My Aquarium Box...or YOUR Aquarium Box??

Hello there, welcome back. In this video, I'm going to be talking about something called My Aquarium Box. And people who don't skip this video are in for a surprise in the latter half of it. It's a subscription service for people who have a tank or multiple tanks. And basically they pay a set amount each month and get you a box like this sent through the post once a month. I've checked it out, and you can subscribe for like a 12 month period, or you can do a month by month subscription, so you can cancel it at any time. And this particular box, this is December's box, it was sent to me by Michael from Aaron's Aquariums. And the reason behind that was really just for me to open it, film my reaction to what's actually in there, let you guys know what I think of it, and also do a giveaway as well. Now, there might be a few people absolutely shocked to hear this, but I don't actually have an aquarium in my house. Now, really, I don't have an aquarium in my house because of my wife. She will not let me have one because when we first moved into this house, it was about 20 years ago, maybe. And I put a pond in, and I put another pond in, and another pond, and then I put quite a big pond in. Here's my little pond. So really, at the end of the day, what's the problem? I can see her point, 100%. Actually, before we have a look in the box, I might as well give you a brief background of my aquarium box. It was set up by a few guys on YouTube, and it was piloted in the US. It seems to do pretty well over there. And I've noticed in a lot of the comments when I'm watching aquarium videos, specifically about my aquarium box or videos from the guys who were involved in it, there's a lot of people over here in the UK asking when it was coming to the UK. Well, it actually is now. in the UK. So I'll put any links that are relevant in the video description so if you're in any way interested in this particular subscription service for the mystery box of Aquarium Gear please check out the video description and without further ado let's have a look in the box. All right and in the words of Brad Pitt. What's in the box? What's in the box? Well that's what's in the box. Got a Christmas card here. from my aquarium box as i said this is the december version hence the christmas card we've got some very good food there i used to sell that when i had a shop these little tablets stick on the glass and the fish absolutely love them they were the favorite ones of the fish the ones with shrimp you can also get a vegetarian one as well shrimp one was the best uh you've also got some algae wafers from the same company again just a little sample fish science are a very good Very good company that do make very good food. We've got a sample of quite nice looking sand there from Unipak and if you're interested I would definitely advise getting either micro gravel or the black sand from Unipac. We used to sell loads of that in the shop and it makes a beautiful job of the bottom of your tank. I'll put the links to it in the video description. And again from Unipak we've got wood stone, basically just a small stone really just an ornament for your tank. And on the subject of ornamentation, we've got a piece of bog wood. Nothing really I can say about that. It's just literally a piece of bog wood. We've got the Unipak brochure, and that's the micro gravel. The black micro gravel is awesome stuff, as is the black sand. I'm a big fan of black in aquariums. It makes the fish's colour stand out really well. Anyway, that's got all their stuff in there. They do some quite nice ornaments as well. I didn't realise that. They must be quite a new range. We never used to get those when we had the shop. We've got a little card in there with the sponsors and their various links. We've got some carbon from Neewa. Neewa actually make little pumps. They make quite good little pumps for aquariums but this is active carbon from them, carbon granules. Three lots of 100 grams. We've got Erase CL from Brightwell Aquatics. Now I never used to deal with Brightwell Aquatics when we had the shop, but they do seem to do a good range of useful products. You know, they don't just make up a product line filled with rubbish, it's all useful stuff. And this one is a tap water conditioner which removes chlorine, chloramines and ammonia. Suitable for fresh water and marine. And on the subject of treatments, this is the one that most people will be familiar with. This is Fluval Cycle, basically just live bacteria in a bottle. Very, very popular. We used to sell quite a lot of that when we had the shop, and it seems to work okay as well. And lastly, from Marina, we've got a little siphon start. Basically, you would attach this rubbery ball to the bottom of your siphon that you would use on the gravel cleaner. And instead of sucking it, you would just squeeze this, and it would start the siphon. Saves you getting a mouthful of water. And I know all about getting a mouthful of water, because I had pneumonia from that once, and nearly died. If I'd had one of those, I would not have got pneumonia, and I would not nearly have died. So there you go, that's it all laid out. That is what is in the box. Brad Pitt, you can shoot Kevin Spacey now. Now the My Aquarium Box subscription service does seem to be growing in popularity. It seems to be something that fish keepers want. Basically when fish keepers want something you have to provide that service. So best of luck to the people who are involved with