Transforming My Tropical Planted Aquarium: Moving And Rescaping!

This video shows the process of moving and rescaping the large tropical planted aquarium. Over the years it had turned into a bit of a jungle, but moving the aquarium was the perfect opportunity to give it some love again and redecorate, replant and restock it, making it look nice again.
Enjoy!
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[@opercula]

I've been in the tropical fish hobby for over 70 years. But I can't recall keeping any fish continuously for 10 years, let alone a cardinal tetra !!That's truly amazing !!

[@LifeinJars]

Wow, that's some time! It's a first for me as well, but I've only been in the hobby for about 20 years.

[@shanelynch8232]

I'd love to see more aquarium videos it's like a super sized jar😂

[@LifeinJars]

It is!

[@softersalad]

I've been watching your videos for about four years now, and it will never stop bringing me joy when you say stuff like "Look at this big Amano shrimp doing shrimp stuff. Isn't that great?!" Your passion for ecology and organisms cemented my decision to go into biology during college. I hope you're doing well!

[@Davidova]

A bold and brave approach to tanks! A hobbyist's aquarium does not have to be strictly a biotope, I think. "Let a hundred flowers bloom!"

[@LifeinJars]

I do agree

[@jakobraahauge7299]

Oh, please do keep the creatures you already have! I think it's so cool that some of them are so old! Wonder what happened to the tiger lily?

[@LifeinJars]

Oh I won't actually get rid of them, just move them to another tank. That is, if I decide they have to go, which I still don't know. The tiger lily is in the front of the tank on the left side. You can see it in the last few clips.

[@jakobraahauge7299]

@@LifeinJars Woohoo!! 😄 Thanks mate!

[@EricSundquistKC]

Looks very nice! I kind of like it with very few fish.

[@LifeinJars]

I agree it has a certain something to it

[@TheRealTMar]

This is why I use a siphon with a squeeze pump. I hate getting tank water in my mouth. ;)

[@ErebosGR]

"I'll try to take out some of this, what I believe to be shrimp poo." >proceeds to suck it out 🤮

[@LifeinJars]

Haha yeah I get it. It doesn't really bother me though.

[@linfei5297]

Wow we saw you upload a minute ago! It's a record! We love your videos! We are in elementary school.

[@LifeinJars]

Nice!

[@joshcide]

I prefer the simplicity of the plants being less crowded, it makes the aquarium seem much more spacious.

[@Korvmannen]

I've heard people call kuhli loaches "mulm sniffers" before, but wow, seeing it is another thing. They look so natural doing it

[@tanksfornothin]

I don't envy you having to carry everything down those classic, steep, Dutch staircases. Hopefully there wasn't one to go up as well lol

[@LifeinJars]

Phew, luckily not! But 10 years ago it did have to go up these stairs. It's unbelievable the amount of stuff I carried up and down those stairs (three pinball machines in the last few years for instance).

[@heykerryann]

Beautiful. Father Fish would be proud. I added some more plants to my tank a few days ago and everyone is happy happy 😊

[@loftir-koftir]

I love this. Only channel showing the confusion we all experience when doing this stuff.

[@wirtification]

I just completed a scaped tank, I love the way it looks. This is a beautiful tank you set back up.

[@jeremiahclark3084]

Looks great. I've always hobbied around with aquariums. Yours is awesome.

[@EuropaE]

I love this channel. It sparked my passion for closed ecosystems and now I have 2 of them!

[@EuropaE]

(Also this channel is one of the main things I point as proof I'm bisexual, because holy shit you're a good looking guy.)

[@LifeinJars]

Haha thanks, glad to hear you're enjoying your own projects.

[@myassoll]

Wrestling half beaks PLEASE. I can never find them, let me live vicariously through you!!!

[@johnnygalaxy9022]

What...! Two new Life in Jars videos in one week..! What sweet natured deed did we all do to deserve this... 😅

[@LifeinJars]

I like to treat my audience from time to time ;)

[@johnnygalaxy9022]

@@LifeinJars you are the bright spot of KZbin... It's a better place with your channel amongst all the chaos and nonsense on here lol

[@Swamisloc]

Put some boogie worms in there

[@tamarrajames3590]

Great minds think alike…I miss the boogie worms lol.🖤🇨🇦

[@LifeinJars]

I will and I have, but they'll be loach food guaranteed.

