Making a Betta Aquarium From ''Leftovers'' (Aquascape Tutorial)

In this video I'm making another really colorful nano aquascape for my beautiful half moon beta. I'm going to show you everything from the initial setup until the fully grown-in layout two months later. So at the moment we already have a beta tank in this side of the room but as you can see it is not looking the best anymore. So last month I was away from home for a week and while I was away the co2 ran out and no co2 in a tank with a pretty strong light you're just gonna get algae. I could of course refill the co2, trim the plants, clean the tank and get everything into a good shape again but I was already planning to rescape this tank. It's been up and running for more than half a year so it's just time for something new. Now in order to rescape this tank I would of course have to catch the beta, I would have to catch all the shrimp as well, then clean everything out which is very time consuming, a little bit stressful for the inhabitants as well because I would have to temporarily house them somewhere else you know. So we're actually not going to do that we are actually going to escape another tank because I have another one which is basically the same footprint it's actually a little bit bigger. So we're just going to escape that one and then once we're done with that we can just move all the equipment over to this new scape move the inhabitants over as well and then I think that's easier right? Yeah so this tank is an ADAEM and this one is a UNS5T. So as I said it has the same footprint but it's actually a little bit higher. I would say maybe two centimeters higher. So a UNS5T is measuring 22 centimeters front to back or eight and a half inch. The height is 28 centimeters which is I would say pretty much 11 inches and then from left to right this is 36 centimeters or 14 inches. So it's definitely not a big tank I would say it holds roughly 20 liters or like five US gallons and I think for a better this is like the I wouldn't go anything smaller than this you know. So once we're done we're going to take the light from that tank move it over to this aquarium but we also need light right now to be able to scape to be able to see something. So I think I'm just going to take that light over there place it on here temporarily and at least we can just escape the tank and see things properly. I just hope the cable is long enough but yeah this tank can be without light for a couple of hours. It shouldn't take too long anyway. Okay here we go nice little empty canvas. Because it's such a small tank I'm also going to keep the hardscape very simple. So this morning I was kind of going through my hardscape collection and I think I found the perfect piece of wood. I mean it did fit before but here we go. I think that's kind of how I want it. I think it looks good right. I think this definitely has potential. We can go for my favorite triangular composition. You know tall stem plants on the left side and have it all slopping down towards the right. Have some rocks around it as well. Maybe a cosmetic sand foreground not sure yet. Let's just add in some rocks and see what we can come up with. Let's see I have a little collection of small rocks over here. I think they're not all the same type. So I'm actually considering of gluing the piece of wood to the bottom glass panel and just secure it like that. Otherwise I would just have to glue it to the small rocks. But you know the rocks are not very big and not very heavy either. So there might not be enough weight to keep this wood structure down. So I think I'm just going to glue it over there because we have a nice contact point. And then it's just gonna make life a lot easier. So I'm just gonna take some nice chunks of cotton and wedge that underneath just like so. See if we can get some more in there. That's pretty good already. And then I'm just going to saturate all that cotton with my Sienna Acrylate Liquid Super Blue. Be quite generous with it. So I'll just leave that to cure for a couple of minutes and then I'll try to do another one from that side. Then that should be enough. Those precision tips really come in helpful in a situation like this. I got these on Amazon by the way. So I'll leave some links in the video description. It's just a little nozzle you can attach to any super glue bottle. You can really get into these small corners you know. Okay all done gluing. Hopefully that's enough to keep this piece in place and stop it from floating. Fingers crossed. I actually forgot to mention the type of wood that I'm using. This is Spider Wood also known as Red Moor Wood. It's basically the most popular wood used in aquascaping. This piece has already been used before and that's why it's a little bit of a light brown color. And this piece over here has never been used before. And as you can see it's a little bit more of a yellow color. And what you need to know about Spider Wood is if you use it for the first time it will create a white moldy fungusy layer on top of the wood. It's completely harmless in a way. It's not really harmful for fish or shrimp or whatever but it can sometimes melt some