the My Aquarium box and I hope it goes from strength to strength. Now then, I did mention at the start that Michael sent me this box to take a look at but also to give away. So I'm going to give this particular box away and I'm going to add some more things to it. I've got a couple of books here. These were just left over from when I had the shop. I think we used this one for reference and we might have had this one for reference as well. Two decent books. No use to me. You might as well have them. A small amount of media bags there. These are useful for putting chemical filtration, the likes of carbon and so on, into filters. And they can also be used when you're making DIY filters as well. And talking of DIY filters... Some people may or may not know this but that stuff is called K1 Micro. Back in the day, many years ago, I put the first video on YouTube showing an internal moving bed filter for aquariums. That idea just went all the way around the world. I loved seeing what people were doing with that. And there was a lot of big channels took it up as well, and I mean some of them have got like hundreds of thousands of views, possibly even more, there might even be one with a million views out there, I don't know. That idea really took off, and it's a very specific filter, it's really for hammering ammonia and nitrite, but it does work very very well for those pollutants. So here I've got a litre of K1 Micro, which is the latest version of K1, and that is absolutely excellent for making DIY filters. And because those DIY filters would be driven by air, there's a little air pump there as well. It does have a European plug on, so you'd have to cut that off and put a UK plug on it. And on the subject of DIY filters, probably my best invention was one called a tube filter. I'll put a little clip of that one on now. I mean, that's just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Look at that. And the fish love it. That was a lovely little filter, it really was there just to polish the water, just to make it crystal clear, and also because it had the Biohome to act on the nitrates as well, and also it oxygenated the water as well, it pretty much did the whole job. Really nice filter that one. So I've got a full 450 litre an hour kit to give away, I think I normally sell those for 40 quid. Make your own little filter. There's a nation of gel filter balls there which would be added when you did maintenance on your filter and that would help to seed your filter again. It also helps to seed new filter media as well. They are excellent because they dissolve as they're needed in the presence of ammonia and nitrite. I'll make a video about these, I don't think I've actually made one yet. So there's a lot of people who won't know what these are but they're really excellent. You normally use one One per 20 liters or thereabouts. We've got a vacuum packed fine pad there. When it's opened up it's actually 11 inches by 17 inches so that's great for your DIY filters or adding in your canister filters and so on. And lastly but not leastly we've got a kilo of Biohome Ultimate. I'm not going to slather on about how good this stuff is just look it up and see what people who actually used it think of it. It's awesome stuff. So that is what I'm going to try and fit back into that my aquarium box and I'm going to give that away. Okay, there's three simple criteria to meet for you to be eligible to enter this competition. First one, you have to be subscribed to my channel. Second one, you need to be in the EU. That is the UK and... The European Union countries. It doesn't cost me a huge amount to send a heavy package out to those countries. It does cost me a lot to send further afield. So the likes of Australia and America would cost me somewhere between 40 and 50 English pounds to send this box out. That's simply too much. I'm generous, but I'm not that generous. There will be other competitions coming for you guys. Don't worry. And the third thing, which is something that I have never stipulated before in any of my giveaways is that you have to be actively involved, not necessarily in my channel, but on YouTube, you have to be actively making videos. So when I pick a winner and I go to your channel, there has to be some videos there, ideally from the last six months. They don't have to be on aquariums, but as long as you are actively involved in the YouTube community, you can win this prize. I will put the list of those requirements in the video description, just in case you didn't catch them there. They will be there in black and white. To win that, hopefully in time for Christmas... All you have to do is in the comment section, just start your comment, if you're going to make a comment, with my aquarium box. All you need to do to what was once my aquarium box will be your aquarium box. Plus all those other things that I'm chucking in as well. Just as a thank you to everybody who watches the aquarium and pond related videos. Now you will have to be reasonably quick because Once the view count reaches a thousand, or at least once I notice it go over a thousand, I'll block the comments on this video. I'll then go onto a website which picks a random comment and from there I'll pick a winner, contact you, and you can send me your address details and I'll send it out. So best of luck to anybody entering this competition. Big thanks to Michael for sending that box out and allowing me to send it out to one of you lucky viewers. Thanks for watching, see you in the next video.