Fish Biologist reacts to YOUR AQUARIUMS 

who ever owns that cichlid tank should be proud. its an easy 9.5-10 compared to other cichlid tanks. really impressed you got the plants to grow that well.

I can't thank you enough for everyone's kind words! I'm pretty self conscious about showing people my tanks, but Zak and the rest of the community have helped me begin to feel proud of them. I loved seeing everyone else's submissions, even the ones that didn't quiiiite understand the assignment. Love you all!

THAT CICHLID TANK AT 16 MINUTES SHOULD GET A 9!!! If not higher, because for 1, he's managed to keep healthy live plants in a cichlid tank, and for 2, Cichlid tanks are suppose to be overstocked to keep aggression low. That tank would score lower in my mind if he had less fish due to aggression.

Hi ANVJ, at 16:27 the tank has to be overcrowded so as to reduce agression. When having cichlids in the tank it has to be over 100% stocked. (not my tank)

African cichlids are very aggressive, overstocking along with hides is the best way to prevent it. That African cichlid tank shouldn't have lost points, in fact with the plants its 9/10 in my eyes since Africans are hard to keep with plants.

Love the cichlid tank. It's a bit overstocked, but that's for aggression purposes. As long as you have good filtration and do water changes, it should be fine. So hard to find a good planted cichlid tank! I love this!

16:05 African Malawi Cichlids, are Cichlid that do best over stock (need very good filtration), they are very aggressive especially Mbuna Cichlids, the more their are the better they do, so it harder for one fish to be targeted, it's like controlled chaos.

12:30 it’s super cool to see my tank in this video! I will note that fish that is in there ate my living plants but I’ll be sure to get some drift wood and more muted sand next time I change stuff around!

I had the betta fish aquarium at 11:03. Made my day that it got reviewed!

Please do this more often! Maybe like every 3 months or something? This was much more interesting than the shitty aquariums that are all doing the same thing wrong...

I agree with zak. Greyscale's fish tank has to be the best fish i've seen in my life, if i were the fish living in that tank, i'd be living the best life.

Thank you so much for your kind words on my tank (3:44)! Since taking those photos the tannins are nearly all gone

The cichlid tank is supposed to be stocked high because they will fight in smaller numbers

Probably the most positive community on twitch and RU-vid. Chat had zero unwarranted negative comments, even congratulating Grey. That’s awesome

Haven't had fish since I was a kid, and wanna get some when I can so I've literally just been binging AVNJ's aquarium videos to see what to and what not to do.

That straw at 19:00 is probably there to replicate the natural enviroment!

I love all the tanks with the little tetras and guppies. They're reasonable for upkeep and also really pretty.

Please make a episode 2. I have a really good tank to show you.

If you are keeping African cichlids, you have to over stock the tank...there is just no other option, I am amazed that he is able to keep live plants, because generally plants don't survive in African cichlid tanks due to low PH.... I don't know, it looks really beautiful.

"But i guess from a human Perspective its cool" zak not a human confirmed... Maybe he is a fish himself??

The og macen at 7:33 should have won. Getting plants to carpet like that can be extremely difficult without co2 and the Java ferns look incredible considering how picky they can be. If you can barely see your hard scape you know you’ve done an incredible job.

AVNJ you like are the only thing that just allows me to laugh while being super entertained

This is such a great idea! It makes me wish I had an aquarium, but then again I have no time to take care of fish so I'm going to stay away from them for their own sake.

Awe man I wish I had submitted my biology teacher's overpopulated tank. There was a structure in it that I believe was once a replica of SpongeBob's house but nobody knows anymore because it's overgrown in some weird fungus lol. Feel bad for the hundreds of fish in that tank

If you don't overstock that Malawi cichlid tank they will tear each other apart. Winnie knew what they were doing.

2:24 “but I guess from a human’s perspective it’s cool” … something you want to tell us, Zak?

I absolutely NEED a channel like this but for paleonthology. Fuck it I need a whole collection of specific biology channels

When I was little my parents had a huge salt water tank that had small sharks, cleaner fish, and a few larger fish. It was like having an aquarium in our house. The reason that it is no longer around is simply that they all died to a disease that a new fish had when it was introduced. Also it was right before the 2008 recession so my parents then no longer had the money to restock it. Miss it

I've been aquascaping and running my planted tanks for years and I love how he reacts to every plant

I would also give the cichlid tank a 9.5 because it’s beautiful tank and you also have to overstock the tank to keep aggression down but overall I love it

I was hoping to see more shrimp. When I had my tank I loved my amano shrimp. I had two and just watching them pick away and eat at the substrate was fun. My brother loved keeping plecos. We had two common plecos and a third from a friend at some point. My dad always made sure to keep the plants well and gave the fish great places to hide. The attached to plants to three small pieces of drift wood and it really filled the tank.

