I Built My Dream Aquarium Studio | Full Tour & Setup Breakdown

Welcome back to Logan Randall Aquascaping. Today for the first time in about a year I'm going to take you through my entire aquascaping studio. This aquarium space is a little different than what you might expect. Every aquarium, every terrarium, everything you're about to see lives inside my apartment. This is where I work, where I exercise, where I relax, and where I build and film every scape you see on this channel. So it's really important that everything feels beautiful, clean, and curated. Today we're going to walk through the entire space tank by tank. If you enjoy aquascaping inspiration and setups like this, be sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, and hit the bell. Alright, let's get into the tour. We'll start with the largest tank in the space, the UNS-90S. This is the newest aquascape in the studio. It's only a few weeks old, and you're catching it right in that early transition phase. Some of the plants are converting from their tissue culture form, so you'll notice a little bit of melt, especially in the HC Cuba. That's completely normal at this stage, and it should bounce back soon. But even with that, most of the plants are settling in really nicely, and the fish are already starting to color up and fill out. I've got Clown Killies in here, Pygmy Cordys, and some Neocaridina shrimp keeping things clean. This is one of those tanks that I'm especially excited about long term. The 90S footprint gives you this really nice sense of depth, even though it's a relatively shallow tank. As this one grows in, and I add more schooling fish, this one should really come alive. Moving over in the space, we've got my UNS-60U. The glass itself is actually the oldest aquarium in the entire space. I've had this tank since I was living on the east coast in upstate New York. This scape is intentionally a little bit different. It's not meant to be a competition focused or hyper refined aquascape. It's more of a plant showcase, like a cornucopia of plants if you will. Big textures, bold shapes, and a central island layout surrounded by sand, and just a ton of life between the plants, fish, and shrimp. The Espe Resboras in here have grown out beautifully. When I first got them, they were really tiny, and now you're seeing them close to full size. One of my favorite plants in this tank is the Blixa Japonica. It's absolutely taken off. Fun fact, Blixa is actually one of the few truly aquatic plants we keep in this hobby. A lot of what we use in aquascaping are technically bog plants that can be grown immersed as well, but Blixa is fully aquatic. There's also a little bit of natural BBA and algae developing on the wood, and honestly I don't mind it. It feeds the shrimp and kind of adds to the ecosystem feel. This tank is very imperfect, but I love it for that. Next up is the UNS 45U. This one's about six weeks old, and again you're catching it right in a little transition phase. So this tank uses Malaysian driftwood, which has this really nice reddish tone, and it's paired with lava stone. When you've been setting up aquascapes for a while like I have, you start to recognize these phases. The first few weeks feels really stable, and then you might get some melt, especially with tissue culture plants. In this case, the Glossostigma melted back really heavily, but now it's stabilized and the new growth is coming in. I can already tell this tank is about to explode with growth. And the Helanthium tenellum broadleaf on the left side is really starting to take off. The green neons in here are super active. They're eating well and have really colored up nicely. This is one of those tanks that just feels alive already to me, even in this early stage. So I really can't wait to see how the planting develops. All three of the aquariums we just discussed are fully high-tech, but now we're going to move over to the other side of the apartment, to what I call the low-tech wall. This is where things get a little bit more relaxed, starting with one of the most popular tanks on my channel, this UNS-5S. Easy plants, minimal maintenance, and a layout that just works long-term. You've got tiny boosts of landra, java fern, and then growing out of the tank is a lemon button fern. That actually started out as an experiment. It did struggle for a few months and was kind of dormant with some die-off, but once it adapted it really took off and now it's starting to grow tall and the color is beautiful. This tank is about as low maintenance as it gets. No CO2, just topping off of water and occasional refreshing of the sand and gravel. It's powered by the UNS Delta 30 filter and a powerful Chihiros light that I run on a very low intensity. This is the kind of setup that proved to me that you don't necessarily need high tech to create something beautiful. I myself was dubious and I've been proven wrong. I love this tank. And next to that tank, I've got a couple small terrariums. These are even more hands-off. Once they're established, you're basically just airing them out occasionally and adding a little bit of water when needed. They're mostly set it and forget it, which makes them a great balance to aquariums when you have multiple tanks to maintain. And then we've got the UNS 35A P-Puffer build. This tank was designed very intentionally around a small shoal of P-Puffers. They're foreign here and they're doing incredibly well. They're robust, active, and most importantly, they're not fighting at all. And that comes down to the planning and layout. Dense planting, tons of visual breaks, and a really complex structure of hardscape that creates separation and territory. A lot of people struggle with Puffers because they don't design the tank for the behavior. They toss a few plants in there and say, hey, there it is. How many can I add? It just doesn't work like that. It's way more complex. This one was built specifically to show how to do it right. So if you have questions, watch that video and try and emulate what I created with this. This is also a low tech system. No CO2, low intensity lighting, and a more natural, slightly messy aesthetic with botanicals and some detritus. It's the closest I've come to any sort of biotope style build. So those are all the aquariums, but there's one more piece of the space that became really important to me that I don't often talk about, and that's my house plants. I absolutely love house plants. They're like the accents to my otherwise minimalistic style. Even though I live in sunny San Diego, unfortunately most of my apartment doesn't get the best natural light. So I started experimenting with dedicated grow lighting, and this fixture from Soltech has been an absolute game changer. Full disclosure, it's not cheap, but it's not incredibly expensive either. And it's built incredibly well. It looks like a piece of furniture that belongs in your home, and it's powerful to grow pretty much anything. I'm keeping it on the lowest intensity here for my snake plant in a dark corner. Soltech was kind enough to provide me with this fixture, complimentary, and a discount code for my viewers. So go ahead and check the description for my affiliate link as well as a discount code. And that brings me to the philosophy behind the entire setup of this space. As you can probably tell, this is not a fishroom. It's not a basement. This is my home right now, and it's not a big space. So everything in here has to have a function, and it has to contribute to the beauty and the calmness. The lighting, the layouts, even how the tanks are placed, how the lighting is mounted, and how things are displayed, all of it is designed to contribute to the space. I'm here every day, most of the day, working, exercising, relaxing, and these tanks are part of that environment, and they have to be beautiful. And I'm so grateful to be able to do this for a living and have viewers like you support my content. So thank you so much for watching. That's the full studio tour as of spring 2026. Do me a favor though, let me know down below in the comments which tank in this space is your favorite. And if there's a type of aquascaping build you'd like to see next on this channel, let me know. Maybe I'll be able to get to it. Thank you so much for watching. I'll catch you guys and gals next time. Bye-bye.