what's going on beautiful people so in today's video we're going to be doing a really cool setup for my better fish in this tank here it's a cube and it is 30 centimeters by 30 centimeters one foot one foot by obviously one foot because it's a cube and the light is gonna be this really cheap [Music] yeah the light is just this really cheap budget highly adjustable one that i've not put completely straight but i'll sort that out in a minute lights everything up beautifully grows plants really well this should be pretty cool and over here look is the better fish that's going to be going back in there i didn't really name this one a few people said caspar or some different names but it's a dumbo better fish just a quick note i had a few people comment before on the front fins of this better saying that they what was wrong with them you know they look damaged they're not damaged it's just like half of it is translucent half of it is white so it looks a bit strange but yeah they're perfectly fine and he's very healthy i don't know all the complicated names he's absolutely gorgeous though look at those massive front fins yeah he's really cool love him so the first thing i need to do is add in some dirt and this is like aquatic compost to me it pretty much just looks like normal compost there's a few like bits in it i'm looking at nothing there aren't hang on okay there we go look you can see it a little bit better there there's a few little big bits in it you can sieve those out i'm not gonna bother i haven't every other time i've done this and it's worked out all right so first things first we need to make a nice pile of the soil somewhere near the center piling in we can like flatten it out in a minute there we go the idea is that we need enough for one inch coverage where we want the plants to be and we can use a sort of flattening tool to push this about a bit you can even put sand in the edges first which i probably should have done but it doesn't really matter as long as you're careful with it so what we're saying here have i worked that out properly is this an inch or am i an idiot no don't answer that don't answer that and then use the scraper look just to pull it all away from the edges if there is any i mean that's plenty good enough there's a fair bit the front here and the uh the roots will just find it wherever there is some as well and then just to boost that up even more i'm going to use some root tabs from api these these are great use them in all my setups now next up this whole thing needs capping with sand or gravel this is because this soil will just float up into the water column unless we weight it down not only would that look extremely ugly it also just caused constant problems and algae that kind of thing not good now i'm going with a bit of gravel first and then i'll cap all of that off on top with uh sand as well just because i like this gravel but i don't want this to be the main thing we're seeing i want to see the sand i'm going for a bit more of a cleaner look you see in this this sand is this this gravel sorry well this is a fine gravel slash sand isn't it really there we go now i can pull the edges away a little bit as much as it's going to let me anyway and then we can go sand on top of that so you see what i mean it's a bit more of a cleaner look now apparently we need to cap the soil by two inches so it's like two to one ratio one inch of the compost and then two inches of the sand right there we go that's a really good base layer to get us going simple to do and very affordable as well so the next job now is to start putting some hardscape in now remember it's a small tank so it needs small hardscape that's just how i believe you should do it in this type of aquarium we need a lot of plants for a wall stat aquarium so that's why we don't want to take up too much of the space down there with hardscape rocks and that kind of thing right i found this piece here which i think could potentially work beautifully i'm just going to put it in for the time being see how it sits and it won't sit at all because it needs a rock there we go nice little rounded one i love rounded rocks many of you know that i just think they look great bring that light forward a bit as well that's better just experimenting with this little piece behind it maybe if i give it a bit more angle oh yeah that's pretty cool right really striking maybe up a touch on this side more like that there we go then that way it's not like completely matching but i think that's very interesting to look at but it does still give us all this space for planting into and we've got lots down this side too i have cut off a little bit there haven't i but there's still yeah there's plenty of room i think just a couple more pebbles in that foreground different colors and that and will be sorted [Music] yeah liking that finger's cute uh if i fill that with water that's obviously all just going to float up everywhere so we need to glue it down using the same glue that i always use got to say it though for new people watching tonight guys so this right here is siano acrylate super glue gel this is just the gorilla one but there's plenty of brands but this is just the one i always get for some reason i don't know why so basically it's super glue that's in the gel which means it doesn't run all over your hardscape and look rubbish oh and it's completely fish shrimp and plant safe as well guys so what we want to do is find a point of contact like there squeeze it into that gap now the glue can take a couple of hours to set really really hard but normally within an hour so you can sort of keep working good blob there where it's attached into that try and get as much contact as you can between heavy stuff and the wood let me show you what i've just done around here because there wasn't much contact between those pieces of wood so just place that pebble now there's lots of points of contact and we get it stuck down there we go it's been a few hours we are all stuck down now that thing is not going anywhere and that's literally as much as i want in there it's probably too much already but you know i've done this so many times now that i i can sort of go on the edge of hardscape versus plant mass you guys might want to do even more plants because it can be quite tough to start with to know if everything's all right or not and