Hey, I really like this type of content you should do this more often! Love your vids

omg please do more of these videos this was so cool and insightful tbh. i wanna submit pics of my family's tank because i don't know much about fish and i'm genuinely curious if its a good tank or not

greyscales tank was truly impressive

16:00 - Those Mbuna are not really overstocked, African keepers do it deliberately to mitigate bullying and fights. Plenty of hiding places but no real territorial establishment. And it means one fish is unlikely to be the target of overt aggression and harassment. The aggression is spread and usually limited to fin flares and body shakes, not outright fighting. Provided the filtration set up is enough to provide for the bioload, then there is good reasons to heavily stock African Rift Tanks. For this reason, trickle sumps are usually used that double the water volume. As long as these filters are set up properly, they are extremely efficient and effective at the conversion of ammonia through nitrite to nitrate, and provided there are regular water changes or a plenum setup to get rid of the nitrate build up, you can run a system like this happily for years. With fish breeding etc.

I wish I had photos of our aquarium as a kid. It was quite large, probably like 50 gallons. It contained a ton of local wildlife (southern Ontario). We stocked a lot of minnows, and then some crayfish, a couple plecos, and a tadpole that never morphed (probably due to bad terraforming). We planted some local flora and placed a ton of cool looking rocks. One of the crayfish actually burrowed under a rock adjacent to the glass wall, so you could see inside his home. It was awesome to look at as a kid, even if we sometimes accidentally mistreated the animals... i.e. that tadpole. It did live for several years though.

Hi everyone. I got a question for any fish expert. I just got a 10 gallon freshwater tank, and I would like as many of the following as possible: Golden shrimp, kuhli loach, hillstream loach, Dwarf puffer fish, cherry shrimp. I understand I wouldn't be able to get all of them but what is the best combination of at least some of those for a happy tank. I'm planning on getting some live plants and lava rock if that effects anything.

I would be intrigued to hear your thoughts on the show Tanked - they do some crazy gorgeous shit in the custom tanks they build and I wonder with some of them how well they’d actually work out long term considering the plants, fish species and others they put in all together. Also just aesthetically since a lot of natural things go in there but in ways designed to be flashy and sometimes kinda artificial-looking.

How do you feel about Robofish? It looks quite real, and it swims around like a fish that has too much meth (thus, any). It's a toy robotic fish, imagine if we can get the bad aquarium folks to use these! The amount of fish saved!

Fish👏 tank👏review👏

That lizard was trying his best you can't blame him for being hydrodynamically challenged... 10/10 best fish

Not gonna lie, I was half expecting reuploads from s****y aquariums but most weren't that bad

I'm not on discord, so I didn't submit my tank, but I keep my Veiltail Betta in a 10 gallon tank along with an Inca Snail. I've got a fake plant that I'm using to hold abunch of java moss in place, along with an anubius plant growing in the middle of the tank that the snail likes to nibble on. I've also got a betta hammock leaf and I'm using a small dish to baffle the filter so the water current isn't as harsh. The substrate is just aquarium gravel that I'm pretty sure was meant for Glofish tanks, mainly black with scattered neon pebbles. My betta's name is Arthur, because he's a beautiful shade of red with a few iridescent details, and my snail is named Merlin. Both of them love to dig around in the moss and Arthur is very demanding about getting his food right when he wants it. Merlin doesn't seem to care when he gets his algae wafers, granted he eats what grows in the tank as well.

17:57 those are definitely mollies. look at those pitch black eyes and only mollies and guppies have those traits. Platties and sword tail has white "iris" like structure in their eyes.

I think the palidarium at the end was the best, there is so much work that goes into those

I would love to see the full vod of this stream it seems like such a interesting thing to watch unedited

What you're referring to as an "out of water component" is what's called a palladarium. Palladarium is sort of an aquarium and a verarium at the same time, but instead of there being any land the bottom of the tank is an aquarium. I believe they're commonly used for amphibians frogs as well as fish and I've even seen some people put in island in the middle of a palladarium or seal the tank and put ants in there as well.

Now I wanna show you my tank 🙈 3ft tropical with 3 kuhli loaches, 2 sidthimunkies, 4? bristlenose, and 5 guppies. two big bits of driftwood that the loaches live in covered in java fern and moss and a large arched rock with just a tonne of java fern scattered through the tank. Been running for close on 10 years now, I've moved twice and just sealed up afew buckets of water for the moves. That plus the external canister filter means I have an amazing microbiome in there. When im stressed and/or can't sleep I just sit for a bit and watch it to chill out.

