanks and Ponds

In today's video, I'm going to be showing you all of the maintenance that goes into running all of my tanks and ponds. Let's go. But before we get to all of that, if you're new to my channel, don't forget to like, subscribe and turn on that bell so that you're notified when I'm uploading new videos. And as always, such a huge thank you to all of my subscribers and supporters and sponsors. It means the absolute world, so thank you. Right, before it rains, I'm going to go and grab some natural seawater for my saltwater tank. It's a little bit more seaweedy than normal. Normally, this is not here. This massive lump of seaweed, so I try and go in the patches, like you can see this blue patch right here. So I'm just going to go and collect my water where it's the clearest on this little beach here. This is my favourite place to come and get water. I'll just show you around here. It's absolutely stunning. As you can see, I choose this beach because there's really not a lot going on around this area. It's super quiet. You're not getting, you know, I could get in closer to where I live, but then, you know, you're risking getting runoff from housing and stuff like that. It's literally like that's just all open water out there and you go around even further and you go to the deep ocean just out there. So this is kind of right on the peninsula where you go out there and you're right into the open ocean. So that's why I choose this place as it seems like the most closest point to where open ocean is. But how stunning is that? It's absolutely gorgeous. Anyway, so let's get back home now that we've got our water. As you can see, I've got my four little water jugs there all ready to go for my saltwater change. Let's get back home and do it. Drive this side. Let's go this way. All right, so I just got back home and I reckon I might just quickly do this pond at the front as it's a bit of an easy one. The only thing is because this gets a lot of afternoon sun, I get a lot of hair algae in here. It's something I've been battling for a little while. But we are getting there with all this plant cover and these guys are slowly getting bigger to cover and give a bit of shade. We're getting a little bit better in terms of the algae, but it does clog up the filter still. So which results in this not being its beautiful self. So first off, I just turn off the pump because the issue is always on this side of the pump. See all that hair algae there. So I just take off that bit. Look at that. Huge amount of gunk in there, which is perfect for the plants. So I just put that on and give that to the plants. But this will pretty much fix the problem there. Just get rid of all of this and this is like a week's worth. This honestly just clogs up so quickly. Right, so that's pretty well good to go back on. And I just try and pull out as much of that hair algae as possible. It's getting a lot better than it was. But look at this still. Just mats of it. Anyways, now that I've got rid of most of that. Just get rid of any of these dying lilies and flowers that have already flowered. Like that one. I'm just going to put a little leaf over here. Just so. Take that off the plant. Pop that back on. Alright. And turn that back on. That should run really smoothly now. Get rid of all that. There we go. Much better. I'll just occasionally do water changes. Try not to scoop the goldfish up. Which my plants absolutely love this water. Really easy this pond. And honestly I just do bits and pieces. I like to come out every morning and pot around in the garden. So every time I come out here just picking out little bits of that. And slowly we'll get on top of it. But the thing I absolutely love is being able to use the water for my plants. I absolutely love it. Right, let's head inside. Right, first up inside I'm going to do the six foot tank. So I'm just going to clean the glass down a bit. Which I don't know about anyone else that has tanks. Makes it really difficult because they try and pick off the algae as you are scraping it off the glass. And it's really hard to try and not get them as you're doing it. You don't want to get their little mouths stuck as you're scraping off the glass. Right, now that I've done that I'm going to start draining the tank. So actually I'm going to grab some towels. So now to drain the water. And I kind of like to do a bit of a two bucket system. So with this I just kind of use the gravity to get the siphon. So I'll let that start draining. Now you just usually have to put these wave makers down a little bit because they start to get exposed. And then once it gets to a level that is manageable to carry I switch over to the next bucket. Remove this one. And while that's filling up I'll go and tip this on my driveway. Which I absolutely hate it when people spot me tipping a bucket of water on my driveway. I'm sure they're thinking, mate, put it on your grass or your plants. But it's salt water, not going to do that. It's really great for weeds. So on the driveway it goes. Doing the same with this one. Right, this is going to be my last bucket I reckon. Alright, and that'll do. Go and chuck that one out. Right, next up we're just going to fill it up. Right, then I get my hose and connect it into my Sicce Ultra Zero. So it just takes a normal hose adapter there. So I pop that in there. It is unreasonably long and I will find something a little bit shorter eventually. But for the meantime I'm just using the hose that I've got out the back. I just have not gotten around to getting something a little bit shorter. But I basically just try and wedge it in like that. Then I'm basically filling up this bucket. And then I just plug it in. And then it just fills from there. Right, so that is the six foot tank done. It'll just settle in now. But that's all I do water change wise. Here are the two canister filters. As I said, I only clean them out every three to four months. So as I've just done them last week, I'm going to be leaving them for this week. But they basically just have the same