sensitive plants. But it's completely normal. It's kind of just a that you need to go through. And usually after about a month it will stop. Also Holocene does a lot to heat it so definitely get yourself a cleanup crew as well if you're using this type of wood. Just wanted to point that out. Yeah let's move on with the hardscape. Let's see if we can get some of these rocks in here. And yeah see if we can make a barrier so we can have some cosmetic sand in the foreground. I kind of want to try to add in these rocks without thinking too much. Okay here we go. Rocks are in and I think that looks quite all right. Doesn't look too placed you know what I mean. Looks quite natural. So we do have some gaps like in between the barrier. So we could get some aquasol migrating onto the foreground. But I think I'm going to take my chances. I'll probably also close some of these gaps with some moss or something. So I think we can get some aquasol in the background and then we can start planting actually. So of course as always we are going to use the aquasol from Dennerle Plants. And this one is actually really good for this specific project because we're not going to be cycling this tank. We don't have time for that. Once we're done planting we want to fill up the water and pretty much immediately add in the inhabitants. And the aquasol from Dennerle Plants well I've never really tested it but I don't think this one releases ammonia. So it's pretty much safe to use and we can add in the fish straight away. I'm just going to carefully pour it in the background. I actually just got some new paintbrushes. Paintbrush is like the perfect aquascaping tool. So I'm just going to get the small one and just use it to spread the aquasol a little bit. So of course right now we're getting a whole bunch of soil granules in the foreground which we don't want. But I think I'm just going to take a vacuum cleaner and just remove them once I'm completely done with the hardscape. Here we go. Aquasol is smoothed out and all the granules from the foreground removed as well. It's starting to look pretty good. I'm now going to add in the sand. I've got my favorite ADA La Plata sand. I love this stuff. So we're just going to add a thin layer in the foreground and then we're done. Here we go. All done with our hardscape. Nice and simple. You know one piece of wood, a couple of rocks, some aquasol and some sand and I think we have something that looks nice. Can't wait to see this planted. A quick little coffee break first before we start planting. And actually there's one issue. Not really an issue but I haven't ordered any plants for this tank. You know normally when I set up a new tank I always get my plants directly from Dennerle Plants because they're my channel sponsor or I just buy some plants from a cheap Dutch website. But you know because it's such a small tank I thought I'm sure I can just find all the plants that I need for my other tanks. Also a couple weeks ago I set up this little plant propagation tank which is full of beautiful stems. We've got some really nice hortal blood red, some Ludwigia super red over here, a really nice orange Ludwigia. I'm sure we can take something from this aquarium. Also the vase behind this tank. I'm planning to take this vase down very soon because I need to make space for something much bigger. So yeah I'm sure we can find some plants in there as well that would be useful. Yeah let's have a look at the vase. We already have some bush of lambda that's floating around. Some really nice bush over here as well. On this side we have the Micranthemum umbrosum which is a really nice small leaf stem plant. I do have a little bit of blixa over here as well. We could we could definitely take the blixa. I think we have some Trident Java in there as well. So we might also steal that. In this tank I actually also have some crypts floating on the surface. So I think we're good for plants. At the moment the vase is actually full of duckweed and I definitely do not want duckweed in this newscape. So I think I'm just going to try to remove all the duckweed with this skimmer and then we can harvest plants from the vase. This might take a little while but I think it's going to be worth the effort. Okay guys I think we have enough plants. We have some Trident Java fern. We have some bush of lambda. We've got a little bit of blixa. The crypts. Some Rotala blood red and the Ludwigia. Ludwigia super red and Hydrocotyle verticillata. And over here we have the Micranthemum umbrosum. One thing is missing is a little bit of moss I think. Let's get these in first and then we can see how it looks. Okay so over here we've got a perfect spot for the crypt. A little bit shaded. Yeah I think it's a nice little corner. Then over here I have a nice little crevice between this rock and this piece of wood. So perfect for a bush of lambda. I have no idea which type of bush this is but it doesn't matter. It looks great. So we've got three portions of bush and we can actually close the line here with another portion of that crypt. There's a little gap over here. I think that's perfect for some Java fern. So I have a few portions. This is