19:04 java moss just takes over everything when it establishes, its hard to mantaim when it over grows, though malayan shrims love them

Is there gonna be another stream like this? I want to show off my tanks

My ten gallon half circle tank had a big statement driftwood with so many tunnels, with one Betta fish and a few cherry shrimp, fully natural plants, covered in duckweed, dark sand, I miss that tank and that betta

If you ever do another one of these I’d love to send my tank, it’s not perfect I’m sure but I love my fish and try to keep them happy. My tank is very dense in terms of objects and plants with very few fake plants even though it’s pretty big, but it’s good because it’s full of hiding places and my fish live hiding and playing around the stuff. It’s also got a filter pump thing and a heater and an air brick with a pump to keep it oxygenated.

I feel like "4/10, needs more drift wood" has some good meme potential.

The tank at 21:20 hits home hard. I spent so long designing and building my paludarium so I could have vampire crabs only to find out there is no way to get vampire crabs (and they’re also illegal) in Australia. It’s just a sad lil plant section. Looks good but really wish I could have some crabby friends in there too.

I don't know why but "there's a whole ass plecco there" had me laughing for a minute.

I mean technically a pond IS a pretty good fish tank if you take care of it… but we have no images of the pond to judge if the pond is well kept. Course what woulda been the best meme post would be a picture of the ocean, best fish tank ever

I love how fun and educational this is

I remember seeing this in the your ideas suck video and was disappointed thinking that this sort of video wouldn't be made. Glad to see I misinterpreted it!

3:02 When the picture is so blurry it could be evidence that the Megalodon still exists

Ah rats. Didn't know this was going on. I'd have sent in my brackish planted tank for my pair of figure 8 puffers.

I remember I had a lot of guppy in a large tank before. They died a few years back when there was suddenly a 20C drop they lived for like over 6 years before dying rip

If you’re just starting with plants in a tank and they are still small mix in some silk plants. They can host beneficial bacteria better than plastic and they in general look nicer

god i wish my parents and grandparents still kept their tanks. they loved saltwater fish and my parents had a few clownfish and blue tangs and anemones as well as a brittle star somewhere in the rocks and my grandpa had a lionfish and a second saltwater tank dedicated to shellfish, anemones, coral and sea stars (it was a hugeass tank with a lotta basically non fish sea creatures) they ended up giving the fish and tanks away bc of work and not being able to maintain the tanks daily but i remember watching the lionfish as a kid when i visited my grandparents and them warning me not to get too close or he would jump out the tank and sting me to death.

Skinks are my favorite types of fish

Where do you find pieces of rock and drift wood like in grey scales tank. Do you go out and find them on beeches or in the woods?

God damm it I didn't know about this. It would be cool to show my 112 l tank with two gouramis, 20 neon tetras, one bristle nosed pleco (don't judge me it came from 25 l tank that I got from my aunt) and with a bunch of mistery shrimp that came with the plants. I have such a thicc Forest of plants in my tank that I need to cut them every two weeks.

“i don’t know much about aquarium fish” **is a fish biologist**

Wow some of those aquariums were so amazing. I just happened to come across this video and channel while browsing around. I used to have two aquariums. One around 5 gallons for a beta and a 30 gallon for goldfish. My goldfish tank was my first one. I tried setting up a really nice one with plants, rocks and really nice substrate. My plants were uprooted everyday by my fish, I eventually just got rid of the plants. My goldfish would rearrange anything they could. They had stones that I set up in shelves for hiding places. It worked really well but I used stones from my grandparents quarry and I had no idea what kind of stones they were. My fish ended up being very hardy with all the mistakes I made. They thrived I had them for a very long time. Sadly they were too friendly with people. One of my nephews even after I asked him to please never do that again would catch my poor goldfish and carry them around. The parents didn't care and the kid he just thought it was pretty funny. Poor fish though never learned to just avoid him. I wouldn't leave him alone with my fish but I wasn't always there when that kid was. Saddest day for me was coming home and finding one of my fish freshly dead. I don't know how he died honestly but I guess he stuffed the gravel in his mouth and couldn't dislodge it and eventually just died that way. I know it wasn't long as his eyes were still clear, he was still shiny black. Man I miss my fish... They had their own personalities and I grew to adore them. I don't know if I would ever raise goldfish again though. Maybe I'll set up a small aquarium for a beta fish again.

When he pointed out the fake flowering underwater plant, it made me think of the underwater flowering plants from the San Marcos River

I love how he ignores the fact all these tanks have disgustingly low water levels

Word of warning, Bowfront tanks are a bitch to clean. Can never get a razor or squeegee to sit right to get algae off of the glass.

This made me extremely happy with my tank

Where do you post these? I aquascape and I totally missed it :(

i was not expecting the amount of problems there would be from the submissions in the video, or i was expecting complaints abt the aquariums themselves, but the amount of people who just fucked up in the submission process is fucking hilarious

Didn't know about this submission. Where do you submit pics?

The first two entries captures perfectly the vibe of a contest that took place on Discord.

