We built a SHALLOW Aquascape with Tiger Barbs!

I do feel very creative today, so let's get into it quickly. I really want to build this aquarium. And the good news is, that I've got professional help with Gary here. So we're gonna do something beautiful. My idea is to build an aquarium, that looks like a shallow tank, that I built for the dwarf pufferfish. And it's gonna be a minimal escape, with red moorwood, with Dracula stones and a very interesting island composition, for planting the Parvula mini there. Dwarf hairgrass. Welcome to the beautiful world of aquascaping! And the good news is, that I know exactly what kind of fish I'm gonna use from the very start. And it's gonna be the Puntigrus tetrazona, which comes from Sumatra. We just call it Sumi. Usually what we do, is we build the aquarium, we watch it for a couple of weeks and then we decide, what kind of fish would complement, or would enhance that layout, that we built. This is not the case today. Okay, so I found this piece, which is great. And I want to actually put it in a way, that is greeting the viewers, when they enter the gallery, because they're coming from Gary's side. Did I want to put it like that? No, because then it's pointing towards you. And you don't want that, right? So what you want, is to have it this way. It is actually going higher, when you enter. Going higher and it's like inviting you into the gallery. Because if you would put the other way around, then you would obstruct the view from the aquariums in the back. If we have this, we have more open space here. If we have it the other way around... This is a very important creative decision, that we have to make. This looks a little bit smoother. This detail here is beautiful, so I want to keep that and feature that. Right now we have four holes drilled into this aquarium. And then we have a Eheim 1200 XL filter underneath. It has two inflows and it has one outflow. We have the outflow in that corner and we have two inflows plugged in here. Now I don't want to not have an inflow on the opposite side of the outflow, because I really need to not have water standing here. Especially when you have this wall of wood, obstructs the water flow somewhat. We're gonna like plug this and then we're gonna use the inflow there and there and the outflow on the other side. And another creative idea, that I have and I'm gonna tell you everything from the start, is to build little islands of hairgrass. And around the island you're going to have rocks and sand. I think I'm gonna use the JBL River sand, which has like more artificial, but more whitish tint. So it's gonna look better with this grave rock and the whole thing is gonna look a little bit cool, but also a little bit lean. See? I came prepared. Let's start working! Let's get rid of the artificial ends. Much more better. I'm gonna break the glass today. And while Gary is like trimming the end, the bulky end of the wood, to look more natural, I'm gonna show you the River Est Red Moor wood branch mix, which is a great little detailing tool, that we've got. And then these branches will be glued with the River Est Fast Fusion compound and the River Est Liquid Super Glue onto the big Red Moor wood piece. We need to actually glue this onto something. Let me see if this aquarium is visible from 360 degrees. I really love the saying that somebody once said, that my life took a 360 degree turn. So you're basically heading to the same direction. So from this direction, it might want to go a little bit higher. More. Less. Okay, let's glue this. This is the River Est Gray Fast Fusion compound. This gray color does not show that much, when you use it between the wood and the rock. This will not stand by itself and Red Moor wood is known to float. So I think maintenance-wise and generally a good idea to glue it to the rock. And before you say anything, this is not resembling the Wet Pat Goldfish layout, that I did. Because that had different kind of stones and no plants whatsoever. It had the wood, which was growing upwards. Completely different scape. The next two main composition elements in this are gonna be the islands of hairgrass and the bigger pieces of rocks. Yes. The curvature of the wood is following the line of the rock. Can you see that? We could actually build a dam, so that the clay-based soil and the sand will not mix. Yeah, move it more. More. Okay, too much. Ah, make sure... Actually, actually... Let me see how it looks from this side. Now I'm gonna move it. Okay. I can live with this. Here's gonna be the inflow, right? Yeah. No, because this side is pointing there. And as you can see, all the rocks are pointing to that, to Aaron right now. So we have these stones okay, but that is like too high there. How about flipping it? I like the texture of it though. We need to... How about to make