the largest one. Might have to secure with some glue but I don't really want to do that. Maybe the smaller portion is going to actually go on top over here. So then the background is just going to be a mix of stem plants. So this is the Micranthemum umbrosum. I'm actually thinking of just mixing it all randomly. I normally like to keep my stems in groups you know. But it was nice to just have everything together. So this is of course the Ludwigia super red. Still really nice and easy red stem plant. Okay so the background is basically just planted with all those different stems. We still have a little bit of an empty spot here in the mid ground and there in the right corner as well. What do we still have left? This one. The Verticillata. One portion of the crypt and we have all the Blixa. So I think this open spot on the front here is really good space for the Blixa. I really love Blixa. Probably one of my favorite plants to be honest. It can get quite big but then we can just take it out and make it smaller again. I'm still not really sure if you can trim the leaves of the Blixa but I think it's going to hurt the plant. So you have to take it out and yeah just make it smaller with the stems. Then the last portion of the crypt can kind of go here. Add a little bit more space to grow out and then we can just fill the rest of the space with the Hydrocotyle Verticillata. Now this was probably spread runners throughout the entire aquarium but it doesn't grow that fast so it's easy to keep in check. It looks kind of cool you know like little mushrooms popping up here and there. Okay almost done planting. It's looking really good already. I'm just gonna give everything a quick spray because you know some things dry out really quickly especially the Java ferns. I just wanted to add some moss. Now luckily I still had two tissue culture pots with moss left over. These tissue culture pots with moss you can keep them for a very long time you know. I just keep them in the window not in direct sunlight but just with normal daylight and then they stay good for a couple of months you know so that's nice. So I have some Java moss. I'll get some proper close-ups. I have Java moss and I have Weeping moss. So I'm thinking to add some Weeping moss on the branches over here and then you can hopefully start to weep downwards that it can look nice. And then the Java moss I can kind of place randomly in between the stones over here. So I'm just going to put a little bit of super glue in a few spots because the Weeping moss doesn't actually attach very well to surfaces. So I definitely recommend either tying it or gluing it. Then just take small pieces of moss, lay it on top of the glue, just slightly press it down. You can use your fingers of course but there's always a chance you're gonna get glue on your fingers. Okay so that's the Weeping moss all done. Now for the Java moss I've actually glued some pieces to small rocks. I'm now going to add these rocks into our rock barrier and then the moss will kind of just spread out naturally from there you know. All right all done planting. It's looking really good already and I kind of like that we did it with leftovers. You know like all the plants from my other tanks. I don't usually do that. I'm now going to fill the tank with water and I'm thinking to leave it on this table overnight because it's quite late already. It's dinner time and then tomorrow we can do the move to the corner and the swap at the inhabitants. Right it's the next day and I have a little confession to make guys. As you can see we have a rock on top of our piece of wood. That is because the piece of wood actually floated up to the surface. I can't believe this happened. I'm a little bit embarrassed to be honest. It hasn't happened to me in a long time. Normally I'm quite diligent with you know making sure everything's secure enough it's gonna float up. But I guess that one connection point just wasn't enough. So about an hour after I filled up with water the wood came losing the float up. Luckily it didn't make a huge mess and I kind of managed to fix it without destroying the entire layout. I think the piece of wood has shifted a little bit towards the back so the background is now a little bit more narrow and there's not as much space for the stem plant. But I think it's still all right. Yeah it even happens to me as well. Okay so how are we going to do this? I think I'll just drain this one about halfway just so it's light enough for me to carry. Of course remove the CO2, remove it and outflow. Then I can take the aquarium off the cabinet and then I can drain this one completely. Move it over to the cabinet, fill it up again and then we just connect all the equipment and add inhabitants. Okay so just shut off the filter. Okay remove the CO2 diffuser, remove the lily pipes. Let's drain some water. There's quite a bit of hair algae in this aquarium at the moment. But there's also still some plants that I would like to save. So hopefully I can, hopefully I can do that. I think I'll just temporarily place this aquarium on the desk. Make a little space. It's a bit dark at the moment because it's early in the morning