[@tamarrajames3590]

@@LifeinJars For certain…they will not boogie long in this aquarium, but the loaches will be happy.🖤🇨🇦

[@NaireVeuze]

Maybe just a shoal of cardinal tetras. They show their shoaling behavior best when they are alone in large numbers in the tank and I find it so calming. Especially if you want to leave more swimming space in the future, this could be a great option.

[@LifeinJars]

They are fantastic fish, but I've had them for ten years now so I want something else.

[@TheSeptemberRose]

Definitely add some Corydoras!!! They're wonderful fish!

[@LordZanba]

I like the little guys in your aquarium. I definitely think you should keep them, but add some other species of animals which can cohabitate with them if you were to add any.

[@mofish3601]

I found your videos years. Ago based on all the aquarium content I watch so I’m always happy to see your tanks!

[@angojones3713]

Thanks for another great video! No matter what kind of content you produce, it's always entertaining and informative.

[@LifeinJars]

Thank you very much!

[@haileyjones2311]

Your videos are just so fascinating to watch. Would love an update when you get new fish! This was definitely a “trust the process “ type of thing 😂 in the end the tank looked beautiful

[@LifeinJars]

Haha well thank you for the trust!

[@samanthagaragozzo1323]

And still the tank was gorgeous from start to finish. Thanks for the content!!

[@LifeinJars]

Thanks for watching!

[@5avan10]

I would definitely get more cardinal tetras, and maybe some rummy nose tetras to go with them. Some golden ram cichlids would make nice tank-mates.

[@RookwingsKirk]

A story about peas [to go with your shrimp at the end]: I fed some thawed out frozen peas to mealworms and the next day a lot of them had got their heads stuck in the peas. They looked as if they were wearing tiny green crash helmets!

[@LifeinJars]

Hah that's a great sight to imagine.

[@tracybowling1156]

I'm so glad we got to see you in this video. You are as handsome as ever. Your fish tank is really cool! Great job! Btw, I had a loach once. He was super cool even tho he hid all the time. 😊

[@Poohze01]

Love the aquarium make-over! I vote to mix it up - best of all worlds...

[@LifeinJars]

Noted!

[@louiesumrall358]

wow fanstastastic!

[@CelebratingPi]

Looks awesome!

[@uncertaindaisy]

this was a delightful video!! i can’t claim to know all that much about aquariums, but perhaps some more shrimp as well as more fish would liven it up a little, maybe different varieties? it is a beautiful aquarium and amazing that you’ve kept it going for ten years!!! excited to see how it evolves over the next ten also ! :)

[@LushSaltyAquariums]

Cheers from my fish room channel all the way in Chicago! Loved the tank before. Love it even more now :)

[@LifeinJars]

Greetings from Amsterdam :)

[@vitalijussmirnovas7954]

Cool stuff thanks!

[@TimosGarden]

kuhli loaches are very cool people i got some a few weeks ago after not having them in my tank for a few years i still love them (again?)

[@GamePlague]

And they can live for such a long time too. My favorite fish for sure.

[@PondScummer]

Unfortunately since they're wild caught they can be hit-or-miss health wise, but once you get healthy individuals they're near bullet-proof with how hardy they are (minus tank escapes). I had some in a small lidless tank of mud and moss for 2 years and never saw them. Thought they had died long ago, but when I took the tank down, all 3 were there fat and happy!

[@MHSDankusPotatus]

Wrestling halfbeakes 100% i love them

[@ibrahim-sj2cr]

all your content is great.... also mixing up the topics and diversifying boosts you in the algorythum algorhythm algorithm yes the last one

[@PondScummer]

Ever had interest in micro rasbora / danio species? I can see a school of Boraras sp, Microodevario kubotai or Danio erythromicron doing really well in your tank. :) Sundadanio axelrodi are a small, really pretty iridescent turquoise fish that would also do well with the addition of tannin & leaf litter, if you like the look of them enough.

