Aquascape Tutorial PLATY FISH Mountain Aquarium How To Step by Step Planted Tank Guide

What's going on beautiful people? So today we're going to be doing an aquascape for my platyfish and the platy babies because I've got quite a lot now. I've got the two parents and a ton of babies. Anyway, quite recently I've been doing a few scapes with a lot of wood in. On this one I'm going to go just rocks. I'm going to make like a mountain style scape. I've never actually done that so it should be fun, should be interesting. It's going to be a challenge though. Hopefully I can pull it off. So yeah, that's the tank. That's the light. There's the stand. Oh, don't worry. I always get this. Oh, your glass is going to crack. I've had this running for nearly like two years now. No problems at all. I built this down myself. It's just got like a front panel that's magnetized on the corners. It's strong, does the job. I mean, it doesn't look pretty when I haven't got anything in the tank, but it does look quite swish, doesn't it really? Let's be honest. I was pretty proud of myself when I did that because I'm not the handiest of guys. Well, I'm quite handy, but making my woodwork look neat is quite difficult. Anyway, oh yeah, filtration guys. These I bought separately and they hook up to this All Pond Solutions filter. I'll put all the details on the screen. I'm not even sure about all of that. I think it's like a SunSun equivalent if you're in the States, that sort of thing. But every single thing is like cheap here and that's just how I really like doing things. I just love the challenge of it. And yeah, let's crack on with the build, to be honest. First of all, I need to bank up the back loads. And for that I'm going to use a lot of coarse gravel. This will then give us our bed to put our rocks on. Right, that's our base. Now this is going to mean that it's going to support the load of big rocks, so we can go really big in here now. I'm looking forward to doing that. So I'm going to use serious stone. I've got a lot of it available and it just looks like mountains to be honest already. So out here is my storage area and you can see I've got loads of different bits of wood, bits of rock. We've got lava stone down there, black lava stone, lava rock. And then this is all the serious stone. Actually, I've got a bit more underneath there as well, but you can see I've got some nice big pieces here. There's no way I'm going to need all of it, but it's going to be a bit of a jigsaw puzzle putting it all in. So it's good to have lots of options. Oh, I've got even more there. I didn't even realise. Okay, we've got loads of options. So at this stage, I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm just going for a little bit of randomness, just mainly getting the rocks in and then I can just adjust over time. It's going to take a long time with this kind of scape and there's no need to rush it. Just take the time of it until you get it right. You can see when you're getting it right, I'm starting off trying to get like a valley. I'm going to go from there. Right. Hopefully you can see I've got like a starting structure there. It might change. It might not. Who even knows? But I've given it sort of like a border and there's going to be loads of room at the back there for me to pile up more of this stone on that side and on that side. And then we can maybe put more rocks on top to give it even more of a mountainous height. I want to try and bring the rocks all the way to the surface if I can. And then we can sort of plant around them and create sort of, I don't know, pathway, something like that with the plants. I want to keep that valley in the middle running through. I think that'll look quite cool. Sort of spreading out into an opening area with even more plants. I've got to try and keep the plants quite small though. So we're not going for like loads of stems and stuff because it would just ruin the scale. But so far so good. Right. Keep going. Just keep putting this stone in the back. Now I'll probably shuffle this around a bit because it's quite straight. Look, whereas we've got really good sort of randomness to those rocks. These are pretty straight. So I might just need to push that one back a bit and bring this one out and give it a little arch. Again, it will add more interest later on. I can put another smaller rock in the foreground, plant around it. It'll just create more interest basically. Okay. That is looking good. So I want to start building up those layers behind the rock walls. You know, the front of the mountain, if you like. I want to start getting some nutrients in. So I'm going to put some aqua soil in and then more stones, more axles, more stone. You know, I don't want too much aqua soil because apparently it can lead to issues with compaction and anaerobic stuff. I don't really know too much about all that. All I know is that the axle will creep through holes like there and there and run the back. And then on this side, we've got some holes in that as well. So what I'm going to do is use some filter floss in those gaps and I'll block that out. And it means that we can not have to worry then about it always