and lights are not on yet. Okay take the light off as well and then let's see how heavy this is. It's not too bad. Here we go on the desk and now we can start draining this one. Okay now we can move this one. Okay tank is filling back up again and now I just need to address the in and outflow because previously I was using just a regular glass inflow and a spin pipe outflow. Because that's really good for petas you know. Only issue with this combo is that there's no surface skimming. So after a while you do get a bit of a a scum on the surface you know which just doesn't look very nice. Also I don't know if it's bad for petas because they do breathe from the air you know. I just want to have a nice clean water surface. So I'm thinking of upgrading to the aquarium neo flow. I currently have one set up on this tank right here. You can see like it's really nice transparent plastic. Looks really good and then right now I don't have the skimmer on it but if I want to. See I can just have a nice little surface skimmer like that. Okay this is too funny I have to show this to you guys. So I was done filling up the aquarium. I turned on the filter and I kind of noticed that the flow was not very good. So I thought maybe we need I just need to clean the filter you know. Took the filter apart cleaned it. Actually wasn't that dirty so I thought maybe it's the tubing. Because this tubing is for 9 12 millimeters and for this filter I should actually have used 12 60 millimeters. So I thought okay let me just change it change the filter tubing you know. Now luckily I'd actually ordered some filter tubing the day before. So this is 10th of March and actually two days ago. As you can see today is 12th of March. So two days ago I ordered this filter tubing from Chihiros and look what I just got in the mail. This is from F-Zone. I don't mind it's a different brand but it's like one two three four separate pieces. Absolutely ridiculous. This one also has like a cut on there as well. So somebody just ordered this cut up into the size that they needed. That's like okay actually I don't need it so let's just send it back. And then Amazon just sent it straight back to me as well. Absolutely ridiculous. All right tank is all done. Everything is installed as it should. We have the new flow over here. Tank is looking good. Nice and crystal clear. And in the cabinet it's a little bit dark but you see right against the filter. And with the use of two double taps I managed to use those clear silicon hoses as well. So we're all good. I've actually left the tank running for a couple of hours because I filled up with RO water and RO water is quite cold. So now it's been running for a couple of hours with the heater. So we're ready to add in the betta and the shrimp. I've just totally destroyed this tank but all the inhabitants are here. We have one beautiful betta and a couple of shrimp. So after I changed the filter hose the flow is now actually really good again. Almost a bit too good. So I've already reduced it with that circular attachment on the outflow. But I kind of want to see how he's swimming and how he's behaving. You can always reduce it more if necessary. Yeah I don't really like what I just saw over there so I'm going to add these clips as well. Here we go. So now with those clips on the flow is reduced even more and I think this should be better. I don't know if you guys can see what is currently hiding underneath that rock. The rock that I'm using to hold the wood down. So we'll give him some time to get comfortable here. Okay 70 days have passed. Almost two months and this tank is doing really well. I'm really happy with it. I've done one trimming session where I trimmed the stems in the background and I think it's almost ready for another trimming session. The stems are growing quite fast and I really like how the foreground developed with the moss. Looks really good with the little patches of Java moss here and there you know. As you can see I did add some more gravel. I didn't really make a very good barrier between the aquasol and the sand foreground. So there was a little bit of aquasol constantly rolling onto the sand which you know just doesn't look very nice. So I now added some of the Duwa river gravel something like that and yeah I quite like that actually. Looks really clean so I'm happy with it. Beta seems happy as well but actually for the first few days after I moved him in here he wasn't doing very good. He was kind of a little bit worried that he might not make it. Not sure what the issue was but he was constantly either hiding or just being very like just not moving at all and kind of just hanging on the water surface. But I think he just you know had to get adjusted to this new environment I guess and now he's just like his old self again. Very active, constantly swimming around, interacting with the shrimp and yeah just doing good. So just a really nice and colorful beta tank made from leftovers basically. One piece of wood, a couple of rocks and then just plant trimmings. Really happy with the end result. Hope you guys enjoyed this one as well. As always thanks for watching. See you in the next one!