My black foam aquascape fail: What went wrong

by megan
Published: Last Updated on

Transcript

[00:00:02.170]
So this is a little bit of a different video from what I’m used to doing. This one is a fail. And I wanted to show you this one because I filmed and all of it before I realized it was a failure. And to show you that it’s okay to mess up, especially when it comes with trying to create decor for your aquariums. This is my attempt at creating a shrimp world. I’ll put a better word here for my shrimp, and I wanted to use black foam because I have seen so many amazing YouTube videos that do this, and I was like, that looks easy, why don’t I give it a shot?

[00:00:51.780]
And I filmed my updates and my progress along the way. But before I show you this, I wanted to give you the caveat that this was a fail. This did not turn out functional, and I’m going to show you why after we go through all of the stuff that I already filmed. So here’s the time lapse of me building a foam shrimp cave and the things that maybe you can catch it when you’re seeing this, that I messed up, that I caused this project to fail.

[00:09:33.610]
So, you’ve seen it, and I wonder if you caught the things that didn’t work out according to plan. The first thing I would say that I messed up, that I would advise you to be cognizant of, is don’t try and do too much on your first build. This was above and beyond my pay grade, which I realized about halfway now, I would say like a third of the way through. When I started to try and build the pool where water would pull in, and then I could put the atomizer and get that nice little goth fog going.

[00:10:08.340]
I did not glue it well enough and seal it. I tried multiple times. When I realized this was failing to reseal it, and it was just too far gone. There were holes that I couldn’t see, creases and crevices so that water just could not pool. It wouldn’t work.

[00:10:28.390]
The second thing that was a big fail, which I realized the instant I put it in my tank, was this was way too big of a project for such a small tank. That was a three gallon, I think, top fin shrimp paradise whatever tank. It was just too big. It was too overwhelming for that space.

[00:10:52.300]
And basically, if it had been successful, basically gave my shrimp like, zero room to kind of frolic around. They had places to crawl and climb, obviously, but it wasn’t anything that would be very good for them. I even tried carving it down a little bit, but the foam is just so expanding and massive and overwhelming that just even nick in it here and there. It wasn’t a good thing. It ended up being a scrapped project.

[00:11:25.360]
I still have it for some reason. I guess I’m just becoming a hoarder now I haven’t trashed it yet. Maybe hope springs eternal and I think that I’ll find a way to use it again. But what I would recommend for you, if you want to do something like this is one, don’t do all the bells and whistles first. Just start with a really basic cave build.

[00:11:51.710]
You can make fancier ones later. Just get the first one of the way. Two, foam is super expensive for what it is used for. That one can went to that cave, that whole cave. I didn’t have any left after I did that.

[00:12:08.730]
And if you think about it, yes, that cave thing was monstrosity. But you feel like there should have been more, right? Like I should have been able to do a little bit more with it. So just FYI, if you’re going to do this, just realize that it’s going to be like all of things aquarium, it’s going to be expensive. And three, don’t do this in a smaller build.

[00:12:34.700]

I know that there are super talented people here on YouTube. I’ll link to a couple that are just killing it and were my inspiration for doing this. And they do it in small three to five gallon aquariums. But they’re professionals. They make it look so much easier than it really is.

[00:12:51.380]
I would say if you do want to do something like this, start with ten gallon. Maybe just your standard rectangular ten gallon.

[00:13:02.250]
That way you’ll have enough room to manipulate things should you need to. It was really hard to dig into that tank and carve away because there’s not a lot of space in there. So I would recommend starting slow. B realize how much is going to cost you. And C starting with a bigger tank.

[00:13:23.090]
I thought maybe if I started the smaller tank, it would have been easier, but it ended up being quite the opposite. SEO, that was my shrimp fail. My shrimp are happy in their other tank. And yeah, it is what it is. That’s fine.

[00:13:41.030]
At least I tried, right? And I wanted to let you know that you might mess up. Hopefully you don’t, but if you do, I did it too. It happens, whatever. So if you like this video, could you do not me a favor and hit the like button and subscribe to the channel because it tells YouTube that I’m doing a good job and it gets you updated content right away from my channel.

[00:14:02.740]
But in the meantime, I hope you have a fantastic week. I will see you in the next video.

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