I’m not a super big fish guy, and even though I love your videos, and they’ve made me love fish more, they’ve also made me realize that I wouldn’t really want an aquarium. I guess I’m just not a big fan of aquatic environments when they’re in a small space like a fish tank. I think I just appreciate them more when they’re a part of a larger ecosystem I guess? I don’t know how to explain it

0:58 what a pretty fish

I have to replant my fish tank as I do long blackout period (hair algae for more than 2 years) and I don't really fertilize my plants for months. Most of my fish died of diseases and my 2 pearl gouramis have died of internal parasites. I couldn't treat the internal parasites. I'm now thinking of restocking it with sparkling gouramis.

Bala sharks get over a foot long tho... It takes them a very long time but look it up. they get rescued just like the Redtail cats. just a lot less likely the catfish are just so hardy and live through mostly any terrible conditions where the Bala shark would just die.

When my giant piece of driftwood gets fully waterlogged, then put in my aquarium, i will be sure to send in mine ^^

18:39 as someone that has been raising mosquito fish for years, they grow 2+ inches long. A pot like that is too small. Hell, my 55 gallon breeder tank stunted their growth. I wound up putting my tank's stock in my swimming pool and made it into a pond

when the first two tanks aren't even fish tanks let alone a photo. man you know we're in for a ride.

That paludarium at the end would be great for a newt species.

If you know any herpetologists bring them on for a round of this with lizards and snakes because that would be fun.

4:30 He's saying the betta tank is not too small... thats actually pretty small for a betta. For a Betta tank minimum is 2.5 gallons but what you should put your betta in is a 5 gallon for maximum comfort. And im also going to add that the PLASTIC plant in there is very bad for the betta. as the betta swims its fins will get ripped up by it 6:25 its just too overstocked and for the people who put angel fish in like a 5 gallon. It's too small. especially with other fish. Angel fish tend to grow pretty big and tend to need a lot of room.

I have a uncle (son of my grandfather’s brother) which I used to visit a lot. He was very wealthy and had a fishtail that was 3 metres high, five metres deep and seven metres long. Almost of „James bond fish pool“-proportions. It had some rocks and coral in the back of the tank reaching up to the surface. This was a bit of a problem for one dumb fish who kept stranding himself until my uncle fixed the rock and made it higher. The front was all full of Seagrass and wood. There were at least 100+ fish in this tank. Including two male moray eels. They sometimes ate other fish but they reproduced at such a rate that the uncle had to fish some out and sell them. Anyway, my mom had a falling out with him and now I haven’t seen him for 5 years. Hey man, I know you watch RU-vid and like fish so if you read this, you know who I am. Write me a letter.

Once went to someone's house and they had this HUGE tank, it wasn't super tall but man was it long..It was very cool me as a kid; not as good as some of these really good ones but impressive :)

I'm going to offer a little criticism on choices of fish. There were a couple of tanks with bala sharks and one that had what I think are a couple of tinfoil barbs. Those fish are tank-busters, and I hope those aquarists have seriously big tanks ready, like tanks big enough for a school of pacus. They're going to need it. Also, I'm not familiar with Johnny darters specifically. Do they stand water warm enough for a betta? I think I would have gone for a paradise fish instead so I could keep my water around 70 or so. Then if you wanted to, you could try out some white clouds. The paradise fish might tolerate them being in the tank. In other words, I'd probably turn it into a cold-water tank. Or instead of the Asian fish, maybe I'd collect some kind of small to medium size shiners. Of course if I'm wrong about the Johnny darters, if they can stand warmer water than other darters, the tank looks really good.

People who have an amazing fishtank immediately get respecc points

Used to have a big barrel of fish, hose water for water. Had around 100 goldfish.

From someone who don't keep fishs, how do you mantain a tank with so many plants/rocks/wood, dosen't it make it hard to clean it? Do you even have to clean it (based on the the tank at 10:33)

I think the last tank with the land feature shouldve won, it looks really good

I love these videos and hope to see this and more series to continue as long as possible and hope y'all are having a great summer

Any ideas for brine shrimp tanks I thought maybe some moss balls but I do not know if they can take the salinity

I could send avnj a picture of 10 heads of lettuce and a stick in a 8 gallon tank of water and he would applaud it for having so much greenery

7:43 * looks over at my tank with a squidward house *

all those tanks need love. most not even full. coral in fresh water kind of like SpongeBob to aqua scrapers. filtration looks neglected and all the heaters are up and down. should have heaters submerged and almost or parallel to the sub straight. up and down you run the risk of cooking the fish if the thermostat is above the water line. sub straight should be minimum of 2-4 inches in depth. your very kind to your viewers and contributors.

“If i saw this tank id be impressed. 7/10” “This tank is the top of good, but not impressive. 8/10” Somethings not adding up

Fubberphishs tank had pea pufferfish in it which should be kept on their own.