[@LifeinJars]

Those are really nice, but I want to be able to join this particular tank from across the room as well haha! Definitely something to keep in mind for a smaller scape.

[@gafrers]

Nice results

[@kerryb2350]

The music fits in perfectly 😊

[@loftir-koftir]

You asked for suggestions for interesting fish. If you like behaviour (I'm also a shell dwelling tanganyika nerd), you could get laetacara curviceps or dorsigera. You could definitely record them mating, raising their fry and how they interact and dance for each other as an episode. Another alternative is the aistogramma but they breed in harems, which I find less interesting, even though the male still protects the outer perimeter of the territory. Same goes for nannacara anomala. Mikrogeophagus is a great alternative but you have to be aware of getting those that are bred in your own country, preferrably by a private individual. The imported ones are often sterile and cannot take care of their fry if they make some. Thats about it I think for now. Thanks for another great video. Very enjoyable, always.

[@LifeinJars]

Thanks!

[@jonmurph589]

Looks good, well done 👏👏

[@paisleykitty7]

Tank looks fantastic! Great vid. Have missed your videos!

[@doifhg]

loaches are so cool

[@LifeinJars]

They totally are

[@emerald7537]

add some kind of pleco, they're pretty fun lookin

[@amberino4240]

That was wonderful thank you! I jusy rescaped my smol tank with 2 platinum african dwarf frogs.. i know what you mean about being able to spend hours watching.. have you ever thought of owning a few cute little ADFs? Id love to see how you curated their super chill and friendly biome needs.. anyways that's just me because I'm living it aha 😅 keep being yourself, you spread joy ^^

[@LifeinJars]

I've been enjoying my dad's african clawed frogs for literally all my life!

[@Wtfzipcode]

would love to see your take on a blackwater tank

[@notamoose231]

I read somewhere that, unlike most other freshwater dwarf shrimp, the Amano can walk on land, at least for a time, perhaps to journey from one body of water to another. Seems like a hideously dangerous undertaking for a shrimp, but amazing.

[@LifeinJars]

Yep

[@brelouum]

this makes me wanna rescape my tank

[@LifeinJars]

Dewit (no pressure)

[@TalsBadKidney]

yessssssssss i eat up the life and the jars

[@haunted5311]

3:00 I know what you mean, trying to move something both fragile and heavy down narrow stairs is incredibly anxiety inducing. 😂

[@nanvolentine9110]

Well done, it looks beautiful. You've got a lot of interesting things in there.

[@LifeinJars]

Thank you!

[@Intothewildblueyonder]

“My back hurt for only two days” 😂 Great video! Don’t hurt yourself

[@thejony5]

I love how nonchalant he said it too. “Oh, I only fell down the stairs and broke both my legs. No biggie.”

[@LifeinJars]

Haha I try my best

[@Diodoron]

"I am used to a larger hose" Cheeky! 😅

[@Barb0nius]

How do they get behind the 3D background? Why do they go behind the 3D background? How do they have space to swim behind the 3D background? 3 great questions that baffle scientists to this day

[@LifeinJars]

Who knows....

[@tamarrajames3590]

It looks lovely, and I know it will grow in even better. I’m glad your long term tenants made the move safely, and they certainly look happy. I’m sure whoever you decide to add to this tank, they will settle in comfortably. Stay well and happy yourself.🖤🇨🇦

[@LifeinJars]

Thanks! You too!

[@somedude2455]

If that’s a 90cm aquarium, then you should get dwarf rainbowfish. Melanotaenia sp. Kali Tawa, mairasi, parva, pygmaea, praecox, ogilbyi, and maccullochi are great examples.

[@JamesWon6]

I like your aquarium, nice video

[@LifeinJars]

Thank you

[@Froggsroxx]

I now want a loach aquarium

[@LifeinJars]

It's fun!

[@zerofide]

a pair of glasses away from a jeffrey dahmer costume, love the videos!