that's why you have to have a test kit guys because you need to tell the water's doing at all times i'll test every day when i fill this up but more about that later so it's now been 24 hours since i first glued the rocks to the wood and that's now going to enable us to do a little trick which makes the next process so much easier right what we can do here which is quite cool slide that light out of the way we should now hopefully this works now i've said it we had to take the whole thing and lift it up yes careful careful careful yeah there we have it look so i mean this one's just floating in mid-air but that will be on the sand now i've got some weeping moss i want to put on the wood the reason i'm okay putting weeping moss on is because it doesn't grow crazy fast like all the other mosses and it means it won't just take over the whole escape as well first thing i like to do is just mist the wood where we want the the actual moss to go and it sticks a little bit better here we go we've got a good little portion here don't want too much though he says putting an absolute ton on actually it's not too bad spread quite nicely just put that on like that get the moisture to start soaking it up it should kind of stay and then we take our cotton thread you can see here wrap it around and tie it off there we go looking good now i always find that tying on the moss ends up looking way better as the tank progresses than just gluing it on and it's like fully secure straight away which means you can cut off all those sort of scraggly bits and i really recommend you do because if you don't it can grow really wispy in no time whereas if you keep it tight all the way along look at me trying to give advice on moss everyone knows i always just leave it not this time not this time yes so take your scissors and just cut off any of the extra bits that are hanging out trust me it feels a bit bad because you're you know cutting off the moss but it looks so much better try not to cut the uh the thread that you've used right we're looking good next thing we can do is add some little java ferns to this and a little bit of anubias as well i think they'll work really well in in that little corner and then this side as well now i'm not going to go for big pieces because i don't want to take up stem room plus it's a small tank seem to keep the java phone small so in this instance we can either use our glue again or in the case of this java phone i already put it on a rock which is awesome so i can just place that in hopefully hopefully that works hang on there's a gap here if i can just place it there is that looking good yeah i think that'll look good on one side and then this side i don't need to glue it either because there's a nice little crevice that it'll actually just stay in and then i've actually got two types of anubias here this is anubias petite and then this is anubias bonsai it's so tiny but both both are small so i'm going to use them both so you can see down here where i use the glue to join the rock to the wood it's quite ugly looking so if we just take some of our glue and put it back on top of that barely any left in this one okay and i think the petite will look really good in this section you just need to hold it for like five or ten seconds lots of you actually ask how i don't ever stick my fingers to this the truth is i always do and i did a little bit then as well and then i'm thinking the bonsai on this side hopefully i don't break this rock off there we go looking good and now we can just slide the whole thing back into the tank hopefully a bit of luck where was it about there yeah that's right well that is looking smart slide the light back about there midway yeah i really like that so it is now time to add in some sort of detail gravel because that's quite bare i want to keep it close and tight to where all the hardscape is i want to have a nice sort of beach feel in the foreground so i've got this stuff here it's quite sort of rounded just like the other pebbles like i said i want to keep it tight and i'm also adding a little bit more thickness to that layer to plant into here that looks really good actually i don't expect that i thought it was gonna again i'm i'm doing what i always do here just dropping the stones on top of the the bigger pebbles letting them fall where they want to otherwise you'll be there forever trying to place each one individually wouldn't you so for instance this one here at the side left a little bit of an open gap in front of it just place a few more on all right that looks fantastic around the side here as well and on that side oh i'm loving this in fact this might be what i'm going to do on my home aquarium on a much bigger scale because that build is coming up soon as well oh yes guys i'm absolutely loving that look a bit more back in this area as well but lots of plants back here and it's going to add extra sort of media if you like for for the beneficial bacteria to colonize so there we go look really piled in that back section look at that built up lots and lots of space there now to be able to plant plants into without it stirring up that soil underneath so that's what i wanted to do there really make sure it was capped now from the front you're not even going to see that because we'll have a lot more plants going on won't we smoother plants it's time to put our first ones in so for a dirted no filter wall stud tank to work you need fast growing plants and one that's really good for that but doesn't completely take out well it will if you let it but is the uh is the sag that you can see there now i've been growing quite a bit down here in one of my storage tanks for plants this is like this is the only one that i now use that's full of water so i can pick anything from here there's quite a few actually different types in here i'm just going with this sag to start with in that foreground area so i've got some nice really short ones to go at the front here the reason i'm planting this all now before i fill it with water is just look at that see how easily that sits in with the stem plants i don't know how they're going to sit like this look just put it in and it's already sitting how i expect it to and the water's in there stem plants they'll flop over so no not interested [Music] we've got some good planting in there now it looks great didn't it i've also got