an island between those three rocks? The smaller one. And the parboil will enhance it a little bit. It will, definitely. I'm trying to find the position of the islands with the hairgrass, because I really want to create these patches of hairgrass growing in islands everywhere in the scape. And that with the rock, with the sand, it will add an interesting composition to this whole scape. I love the way that I can take the path underneath that big branch over there. Okay, so one patch there. Two, three, four, five. What do you think? I like it. Gary? I like it. It's interesting, we never did something like this before. So let's glue them together. Now what I'm going to do is use the brown colored River-Ess Fast Fusion compound, which is dusty as hell now, but it's okay. And then the River-Ess liquid super glue. And I'm going to attach these smaller wood pieces to the rocks and to the other wood pieces, to create these islands. It will keep the hairgrass and the clay-based soil inside. No, I think I'm okay. If you want to bring another glue and just try to do the other ones, we would finish faster. Just be careful, because wherever we're using this, it's going to actually show. So we need to cover it with like a mini-coin or something. So let's use as little as possible. Don't move the hardscape, please! We are done. Are we done? Yeah. Okay, let's put in the soil. But before we put in the soil, we need to actually cover the holes with fine filter mesh. I hate this here. This will stay like that. Soil will live here, sand will live all around. And add detail and this whole thing is gonna be like this. You never did this before, because we're always building like this. So this is something else. There's a reason we didn't do this before, probably. I'm opening the River Est Red Moorwood selection. And we can start adding details. It's too high. This is not pointy. This whole structure will come alive only when you add a lot of small details to it. And adding this River Est Red Moorwood, the thinner branches of the River Est Red Moorwood are really helping us to enhance the whole impact of the layout, to have more things to look at. This can take a lot of time, but you see it only in seconds. So what I'm doing is I'm trying to fit in all the different pieces to different spots and see whether it works visually or not. If it enhances the layout, or if it takes away from the layout. So this is mostly trial and error. All the branches will need to start from the same point. And they should add detail by growing up from the same point. So what I'm doing now is I'm adding smaller branches, that are growing out from the root. And just continuing that line towards the right side of the view. This one is actually... We didn't take care of it. So we started to glue on top of it. So it doesn't fit, right? Now we need to move it a little bit. Happy! I don't want to see this wood from that side. So what I'm trying to do, is just to place it right behind this one, so it does nothing, right? So this is absolutely not visible from this side. Kind of. But right now, here, this adds a lot of interesting detail. That's a really nice detail! When you look at it from this side, I really love the way how it looks. In the meantime, Gary is actually covering this hole with a cap. So we can discontinue that from working in that spot. I started adding a lot of branches to this part. And this part came alive. I'm missing the same branches here, actually. Can I pour in the sand, meantime you are growing the branches? Of course, you want the fun part, right? Yeah! See how all the details started to appear? I know it's a lot of work, but when you are actually adding these small branches to the rocks and the wood, things started to be more interesting in this side. I used the full jar of the Fast Fusion compound for just this. But it's fixed, everything is fixed nicely. Okay, so now, detailing! Does it work for you, this brownish pebble? Yeah! The guys like this, because it's like brownish, so it will do a kind of a transition between the brownish wood and sand, and the gray rocks. The Red Moor wood, which you see here, and the Ironwood, which you see right next to it, are two different colors. You can mix them, because the Red Moor wood will become just as brown as the Ironwood later on. So it's not gonna be an issue when you're using it together. So if you check out what's happening in the 650, in the back we have Ironwood, in the front we have Red Moor wood, and we have kids in the gallery. We're gonna use Bucephalandras in the middle of that. Just like there. Make sure you plant densely, Gary! Okay! So the planting phase will start. Gary is gonna help me with the Dwarf Airgrass. And we're gonna plant all these islands with it. And then after we're done, I'm going to check out how much Anubias Mini