[@francescom4829]

Welcome to the beautiful world of aquascaping 😂😂😂

[@Broken_robot1986]

Nice refresh, looked a hot mess before!

[@LifeinJars]

Haha

[@Shaden0040]

Yes yes you can film it for hours. one suggestion is get a cameramount tripod and lock it in place that way you can move the camera left to right to follow a particular fish or eminent certain location watch the fish come into that location. the other thing you might want to do is get yourself a zooming lens so you can zoom in closer to the fish I mean you do really good with the amount of shrimp but it was kinda unsteady just a little bit not not very noticeable. and hell you can film each fish individually for like 10 minutes get the best footage out of that put it together then you get yourself a little half an hour reel of your 5th tank.

[@a52productions]

the tetra are so pretty, the loaches are funny looking, and the plant arrangement is really nice!! is this aquarium self-sustaining at all? or do you still have to feed the fish and change the water

[@Sejrfader]

Aquarium videos are more than welcome

[@chrishammer4749]

Blue Acara would set off the colors of the tank.

[@lewisnelken1966]

this video is awesom!!! I wonder how you got the sediment that settled on the leaves to drop off without making the water cloudy again... I definitely think you should keep your current biotope ,,, you have worked on it for years and the animals inside of it have worked their butts off living inside it. I think that is something to cherish and you shouldn't do a major change unless something is not working

[@jonisolis9645]

Wonderful! Give us an update when you get new fish for this aquarium. Do you have any other aquariums?

[@LifeinJars]

I sure do, and plans for even more. This is a video about my shell dweller aquarium: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ooqbaJyrpNZ-r9k

[@TheRealTMar]

Your elderly cardinal tetras look very good! As for planting and stocking, I have a fairly heavily planted 240 l tank and have cardinals, silver tips and rummynose tetras, amano shrimp, two bristlenoses and bandit corydoras. I had intended for mainly Amazon species, but the shrimp are excellent gardeners. I had also wanted to plant South American species only, but over time I also added a number of different anubiases and a couple of other plants because I basically only saw one shade of green and a few reds in the middle. Do what makes you happy and if you feel you need to add something or change the scape a little, just try it out.

[@LifeinJars]

It's the natural way of life for a hobbyist's aquarium.

[@TheRealTMar]

@@LifeinJarsso true! But I would like to do a blackwater system simulating a creek in the Rio Negro flood basin.

[@grantme2468]

more shrimp !!

[@TheSeptemberRose]

I LOVE Kuhli Loaches!!!!!!

[@greensun5998]

What it really needs is a plastic deep sea diver figure. 😄

[@LifeinJars]

NEVER!!!!

[@greensun5998]

@@LifeinJars One that blows bubbles and has a little ship wreck nearby. Maybe a chest of gold coins. It'll be epic.

[@RonDgasz]

Didn't realize fish got that old. Leip.

[@LifeinJars]

pretty leip

[@duijfjekan453]

echt genietable

[@LifeinJars]

Thanks bro

[@duijfjekan453]

Ben je broer niet ouwe

[@vylinful3198]

keep the shrimp!

[@bigsarge2085]

👍👍

[@becausestuffbreaks]

Do you have to treat your tap water with anything to keep it from killing your fish?

[@LifeinJars]

Nope, I can literally put my tapwater straight in. That's the beauty of our dune-filtered water :)

[@becausestuffbreaks]

@@LifeinJars Nice! Our tap water would kill everything, because of the chloramine they use. Can't imagine what it's doing to my insides.

[@Shaden0040]

If you want you quickly look to really love you Add a bunch of leaf litter They absolutely love leaf litter anything they can get under and crawl through and around will make them really really happy plus they'll probably breed more often that way so you'll have baby loaches cooling loaches and the babies are cute they're like grass stem thin little little worms that run around in the graveled sand they're absolutely adorable when they're little and they're only like about an inch long if that maybe half an inch long they're really small when they're first born you just have to make sure that you have a sponge on the intake of any filter power filter otherwise it will get sucked sucked up into the canister or into the back of the back of the back of the tank filter

[@balazsvarga1823]

I would keep the old animals around. You aren't studying a specific biome in a lab, and they'll be interesting in their own way, seeing how species react with each other.