filter media that comes with the Sicce Whale 500. It comes with all the filter media you'll need. That's all I've got in my canister filters. But they're very basic cleaning them out. You know, pretty standard stuff. But yeah, that is all I've got running on this tank. I've got my Illuminagic lights which I've just added on. I am just obsessed with them. They're so stunning. So yeah, really happy with them. And that's it for this tank. Now I've done the water change. It'll just do its thing. And I love, especially the next day after a water change, it always looks mint the next day after a water change. Right, since I've got my UltraZero out, I am going to go and do the Koi pond next. As I'll be using that on there. And I don't think I need it for anything else. So I'll go out there and show you what I do for the Koi pond. So all I do for the Koi pond is, I just love being able to use this fish water for my plants. So I just pop my UltraZero in there. Plug it in. Then use it to go around and water all my plants. I'll also show you how I clean out my sponges. So I'm just filling this up with a bit of the pond water there. As you want to make sure that you're washing your sponges out in the tank water so that you're not losing that beneficial bacteria. So I've just got sponges in here. I'll just literally take them out and rinse them out in the bucket. Look at this water I've just gotten from that. It's disgusting. I reckon I'll go and give this to all of my indoor plants. They'll absolutely love that water. And then basically I just go and fill that up with the hose again. It's really that simple. Next up I've got my Guppy pond. Oh, my gosh. There's some babies. Okay. All right. I need to grab them. Oh, yeah. So we have lots of babies in here. Let me show you. See in there? Some little babies in there and all over really. There's another one. They're all through here. So I'm going to rescue a few of them quickly and pop them into my little baby. So in maintenance for this pond, that's probably the first thing I do is in the mornings come out and check how many babies we have and try and scoop them all up and pop them. See there's about, I think there's about six in that one little scoop. I'm going to go and quickly pop them inside. They're pretty much all in there. So just do a bit of a scoop like that. The adults in this tank are pretty used to babies being around, so they tend to leave them alone, which is good. So that's maintenance number one on this. Because I'm doing a little bit of a breeding project to see what we get. When we mix these females with these males, I'm wanting to see what kind of guppies. I'm really wanting to get that really beautiful tail and also maybe start another strain with that really ultra-platinum color as well. But, yeah, that's basically what this little project is with this little pot pond. I'm thinking I might even start and make an indoor pot pond type thing. That's probably my next sort of project. So, yeah, always, always, always so exciting to come out and find. There's a couple more. All these little babies. Honestly, it just never gets old. It never gets old. So basically I'm still getting quite a lot of hair algae in this pond, even though it's pretty heavily, you know, covered. So pretty much every day I'm coming and picking out little bits of hair algae out of this pond just to try and keep on top of it a bit. Even with all of this in here, it tends to still be a bit of an issue. So this pot up here, which actually has water trickling down into here, it's just got a very basic little pump in here that connects to there. Even in here, I've got all of this in here to cover that, but I've still got so much hair algae in here, but that's all right. We'll get on top of it. I also like to get rid of any, you know, dead leaves or anything like that that, you know, is just not necessary to have in the pond. So I'm getting rid of all of that and, of course, rescuing my little babies to put inside. The only real maintenance I've got to do on this is my little pump here. I just get in with a toothbrush. It's about once a week I have to do this, but just clean that out. It's really not too bad, but you do notice with such a small pump, you do notice quite a difference in the flow coming out from here. And, you know, I just give this a bit of a scrub and kind of, you know, go everywhere with it. Yeah, that should all run good now. So I'll turn that back on. That's all good to go. I do have a heater in here as well. For those of you who are wondering, I did do a whole video. I'll leave the link up here on how I did this little setup. This is a new addition, having the water trickling down from here. But this was just your basic pot that does have holes in the bottom, so I showed how I sealed it and made it watertight to have a little pond in here. So, yeah, absolutely love this little pond, and there's nothing more exciting than waking up in the morning and finding some beautiful little baby guppies. So that's all the maintenance really I do on here. I do do a little bit of a water change and just top it up with some RO water, and that's pretty much all I do on this. Right, I think it's only fitting that we go to the guppy baby tank next. There are honestly hundreds of babies in here at the moment. Unfortunately, as you can tell, the water is very green at the moment. So this one I've been having to do quite a few water changes with. It's just adjusting as I did have a huge amount of plants in it, but as I don't have any light on it anymore, I decided to go very low-tech, just have heaps of this. But the tank is just adjusting, and I probably gave it a little bit too much. But with all the babies, I'm just wanting to feed them that really good high-protein food. So we are getting a few algae issues, but it just means I just have to keep on top of water changes for them. And it probably doesn't help that it's next to a window. But, yeah, as you can see, I have so many guppy babies in here. And once I figure out which one's male and female, the