this new one that i've never used before from tropico it's the one to grow which means it's like grown in these little pots it's got a little nutrient liquid in it but it's called la bella lobelia cardinalis mini every time i say that i sound either italian or like i'm from hogwarts anyway it looks really nice i'm going to put it in i'm going to put it this front sort of area i've left the gap there because i'd like to make like sort of like beached corner or something like that [Music] oh we're looking sweet now for the next part i'm going to fill the tank up i just like plant the stems way better when there's water in a tank now remember do this stage so so steadily you do not want to disturb any of the soil that we've got underneath all that sand because getting that in the water column from the start is just asking for trouble [Music] that's filled up nicely but now for the main part which is adding those stems the plants are going to grow quickly but easy to trim and that's going to filter the water because we're not actually putting a filter in this remember it's a wild start ecosystem tank which means that the plants do all of the filtration so we've got to pack out that back area notice there's some air bubbles coming up that's fine i'll just keep doing that until it's all gassed off those gases won't be anything bad it's not going to cause any problem to the water so don't worry about that it's basically just trapped air as opposed to sort of decomposing methane and stuff like that so i've picked out a nice little selection here of like stems that i know grow fast um they suck up nutrients look great as well so we've got rotundifolia and limnophila cesiliflora something like that yeah these are going to go in first [Music] [Music] green's looking good linda feeler looking great they're brightening everything up now i've got here in my hand a big bunch of rotunda folia with a little weight on it i just they're clippings from another tank i just plonked uh into another tank and they've just been growing nicely there was a whole load of roots i've snapped them off so they can grow again into the sand here all i've got to do is plonk this group at the back and we get like an instant impression so that should be good and i'm thinking in this middle bit here should work quite well so they're quite long at the moment look at that way too long okay cool pull them back out then i'll pull the weight up a little and literally have to do is snap off the bottom of the stems again perfect bottom of the stems are snapped off and the roots will grow back from that section brilliant and now we can get some reds in here in the form of ludwigia palustris hopefully we can still see them peeking over the top there should be able to i've got another one there and then a few more just to peek through in this foreground bit that should look good oh yeah look at that brilliant we've still got an empty space in this back corner i'm thinking maybe you should try a little bit of val i've got like one sort of shoot it might look quite good let me try it oh wow it's much longer than i thought it was hopefully it works only one way to find out though right okay it's in that is huge just trailing everywhere bit of a shame i was hoping it'd be perfect length well maybe that adds a good little level of interest to be fair i think it actually looks quite cool and it's also gonna block a little bit the light because you know betters don't like really bright light i'll also have a few floating plants in here as well though so remember we don't want to block it too much um again we need more in that gap there we can fit more plants in we should put them in remember it's a wilstad ecosystem it needs plants so more than the feeler it's the obvious choice it booms out nicely it's looking great already isn't it wow [Music] oh yes i'm really liking that now there's just one more plant i want to put in and that is hydrocotyle japan that's a beautiful little mini textured plant little little clovers it looks like dot that about a winner [Music] and the last thing we need to do here is just scoop out any broken off leaves and bits like that and the old bit of duckweed in there as well i really don't want so it has now been a few days since i set the tank up i've done a couple of little changes to it which i think's massively improved the look as well so the first thing i've done is i added more of those pebbles look into the foreground they were further back and by the time i'd actually put the plants in you couldn't see them anymore so i brought them right forward and just left a little bit of the sand in the foreground which is very very bright at the moment but that will dull as time goes by and like dirt and detritus and things get encrusted in it and you can also see at the top there i've added some red root floaters this is going to add a sort of darkened area a part where the where the beta fish will take refuge in as well and from the top it looks awesome look at how nice those plants look gorgeous red root flowers are amazing and some people have actually said to me i've ordered red root floaters offline md and they don't look anything like yours but when you get them first of all they're kind of green and it takes a while with highlighting for them to go red so they have to convert and look to look like that they don't just come straight away red some do i think you'll probably pay quite a bit more for those though another thing that's quite cool is the plants are actually pearling look at this see that so because there's no flow in the tank when the plants photosynthesize and create oxygen like you can see there you can really see it and it's actually producing oxygen bubbles on the surface as well because there's a slight bit of sort of scum again because we haven't got any surface agitation but we're going to put some better fish in here aren't we going to put snails that'll create some kind of flow i'm probably going to put shrimp as well but i'm not sure if my better fish is shrimp safe or not i'm hoping it is yeah here is my better he's just been in there just waiting he's already made a bubble nest in it at the side he'll be he was finding there just for a little bit lots of cover for him to hide in he has never had any shrimp in his tank before so i'm not sure how he's going to do he may eat them but hopefully