[@snakehead214]

I never saw more than your hands in a video till now. Got to say, you are a handsome man :)

[@LifeinJars]

Why thank you

[@yarconator5429]

i have ten tanks and need to move soon. i really dont want to do this 😂

[@karelwiebes2082]

ziek mooi ouwe

[@LifeinJars]

Thanks man!

[@ucnguyeninh7957]

What kind of substrate do you use for that tank, beside sand?

[@LifeinJars]

Well I started with sand and humus, but I think it's been just sand for the past few years.

[@supersubscriber10]

What type of substrate do you have in your tank?

[@LifeinJars]

Just sand

[@duijfjekan453]

omg lijpe video ouwe

[@semomonkey]

wtf those small fish are 10 years old? That's crazy!

[@LifeinJars]

yup

[@Shaden0040]

South American bioto How to fish a great be aware that the marble hatches tend to stay closer to the surface and are better jumpers than the silver hats fish But they look better in my opinion And the servers the silvers will stay near the surface but will drop down about 2 to 3 inches down into the deeper water just to be accurate. corridors cafs are great you might also want to look into the hop Low Cats. a good mix of Tetris are serpent tetras lemon tetras candy king Tetris diamond tetras are amazing gold Tetris with the diamond tetris is a great mix. For cichlids go for the epistograms the Ramirez the Rams let's see he holds sicklets go great they go well with angels and discus they're very calm and peaceful they don't really attack anything they're not going to kill any of your other fish unlike Angels which will attack occasionally neon tetris or Cardinal Tetris this is going to take anything unless you've got babies and then they just move out the fish away from their kids. any of the dwarf cockatoo sick goods are great blue of cars any of the other akara species are fantastic for South American buy on If you're going to do the South American biome you've got to get some Amazon swords the best way to do Amazon swords is put them in a small clay smallest clay pot you can get and a crush up a couple of root tabs into the small on the bottom of the pot and add some dirt and then cover it with a sand like a cap of sand for both half an inch worth of sand the whole stuff half an inch doing worth of sand to hold everything else in place I want you plan to plan so you want to get like a small 6 inch pot nothing smaller because you want to be able to put it in the tank where it can get either get buried or get hidden by rockwork or driftwood Or other plants you hide the the pot and those swords will do wonders for you you just have to every couple of months or every 6 months add more fertilizer because they are root feeders they do not pick up nutrients from the water column so doing stuff like flourish or other liquid fertilizers don't do a thing for your Amazon sword They need to have a substrate with nutrients in the substrate. and you probably want to do Amazon floaters floating plants. Railroad floaters or frog that I think are both from the Amazon I'm not positive you know but double check where you can get any kind of floating plan from the Amazon region where South American region.

[@jeffinjoseph8916]

10 years is huggeee. That's very impressive my guy. But didn't they spawn in the decade you had them for??

[@LifeinJars]

Not that I've seen, but there's been months in which I didn't see this tank at all

[@RagmaticalRachel]

Wow didnt we just get a video? You spoil us

[@LifeinJars]

;)

[@redlight.]

very cool very swag ♥💸

[@LifeinJars]

Thanks 😎

[@sajeucettefoistunevaspasme]

that stair angle shouldn't be legal

[@LifeinJars]

Welcome to Amsterdam

[@lelpo845]

12:36

[@areurdytoparty]

9:30 xd

[@LifeinJars]

Oopsie

[@hilbillie]

What happened to your guppies?

[@egregius9314]

You know that if you film your aquarium for 10 hours and put royalty free jazz music to it, people will watch it, right? ;)

[@LeviVanSluijs]

Hi

[@LifeinJars]

Hoi

[@johnnythompson3734]

More tetras

[@duijfjekan453]

supergaaf

[@halbronco7690]

i miss when i thought you were a 60 year old german guy

[@LifeinJars]

I'm sorry