falling forward. I'll try and sort of put some of the bigger rocks or the pebbles up against the front as best I can. And then I have a nice big pocket of aqua soil at the back corners that should work quite well. Right. So we've got our nutrients in each corner. Now we can put more rocks on top of that level now. So we've made like platforms for them. Also, I was a bit worried about the outward force pushing these rocks this way. So what I've done is siliconed these two rocks together and these two rocks together, and that should lock everything in place because the rest is just sort of okay as it is. It's leaning that way. So, and the same with this one, it's all leaning against that direction and there's not going to be a lot of weight on top of that. So we'll be all good in that respect. Plus it'd be full of water as well. Not that's going to make, I don't know how that would help, but hopefully it will. So next up, we can now raise those areas, especially this one. I want this right up. Maybe this one's slightly lower. I will see. It might be the same. I don't know, but either way rocks in, and then we can put more soil around those rocks and that could be our planting areas. So I ended up raising this one slightly at the side. I put a rock underneath it into the soil, more soil around the rock, and then place that one on top. Now from that angle, it looks stupid. Yeah. But from there you can see it's looking good. We're going to fill that whole section up with plants, you see. And I also placed this one here in front of the piece behind it and just gives that sort of carries on that angle with that angle. I don't know. I just thought it looked cool. I've been able to look even better when we're sort of got more done, but at the moment I'm really happy with that. There will be a case for some stuff in the foreground as well that just to carry on some of the angles. But at the moment we'll just stick with that and then move on to the next stage. And the next stage is of course laying in that decorative sand in the foreground. Now we've got those pebbles there. Now you're not going to see those. We're going to cover those up instead of the purpose of bulking up the height. They're not very pretty, are they? So what I'm going to go for is like an off white sort of sand, a quartz-based sand. You're not really going to see a lot of it to be honest. We'll be adding tons of detail around it with quite a lot of foreground plants. I'm going to go for it on this one. Add like a sort of lawn at the front. For that I'm probably going to use something like Gloss of Stigma and it should look pretty good to be honest. Look at that. Having just the sand in the foreground instantly just transforms it all and also highlights how much space we've still got in the foreground which is brilliant because I want to bring those rocks in more and kind of keep that sort of, I don't know, mysterious pathway coming sort of zigzagging in. Maybe open them out slightly at the front. We'll see how it looks but yeah I think I definitely want to keep that pathway. Keep it as sand only. Just a little hint of some plants and stuff on the edges would be really good. This is turning out to be a lot better than I was visualising. I was a bit worried about this build. It's not something I usually do. It's actually a lot more difficult than usual as well. A lot more thinking going on, a lot more planning, a lot more taking your time. So when you guys are doing this, if you decide to do this, just really take your time with it. Next up we need some rocks in this foreground just to give us more detail, you know, more focal points and also a place to separate planting as well because otherwise it's just a block otherwise isn't it. Okay that's looking great but now we need a lot more detail around all these rocks. So what I'm going to do is take some big ones of them because I haven't got small ones and just smash them up with a hammer. Okay there we go. Look I've got a good amount there. All different sort of gradings as well. Fine to coarse, you know, completely different and that should make us get that really realistic look. Okay there we go. Look it looks a little bit scraggly but that's okay because I'm still going to be planting into all of this sort of mess so you'll only see sort of snapshots I guess of those broken up rocks. I've left the pathway clear. You can sort of see what I'm trying to do now. Come out that way, come out that way and it'll try and zigzag across and lead up, you know, the back end there. So I'm only going to put a little bit of detail around these edges. Oh there we go, looking sweet. Now hopefully you guys can see the different pathways. I've got a little one there, I've got the main one up there and I've got a little root going up there. Lots of plants will be in that corner bit but I like to sort of suggest that there's a root up there. Do you know what I mean? So this sand in the moment for me isn't bright enough to be like a pathway sand so I'm going to be sprinkling some more lighter colored right along where I want it to go. So following the zigzags I want and everything like that. Oh yeah that looks awesome, really