not so it's now time to put a better fish in hopefully he likes it come on then okay interesting start i'm really really happy with how he's looking as well look at how much he pops in there that's what i was hoping for because we've got like that flat sort of greenness and the red because he's white like he really does stand out doesn't he look at those dumbo fins going crazy really confused probably right now but this is way better than he's ever had before in my opinion i liked his previous paladarium but it wasn't as pretty on the eyes and it it did like the whole back section was sort of taken out from uh building up that rock area whereas now he can swim anywhere he wants in here even in the sort of thickness that we've got everywhere around here he can go through all of that no problem at all there's a whole section down the back there he can swim in around amongst probably won't though there's a really really chill bet this one letters definitely do have different personalities this is the most chilled better i've ever had as well so can we put in any shrimp do we think i'm gonna put a couple in and then just sort of see how it goes with some snails as well right i've collected up a great little mixed bag there we've got ramsar snails we've got all different coloured shrimp as well from dotted around the fishroom we've got a blue which is kind of looking black there we've got cherry red a yellow a couple of reallys and then some clear ones as well so hopefully they all do all right we shall soon see okay here they go hopefully this all works out good oh come on come on snails come on there you come one's got an air pocket in it right instantly he's paying attention to that yellow one what are you gonna do are you chilled as i think you are yes you are brilliant okay there's another shrimp right in front definitely can see that looks like he's in hunter mode uh oh okay right next to you there's a really there what are you gonna do okay you can definitely see these things moving around him what's he doing what's he doing are you chilled a little go but not really anything too aggressive which is awesome i think we're going to be all right here this is wicked you know why this is good because it means we can have high lighting i can put even more cherries in and they'll just keep it nice and clean and stop any sort of algae and that kind of stuff not so much string algae but they'd stop any sort of powdery algae there we go red again add a little look but not really interested oh brilliant so we're going to be off to a massive winner here for a no-filter tank right now listen up because this bit's important if you actually want to try doing this yourself so you need a few things and you need to be willing to put in some work if you're going to do a no-filter aquarium first of all you need a dechlorinator to make sure that your tap water is safe second of all you need to be willing to do water changes every single day up to 50 and that's not going to be difficult is it when we've got these small little nano tanks that we're doing them the third thing is that you need to have beneficial bacteria on hand as well what we're doing here is called a fish in cycle to start with there's not any beneficial bacteria or very minimal in the whole tank we're adding our own beneficial bacteria while the tank is producing its own from the waste that comes from the better fish the shrimp and the snails you want to keep adding this beneficial bacteria for at least a week and until your testing shows that there's no ammonia and nitrite in the water for me personally in the first week i'll be testing the water every single day when i come in and making sure we've got no ammonia or nitrite now given the fact that such a low bio load on this tank it's unlikely we're going to get like big spikes especially if we're keeping up with the points i've just mentioned and adding that beneficial bacteria but it's just good practice 50 water out 50 back in every day for the first week at least then after that it's all down to your testing you must get yourself a test kit i like to use the api master test kit but there's like strips out there which are cheaper they're kind of hard to read though so i like using the master test kit now i have been known possibly to over plant my tanks some of you complained about it quite a bit but it's my style of fish keeping i like to let the plants do a lot of the work so i can sit back and enjoy the hobby for me the hobby isn't about just constantly cleaning your tanks so this is an absolutely ideal setup for me and when i've done many times before and it works really well you want to make sure that you're going for really fast growing plants as well lots of stem plants that we've used and that sagging the foreground that will spread everywhere so i'll have to keep on top of that moss is also really good at pulling nutrients on the water column and then not to forget those floating plants i've gone for red root floaters you could use frog bit uh duckweed although if you use duckweed be prepared to take it out constantly salvinia is another good one as well but one of the main key things about any ecosystem tank is that substrate layer you can see there it's actually taking up a good quarter of the height of the tank combine this with the soil and the plants and you literally can't get it wrong as long as you're testing and changing your water after a couple of weeks though you'll stop having to change water at all and eventually there'll be no need for water changes i know this to be true because i've done it on smaller scales i've done it on bigger scales than this i've even had tanks running for a year completely with no water changes and looking absolutely brilliant just make sure you keep the stocking very light to begin with for instance we just go for one better and a few shrimps and snails in this tank if you've got a slightly bigger tank you might want a small shoal of say endler guppy something like that whatever it is just don't chuck a huge amount in there i'm thinking like five nano fish if you wanted a school would be okay some harlequins neons like i say endless something like that so if this is something you're interested in i absolutely recommend you give it a go just follow the steps we've done in this video and you should have a successful tank [Music] [Music] you