i think so far on the left side we are now at 240 euros for the glass and the light i think on the right we are at 70 euros for the glass and the light but it's not necessarily a big price difference between these two substrates so just to make sure that both tanks get an equal amount of plants i just spent a few minutes kind of dividing everything up into good portions welcome to a new video everybody hope you're doing well super excited today we're going to get started with the new twinscape experiment so far we've done co2 versus no co2 and aquasoil vs dirt so this will be the third experiment low budget versus high budget and i'm really excited about it so we're going to be setting up two tanks again but one tank is going to have very cheap equipment and one tank is going to have very expensive equipment and these two empty tanks are the same tanks that we've used with the previous experiment and we're going to be using them again today and they're actually perfect for this experiment because there's a bit of a quality and a price difference as well which we'll talk about in a minute we're not going to use the lights though these lights are the chihiros a2 series actually really good light very affordable as well but they're a bit of a mid-range so they're not super expensive but not super cheap either so we're gonna be using some different lights today so to get started i'm gonna take both tanks out of the shelf i'm gonna set up at the table there's so much going on here with all these bars and it's hard to work with so i'm just going to take these two tanks out move them to the table then we can get started so let's get straight into it let's talk about these two tanks so these are the two tanks that we've used for the previous experiments as well but there's actually a bit of a quality difference between the two so that's why they are actually perfect for this experiment now you already might see it the glass from this tank is a little bit more blueish and i think the glass from this tank is a little bit more greenish that's going to be our low budget tank and this one's going to be our high budget or our fancy tank so this aquarium is a 36p that i bought from green aqua i think it was two years ago or something so this is the home brand green aqua optic white aquarium i think this one cost me about 40 euros and this one on the left this is from a brand called ILA i think this one was 70 euros so this glass is a little bit more clear it's a little bit thicker as well i think this is maybe five millimeters and this is four millimeter glass and yeah if we take a closer look at the the edges and the silicone work this tank is just a bit more high quality so that's a good starting point for a low budget versus high budget so cheap tank expensive tank so I've just installed the light on the high budget tank but the camera is not really enjoying it excuse the flickering this is the skylight aqi 40 i think? I will put all the the names and the numbers on the screen but i'm not really enjoying this flickering so i think for the purpose of this video, just for the making of i'm going to switch to a different light that doesn't flicker because it's going to be very annoying so during the setup we will use this chihiros light just because it doesn't flicker and then once we're done setting up these two tanks we're gonna move them back to the shelf and then we'll swap for the skylight so this is the light that we're gonna be using for this experiment this light is 170 euros so that's a very expensive light especially for a 20 liter tank but it's perfect for the experiment so let's now move on to the budget tank so for the budget light i have the twinstar 30b this light is 30 euros so we have 170 versus 30. so this is going to be very interesting so the twinstar 30b is the same light that i've used recently on the no filter guppy aquascape which we have right here i've set this aquarium up i think it was three weeks ago now and it's doing really well so this is the exact same light that we're gonna be using for our budget tank okay so that's the twinstar 30b installed that's our budget light i quite like it i mean for a 30 euro light it's proper bright actually i'm just gonna quickly turn on the skylight again just to have them side by side and then we can see the actual visual difference and the the difference between the intensity perfect i've managed the skylight to stop flickering it was only on 85% so now i switch it to 100% intensity and it's not flickering anymore so it's perfect so now we can have them both side by side and yeah i think it's a bit hard to see on camera but there's definitely a difference in intensity the skylight is obviously a lot brighter but i mean the difference is not that big but yeah it's hard to see the intensity with the naked eye i guess i think so far on the left side we are now at 240 euros for the glass and the light i think on the right we are at 70 euros for the glass and the light of course that's a big difference but there's also a difference in quality i mean this light is very sturdy it looks nice i like it this light is also nice but it's a little bit yeah it's a little bit flimsy and everything you know so of course there's a difference in quality um yeah we have to find out if that makes a big difference in the way they grow plants that's the whole point of this experiment all right then we're moving on to the substrate this is actually going to be exactly the same as the previous experiment so in the high budget tank we're going to be using aquasoil this is neo soil from aquario full of nutrients i love this stuff i use it in all my aquascapes and in the low budget tank we're going to be using pond soil capped with gravel so this is what i used in the previous experiment as well but i've learned from my mistakes and this time i'm going to do it properly and also both tanks are going to get some root