like that. So it's time now we can put in our first sort of foreground plants. Now as I'm going along I'll just remove say a rock like that one and then plug in my Glossostigma, so a short nice compact foreground plant that will spread everywhere. I'm going to just take out the rocks and then put the plant in so that's why I've sort of gone over the top of the rock so I know I'm taking some out. Okay plants, plants, plants, these are the ones I want. This is the Glossostigma and that's hard to see there but it grows like that it looks so nice. I'll use that and a little bit of hair grass as well just for little details right around the rocks. Oh yes there we go already starting to look good with just that little bit of green. Right don't forget to spray these things down they just they get dry so quickly you just keep a mister with you handy and just keep spraying and then on to the next plant. I think next we go for the hair grass and just stump it around everywhere. There we go looking so good I mean that's all the sort of foreground plants that I want for now I might add more later but for now let's leave it at that before we lose all the paths we lose all the detail. Next up I want to start getting some of the bigger plants in so in this area the top sort of areas of aquasol we've got there and there oh by the way I don't think I mentioned this was actually the other way around this stone flipped it this way because it carries the angle and better and also freed up a lot more space for planting so yeah much better like that. Now we're getting somewhere so that's the um Micranthium um the round pearlweed in there and that will sort of grow upwards and forwards kind of like a big Monte Carlo and then on this side the Liliopsis Brasiliensis I've matched it in that corner because some you know it works well just to have it matching each side not necessarily same size as you can see and also I want to cover up now those bits of filter floss and for that I'm going to use some Anubias Petite in those little areas the scale works because Anubias Petite is obviously so small we want to keep stuff quite sort of dainty looking good so far though. Right we're looking good so far I'm thinking I want to add in a few more plants but first of all I want to raise the water level just because I find it easier to plant stem plants and to see if we need any more to be honest this might be ideal that will grow in really good but it might need more we'll just see in a minute. I mean the tank might need some mosses for instance it might not I'm not sure yet I know a lot of people like to go heavy on mosses with these kind of scapes and let them cover all the rocks but I feel that'll kind of spoil the rock work won't it we'll see we'll see. Now as cool as I think this is going to look I'm probably going to spoil it by having the brickwork in the background it's going to ruin that sort of diorama effect you know that realism so I'll let it clear see how it looks because maybe I've got a bit dull here there we go because maybe I want to put a misted background on like I say let's wait till it clears and then I can decide it's not a difficult job to do all I've got to do is drain the water down very gently ease this corner out and then I can just get to the back of it can't I and then very gently back again but remember what I did I siliconed these two big rocks there and those two big rocks there in place which means it should stop anything from moving fingers crossed Right guys it has now been 24 hours since I first filled it up everything's crystal clear I'm not sure about a few things first of all we definitely need more stem plants in those top parts of the mountain second of all I think we do need to put some kind of background on it purely because the brick brickwork behind is pretty much the same color as the mountains and I feel like we're sort of losing them a bit to that so I'm going to drain it down pull it out really slowly and just apply a sort of misted film frosted glass background thingy absolutely nailed that description oh there we go that's better much less distracting now for the plants that I want to put the top here the stems guess what I'm going with pearlweed but hear me out hear me out the tiny little leaves of the pearlweed will actually suit the scale of the of the tank far better than say something like rotundifolia so I think it's going to work really well and also given the fact that it's in those two very distinctive areas it'll be so easy just to go snip snip snip and curve off a little sort of sphere I guess I think I look really good on there not to start with obviously I'll need it to grow in thick first before I trim it but yeah I'm really liking how it's turning out so I think we've achieved our goal the tank's looking so so good but it's time to add the fish now so the fish that we're putting in here are platies I did have a group of like six or something like that I took most of them back and kept two parents because you'll see in a minute I've got so many babies which is really awesome but at the time I didn't platies produce as fast as guppies but they really do anyway let's get them in