coin we have. And I'm going to actually put some detail with the Mini coin here and there. I'm adding the Bucephalandra Bukit Kelam, to have some detail in the foreground. It's gonna look good with the grass. It's like patches of bushes. And I really like it, because that is an epiphyte plant, that can be also planted in the clay-based soil. Next one is Wavy Green Bucephalandra. This is a little bit more yellowish. It's gonna be probably a little bit brighter. And it has the side of the leaves, similar to the Bukit Kelam, that I used before. So I'm not very concerned about how this will look. Gary, we don't have enough soil here. Hopefully, it's gonna stay. This is getting along nicely! So next one would be something, that I could use at the bottom of this. It was Tommy's idea to use this small Microsorum. It's small now, it's gonna get bigger. So blame him, if in three weeks, this is gonna take cover and take over everything here. But I think it's gonna look good here. I wanna use this Bucephalandra at the bottom here. So now the bottom looks very natural, with the Bucephalandras, the Microsorum, the inflow pipe. Let me see, what else can I do with it. I've got the small Bucephalandra, the needle leaf. So let's try the mini needle leaf. Yeah, this looks great! I'm finished! Oh, good! Okay, I've got this cap, which was made of three little bunches of mini-coin and one bunch of Bucephalandra. We'll try to put it in here, to cover this. Which works... Yeah, it works! Can I bring the hose, to start the filling up process? You can bring it, but maybe we will need more of the plants. We've got one spot that we need to cover, two spots, three spots. What can we use? Because we ran out of the mini-coin. Riccardia? Free for small. Yeah, yeah, okay. Okay, can you steal me some, so I don't do it? Okay, Gary, how about that? I like it! Are we done? I'm not gonna say I'm done, because we're introducing the Sumi. And you remember from the beginning of the video, what that fish is. And it's one of my childhood fish, actually. I had it in my aquariums, when I was... I don't know, 9-11 years old. Yeah, just check it out, how this looks. In a second for you, in three weeks for me. The first thing that strikes me after four weeks, since setting up this layout, is how much I love the Tigerbark fish. So the fish selection is something, that I cannot pass by this aquarium on a daily basis, without me stopping and just wondering, how nicely they school together, how nicely their stripes and their colors are compensating this layout. Other than that, what do I think about this layout? It's a little bit empty for me. It looks a little bit like it's not finished yet. And that could be because of the minimalistic way, that this white sand is reflecting everything at the bottom. So that makes it a little bit empty-ish. Which arguably is a good thing, because it contributes to the minimalistic view. Secondly, the plant selection for the Eleocharis, the mini hairgrass is too dark, in contrast with the white sand. So now I would probably choose the Monte Carlo instead, because that is a more vivid, greenish plant in here. It would probably look better, but the white of the sand and the color of the fish are perfectly, nicely compensating each other. Our maintenance team is not happy about the white sand, because that needs to be cleaned a lot and all kinds of debris and any organic residue and eventual algae is visible on it. They need to siphon it and clean it and take care of the mulm. So it's not something that is maintenance-friendly. But that's the only thing that's not maintenance-friendly about this aquarium. Because all the other plants that I've used are growing very slowly, they don't need a lot of trimming. We didn't have any serious algae issues. Actually no algae issues whatsoever. I could see some green algae on the rocks, but that's the only thing. It only makes it look more natural. It's nothing like a blooming factory in there. Other than that, we had some patches visible at the bottom of the tree trunks, especially in this spot right here, which was not covered. So I could see the glue. I just put some MiniCoin on there and that covered it perfectly. So I'm happy with that. Other than that, this single big branch sticking out is weird. I know I have these smaller branches also sticking out, but ideally I would probably have something here as well, you know, to add a little bit more structure to this. This is like very weak visually. So this is all that I wanted to tell you about this aquarium. Let me know what you think. Is it too empty? Is it too minimalistic? I like this style. Maybe some people like the bushy nature aquarium style better. I'm completely for that as well. But this is what I did. So let me know what you think in the comments. And we'll see you next time! Bye-bye!