tabs these are the master line root caps yeah i'm just going to use this because i feel like with the pond soil it's still missing a little bit of nutrients so just to give it a bit more balance between the two tanks we're going to give both tanks some some root caps now there's not necessarily a big price difference between these two substrates at least not for this size aquarium i mean these are very small tanks and the soil you can buy in three liter bags i think it costs like 15 euros something like that and this bag the pond soil cost me 10 euros and then i had to buy the extra gravel which was like 2,50. so all this together is basically the exact same price of a three liter bag of aquasoil but of course with the pond soil you only need a little bit of it so this bag is going to last you a very long time so the initial investment is pretty much the same for this size aquarium but in the long run of course this method is a lot cheaper i'm just going to get started with the aqua soil so i always like to first add in just a small layer on the bottom and if i'm using root tabs this small layer will just help to kind of keep those root tabs in place so i'm just going to add a small layer then take a few of these root caps i always like to just open them up and then just sprinkle them all over the substrate so we just open them up sprinkle them okay so five root caps okay so that's the aqua soil done so we have a nice a thin layer in front a little bit thicker in the back i think that was roughly three liters maybe a little bit less and yeah that's why i just while i like aquasoil you know it's just so easy to work with you just pour it in and you're ready to get started on your hardscape and your plants and then we're moving on to the budget tank so we're going to use the pond soil and the gravel and this gravel is basically like the cheapest stuff i could find in my local pet shop i'm not sure if this needs to be washed or not aquarium gravel is ready to use okay i'm just going to open a bag maybe check a little bit if it needs to be washed or not okay this looks good just add a little bit of water but the water is still crystal clear so i think we can just pour it straight in of course you want to start with the pond soil first okay i think that's good like i said i'm still very much an amateur when it comes to these dirted tanks so yeah i'm always wondering if you can use too much of this stuff you know like with aquasoil like you can't really use too much aquasoil there's no such thing but with this i'm not sure so just removed some of these big particles just to make sure that we don't get any floating debris basically so i think we can now cover this with our gravel and then we're all good okay that's the substrate layer done i kind of like that they look different like the budget aquarium really has a budget feel to it with the gravel honestly i'm really excited about this this experiment i really want to see what kind of results we can get with this budget setup i mean i'm all for budget aquariums and i think it's all just about finding the right combination of products and i think even with yeah with the setup that we have going on right here and the things i'll show you later like we can still get some really good results next up i'm gonna wet the substrate and just make it very moist and then we can start planting so i'm not going to use any hardscape this time it's basically just going to be like a little dutch style tank so we're going to just use plants because that's the main reason why we're doing this right just to see what the difference is between the plant growth and just how well we can grow plants in a budget setup compared to a high tech setup basically not high tech, high budget setup this is way too much of course but these are all the plants that i recovered from the previous experiment basically so we have like a bunch of ludwigia repens we have a lot of the Micranthemum umbrosum monte carlo marsilea rotala orange juice bucephalandra weeping moss as well so we're going to try to use as much as possible the rest of i'll have to just give way to some people and then i also have a few new plants so i recently set up another tank so we have some some beautiful hygrophila pinnatidifa we have some more marsilea crenata and then we have some a little bit of lileopsis as well so i like to use this as well instead of throwing it away so i don't really have a plan for these tanks but i'm going to try to make a distinctive foreground mid-ground and background i think that's important especially in the dutch style but yeah we only have 22 centimeters from the back so there's not a whole lot of room to make a foreground to mid ground in the background but i'm going to try my best oh and i forgot to have this one as well i recently bought a pot of in vitro plants but i didn't use it so i had this plant left over i bought it for a layout but i didn't use it because it grows quite big but i mean in this aquarium it is suitable so we have this plant is called nesea pedicalata species golden something like that very difficult name but this is a beautiful beautiful plant so we're definitely going to use it in here so i think i need to make like a little planting map for these two tanks otherwise it's just going to be messy so let me just write some things down so just to make sure that both tanks get an equal amount of plants i just spent a few minutes kind of dividing everything up into good portions so we have one tray for the high budget tank and one tray for the low budget tank so i think that's pretty much equal my little planting map as well so foreground mid-ground background yeah nobody will be able to understand those scribbles besides me so i think we're all ready for planting so let's cue the time lapse all right so that's the planting completed i think it looks really good i think we have a nice colorful mix so i'll