ISLAND PALUDARIUM start to finish aquascape build

Hey guys, how are you going? My name is Milo and I'm from the Fishworks Sydney where today we're going to be setting up this beautiful shallow aquarium behind me as a sort of island paludarium build. This is all the equipment that I'm going to be using today. I'm going to go more in depth about each one as we hit it, but for now let's just jump straight into the video. So this is the tank that we're going to be using for this project. It's right bang smack in the middle of our showroom so absolutely no pressure in getting it to look nice. Just above it I've got two little desk lamps. As you can see the tank is quite long. It's pretty wide but it's very shallow so it was a little bit of trial and error figuring out what exactly we wanted to do with it. In the end we came up with a couple designs and I sketched some up to go with a sort of island paludarium. So we're going to have in the middle here some big plants growing up out of the water as well as some smaller ones inside and then having some nice white sand along the edges underneath. When it's filled it's only going to be about 25 centimeters deep so there wasn't much submerged space to work with so I think it's going to be pretty cool to work outside of the water a little bit. So the first thing I did for this build was prepare our plants and to do that I just wanted to remove all of the soil and leave them bare rooted so it was just the plants and their roots going into the tank and none of that soil to pollute the water. I also ended up splitting some of the plants for example this peace lily was absolutely massive so I split it into a few smaller pieces that would be a lot easier for me to organize the tank in a way that I wanted to. I went ahead and did that to all of the plants that I had that I wanted to prepare. In the end I had this monstera, a devil's ivy and of course the beautiful peace lily that's going to make up the centerpiece of this entire build. In order to complement that peace lily I had this nice umbrella rush that I wanted to use which I prepared in much the same way. The only difference with this one is that I was concerned about it falling over in the tank as it's a bit top heavy so I prepared it in a slightly different way. I started the same just by removing all of that soil and then once that was done I split the plant into two smaller ones and I planted them into these little pots filled with lava stone just to give them a place to root keep them a bit healthier but mostly to help keep them upright in the tank. I had some smooth lava stone delivered for this build. I think this is a really beautiful rock and it's going to look really nice underwater and really lend itself to this formation. So what I did with it first was just build the base of that island formation just by creating a sort of ring of the larger stones which I would then build up on later. I also prepared a bag of fluvostratum aqua soil in these mesh bags and the purpose for this was that in case I wanted to plant any rooted submerged plants later on down the track I would have an option for it. None of the plants at present really need it if anything all it's going to do right now is buffer my ph but I did want to give myself the option to plant some rooted plants down the track that would benefit from it without having to completely tear up the entire aquascape. It may also give the peace lily a place to root as well. After that I went in with my big centerpiece peace lily and I threw that down the center of that formation. At this point I threw in my hardscape driftwood and absolutely hated it so I took it out and instead I went in with these far thinner black driftwood pieces which I think lent themselves a lot more to the scape. They're a lot finer a lot more delicate and I preferred them a lot more than the large ones that I had used before so I threw those in and then I filled out the rest of the scape with more driftwood plants and then built up the rest of that rock formation with some lava stones and to prepare it all I did was just put it in a bucket and rinse out all of the sediment from it so that it wouldn't cloudy our water once we put it in. I let the hose run in there for a while and once the water was running pretty clear I took it out and I threw it straight in the tank. For this entire build I used 10 kilos of sand. I very easily could have used 20 but I only had 10 at the time so this is how far that got me but as I said I very easily could have used anubis. I think I used a total of five anubis plants and I just planted those in between the rocks to bring the lush greenery not just from above the water but down into the water as well and create more of a seamless environment. Just as I'd finished all of that up our globes arrived. These are going to cast a much whiter light which is going to be a lot better than the warm light that we had on there before and this was the point that I realized I had ordered 20 globes instead of two which I thought I'd ordered but I guess it's always better to have a spare. After I had that all set up I let the tank cycle for a couple weeks with regular water changes before I went ahead and added our inhabitants and after they were in the tank was done. So this tank has been set up now for I don't even know a good few months now it's been a while since I've filmed and it's doing amazing. I mean all of these plants have really taken off I've never used them in an aquarium before. I mean the peace lily has gotten a bit shorter but it's still really lush it's still constantly got new growth coming through it still blooms as well and the umbrella rush I mean as you can see it's just doing really great. There's a big clump of fresh growth back here which I wish would come to the front a little bit more but that's okay it can do its thing. Maintenance on this tank has been a dream the water stays crystal clear all the time all I'm really doing is chopping a few dead leaves every now and then scraping the glass and maybe doing a siphon just to keep the sand nice and clean and I attribute all of that to the filter that we put on it. I don't know if you saw we put on a big canister filter it's the Awaza Biomaster 350. I did a really in-depth video of it which I will link up the top now. I really recommend checking it out because these filters are amazing and honestly they've sort of ruined me for all other aquarium filters because I wouldn't want to use anything else it's just so easy to use so easy to maintain and I'm going to be using it on a lot of builds going forward so I really recommend checking that one out if you want to see what filtration we used on this tank. The fish we ended up stocking with are Congo Tetras and some little Corydoras both of them are getting a little bit more tame as the days go by which is really cool when they first went in they were super scared of absolutely anything and anytime someone would enter the room they would just run and hide because they can actually circulate around this island so they would all hide up the back but now they're super chill with me being here so that's really awesome to see. This tank and this build was so much fun to work with obviously it's some interesting dimensions so it was really fun to think outside of the box and I think it's inspired a lot of people to do the same and it just goes to show how much freedom and creativity you really do have within the aquascaping hobby and that you don't just have to have the stock standard fish tank you can have something that's really beautiful and doubles as a centerpiece in your room a conversation starter and that's what this tank really is it's the first thing you see when you turn around the corner in the shop it's the first thing you see when you look into the fish room and it has started a lot of conversations and I think it's inspired a lot of people to think outside the box with their builds as always all of the products that I have used in this build will be linked in the description down below if you have any questions whatsoever feel free to leave us a comment check out our website our socials if you're in Sydney Australia or nearby come down to the shop and check us out we've got plenty of tanks here we specialize in all things pond and aquarium and we'd love to see you swing by the shop so that's all from me guys want to leave a like and subscribe that really helps the channel and the business we really want to keep making these videos for you guys and seeing your support is what is going to help us to do it well that's all from me thank you guys so much for watching and we'll see you next time