males go into that tank up there, and the females go back into the pot pond. So that's what we got going on here with this tank. But, yeah, as it's been used to having so many plants, it's really just adjusting to, you know, being next to the window, which I put it there because it'll keep it nice and warm. But, yeah, it's just adjusting a bit to it. So I need to, yeah, just keep up with water changes. But it's really not a big deal as it's such a small tank. It's really easy to do water changes. So, yeah, that's that tank there. Next up, I have the water box. Now, I'm not doing a huge amount of water changes on this thing at the moment as I have been struggling with bubble algae. So pretty much all I'm doing on this tank at the moment is picking up the bubble algae and scooping it out with a net. Actually, ever since I've had this tank, I've struggled with really low nitrates and phosphates. So I have turned off my skimmer and that seemed to have helped quite a bit in there. But, you know, I'm so used to such heavy water changes with the six-foot, I can go a little bit overboard with water changes. So I really don't do very many on this tank anymore. But because bubble algae is an issue, I am doing lots of manual removal of that just to see if I can eventually get it to go away. So I'll just hang my little cup over the edge there and go in and start removing all the bubble algae as best I can, trying not to pop it too much. Right, so that's most of it. Now, check this out. Oh, my gosh. I clean this up about once a week but check out that wave maker. It's probably just being made worse doing what I just did then. But let's just try and start scooping some of this up. Watch this. Look how much bubble algae I just got from doing that. It's crazy. I feel like it's slowly getting better, so you never know. But that's basically what I'm doing every week at the moment. And then obviously just give the glass a bit of a clean. And that is all I've been doing for this tank. Right, second last tank is my male guppy tank over here. Well, correction. It's actually guppy and pandacory tank, which I'm really excited about because my pandacories have been breeding, which is really exciting. But basically I've got my male guppies in here. This tank is honestly the most low maintenance out of all my tanks. I basically just top this up once a week and maybe take a little bit out, do a bit of a water change. But honestly, I do not do much with this tank at all, probably because it's heavily planted. But honestly, that's basically it. These plants I plan to sell. Once they reach the top, I'll probably sell them, so it will create a little bit more space. And my male guppies, as I'm documenting all the different colors and everything that we get when we mix those two guppies I showed you earlier, once I know the colors, then I'll probably sell the male guppies, keep the females. It's just so exciting to watch them grow out and see their colors come out. But yeah, I don't need to show you basically maintenance on this one. It's basically cleaning the glass and topping it up and maybe doing a water change here and there. So very, very low maintenance tank, this one, which is great. And last but not least is my brand new tank I set up for my daughter a week ago. It is in her room and doing really well. So I'll go and show you the maintenance on that tank now. It is tiny, so it's really easy to clean, which is great. All right, here is my daughter's Kmart tank that we set up a week ago. As you can see, we've had a little bit of algae growth. So honestly, all I'm going to do is wipe down all of the surfaces. I did, by the way, add in a little snail, a little trochus snail the other day just to help with cleaning the walls. I could probably do with adding another one in, but we've got one in there for the moment. They still haven't hosted the Xenia, which is all right, but they keep swimming in here, which is really cool. And they have shown interest in the Xenia, so you never know. But yeah, it's all doing really well. And I also just wanted to show you what it would look like if it was kind of left for a few days. So here you can see it's just that normal sort of build-up that you get on saltwater tanks on the glass. So I'm just going to wipe that all down, and that's pretty much all good to go. All right, so I'm just going to take off the lid. I'll give that a wipe down afterwards. But I'm just using a little bit of towel here, and I'm just going to wipe all of the glass. It's really not that really hard to get off algae or anything like that. It is just that kind of build-up on the side there, which comes off super easy. And the reason why I am using this is because I can do the bottom as well, which because we've gone bare bottom, we'll be able to notice the build-up on the bottom as well there. So it's just a lot easier with such a small tank to just get in there with something like this. Yeah, that's all I'm doing on my daughter's little clownfish tank. Just check out the six-foot tank as we're walking past here. It is looking nice. So beautiful. Honestly, this is the most rewarding part about a water change is how gorgeous everything looks. Crystal clear. The corals look happy. The fish look happy, honestly. That is the maintenance I do on all of my tanks and ponds. Obviously, I do little bits and pieces throughout the week, so it's not usually a huge job. I honestly just love fussing over them and just making sure that they're all doing really well. So, yeah, it's not often a huge job that I do all at once. But even if I do, I don't know, I find it therapeutic to do it, and then it's kind of like a workout. It feels so rewarding and worth it at the end, so I absolutely love it. But there you have it. That was my maintenance video of this year. I like to do them every year, as I usually have accumulated more tanks by the end of the year. So, yeah, that's my 2023 maintenance on all my tanks video. I hope you've enjoyed. Don't forget, if you are new, to subscribe, and we will see you next time.