put all the plant names in the video description but just to kind of go over it quickly so in the foreground we have a carpet of monte carlo and then on the sides we have some marsilea hirsuta just behind the marsilea we also have just a little touch of the lileopsis and so it's going to mix in nicely all together then behind the marsilea we have a little bit of the hygrophila pinnatifida i've just glued it onto this ceramic plant ring just to hold it down and like in a few days it will find its roots into the substrate but it doesn't really have any roots right now so it's really hard to to plant it that's why i've glued it to the ring just next to the hygrophila i've added a little bit of um alternanthera reineckii mini i just stole that from my red plants aquascape and then the full middle is the in vitro plant that i had left over the nesea pedicalata golden then we have a little bit more of the reineckii mini and all the way to the right i've planted one blyxa japonica this is one of my favorite plants i'm hoping that it will do well in here behind the blyxa we have some the ludwigia repens then in the middle of the background we have the Micranthemum umbrosum and all the way to the left we have the rotala orange juice that's it basically so now we can move the tanks back to the shelf fill them up with water and then we can talk about the rest of the equipment that we're going to be using for these two tanks okay so it's now the next day tanks are filled up with water the water is pretty clear and I've also already installed the filters so the only thing left to do today is to install the co2 system and after that we can talk a little bit about how i'm going to run these tanks in the next few weeks regarding light schedules co2 schedule and fertilization and then we can sit back relax and watch the experiment unfold this aquarium gave me such a headache yesterday i usually i don't really have a lot of floaters when i when i use aquasoil but yesterday the rotala and the ludwigia just kept floating up was super annoying, i was swearing so many times yesterday so now i tied them to a rock just to keep them in place and with the dirted tank with the gravel i didn't have any floaters because the gravel is a lot heavier of course yeah so far i'm enjoying the gravel a lot more let's talk a little bit about the filtration quickly so in the high budget tank i'm using the same filter that i used with the previous experiments this is the dennerle scapers flow it's basically like a combination of a hang on the back filter and an external filter it's quite good this one costs about 70 80 euros and it has a lot of space for media so it's really good has this clear intake and outtake so it looks very minimalistic as well and on the low budget tank i'm just using a very simple internal filter so yeah super simple um i think i need to replace this one because these suction cups are not really working anymore they keep getting loose um yeah nothing wrong with the internal filter i mean i think if there's one thing in the planted tank hobby that's a little bit people stress about too much over its filtration i think filtration is one thing that you can definitely save money on so the only thing both tanks are still missing is a co2 system now just because we have a low budget tank that doesn't mean that we cannot use a co2 system so i think a lot of my viewers probably already know my diy co2 system and yeah that's what we have right here this is my famous diy co2 system so it's very simple i'm just going to give you a quick explanation so a lot of times with these diy co2 systems you will hear people say it's very unstable and it only lasts for maybe two three weeks or something like that this system however is very stable and it will last you six seven weeks easily so it's very simple we just have a one and a half liter bottle in here we have a mixture of sugar and gelatin we basically boil some water with sugar then to that we add gelatin and that mixture sits at the bottom of the bottle then to that we add some more water with yeast so the yeast is then consuming the sugar and in that process it produces co2 so it's a very simple process and it actually produces a lot of co2 now because we've added gelatine the sugar is basically turned into a jelly and that makes it a little bit harder for the yeast to consume the sugar so that's why the process is basically prolonged so that's why these bottles can easily last six seven weeks so we have one and a half liter bottle i've drilled a small hole into the cap then we have the airline hose going into the cap and we've sealed the the cap with some glue some silicone glue or just super glue just make sure it's completely airtight that's very important if it's not airtight it will not build any pressure if we try to squeeze this bottle it's very hard to squeeze it so we have a good pressure in here i prepared this one two days ago and we already have co2 bubbles coming out of the co2 diffuser so there's a whole video about this co2 system on my channel and of course i will leave it on top of the screen in the video description so definitely check that out if you have a low budget and you want to use a co2 system i've been using these co2 systems for a very long time before when i just started the hobby and i still use them to this day so they work very well for me and yeah this will be the co2 system for the low budget tank basically and then for our high budget tank we of course will use a proper co2 system so i have a pressurized co2 cylinder and a co2 regulator this is the strideways regulator looks like a really good piece of kit this will be the first time i'm using it so the main advantages for this over the diy system is that with this you can exactly control how much co2 you want it has a magnetic valve so we can shut the co2 off at night and of course this will last a lot longer than the diy c2 system it is more expensive of course i think the regulator itself is about 100 110 euros, the CO2 cylinder this one is two kilograms is about 80 euros so we're just going to quickly set this up so inside the regulator there's already like a i think it's teflon a teflon ring so we need to make sure that is in and then we can just attach it to the co2 cylinder so we just screw the regulator onto the co2 cylinder basically just until we can no longer twist it and then in the box we have this small wrench you can just tighten it a little bit it doesn't have to be super tight so you don't have to use all your force to just tighten it so just that's enough and then we can attach the bubble counter to make sure it's upright attach our bubble counter so let me fill the bubble counter with some water i saw at green aqua they use this special bubble counter liquid i think i need to buy it as well, the water always evaporates after some time so you can never really see how many bubbles per second you're actually injecting so i'm not sure what that bubble counter solution is i think it's like glycerin or something like that yeah for now we'll just use water so we'll close the bubble counter again and then we can attach our co2 hose which i have already prepared so i just have about one meter worth of clear silicon tubing and then at the end i have a little check valve and just after the check valve we will add the co2 diffuser so i think there's already a check valve in the regulator itself in here but i also like to add another check valve just very close to the diffuser because what happens when we shut the co2 off the water will start flowing back into the diffuser into the system basically so if we don't have this check valve the water will go all the way back all the way back to the regulator i'm not sure if that can cause any issues but the thing is that when then in the morning your co2 system turns on again and it first has to push out all the water back through the diffuser which takes a lot of time and a lot of pressure as well so all this pressure is going to build up into your co2 hose and yeah that's just not what you want so you want to add a check valve just very close to the diffuser and then we just add the silicone tubing to our bubble counter twist the cap back on and then we're basically good to go so this regulator already has a magnetic valve and this one is with a usb cord which is nice so we can just plug this into a smart socket or an analog timer and just put the co2 system on a timer so what i always have is for small tanks like this i'll have the co2 system come on one hour before the lights come on and it will switch off one hour before the lights go off as well so that's it basically so it's a little bit more expensive quite a bit more expensive actually but it's just nice to be able to switch everything off regulate it properly so you know for sure that you're not going to kill your fish with too much co2 or whatever so this is a bit of an investment of course but like a proper regulator will last you like a really really long time like 10 years plus easily and of course you need to get this co2 bottle refilled but yeah those are just small costs that just come with the hobby you know so yeah that's our co2 system prepared let's hook it up to the tank and then we're basically done okay so here below the shelf we have both co2 systems this is the diy co2 system and this is the the one for the high budget tank so i've already plugged the magnetic valve into a timer so the only thing we need to do now is open the fine needle valve here we go so we'll set it to like one bubble per second it's about one bubble per second co2 diffuser is in this it will take a few minutes before the co2 starts coming out here this one is already up and running so we're all good so i'm really curious to see how both things will develop in the next few weeks curious to see if the high budget tank is going to develop much better much faster and we'll see so i think the two things that are going to have the biggest impact on this experiment is the light and the substrate so the light from this tank is a lot more powerful but of course it's actually too powerful so i have to dim it down so probably reduce it to about 70 percent or so and i think for now i'll keep both lights on for eight hours that's what i usually have with all my tanks but i think once the low budget tank is a bit more stable i might increase the time to about 10 hours or maybe even 12 hours and see with the longer photo period we might be able to catch up with the intensity from the high budget tank now before we end the video we of course have to take a look at the total costs so for the high budget tank the tank itself was 72 euros the light the skylight aqi 40 is 170 euros the strideways pro co2 regulator is 110 euros the co2 bottle i'm going for a 500 gram bottle is 42.50 the filter the dennerle scapers flow is 73 euros and the substrate the aquario neo soil is 17 euros which comes down to a total of 484 euros and 50 cents and then for our low budget tank so the green aqua optic white 36p is 46 euros the twin star b-line led light is 30 euros for the diy co2 system i just wrote down five euros the filter is 14 euros the gravel is 2,50 and the pond soil is 10 euros which comes down to a total of 107 euros and 50 cents so almost 400 euros difference between the two tanks of course there's always ways to make the low budget tank even cheaper and the high budget tank even more expensive but i think we have a cool setup going on right now so guys let me know in the comments what do you think is going to happen with this experiment what are your predictions and don't forget to smash that like button really hope you enjoyed this and if you're not subscribed to the channel yet hit the subscribe button i want to thank you guys for watching and i'll see you next time take care you
2022-02-06