I'm Building My Next Dream Vivarium | 100th Episode Special

This will be the vivarium of vivariums! I am AntsCanada, Creator of Worlds,

the biological engineer of a multi-year operation in my giant Ant Room lab, located in my home,

where I’m building an expansive network of ecosystem vivariums: Exhibit A) Pantdora,

my 1000 gallon cloud rainforest floor vivarium, which is connected by way of a cave tunnel,

to Exhibit B) Hydromeda, a tropical wetlands vivarium, and to a vertical glass bridge of

wooden vines ascending up to Exhibit C) Orchadia, a treetop canopy vivarium on the floor above,

and through an opening at the back, leading to a fallen log bridge, to Exhibit D) Verdantia,

a gargantuan 2,000 gallon tropical Grasslands Vivarium. It’s all one massive connected

ecosystem, I call Pantgea, housing a plethora of fungi, plants, and animals, whose purpose

is to reveal how ecosystems work in the wild, and guys, this happens to be the 100th episode of this

Ecosystem Vivarium series! Crazy! So in celebration of this milestone,

I have decided to announce that I have officially begun the construction of our next giant vivarium,

which will attach to Pantgea, and is set to be the vivarium of vivaria, pushing the

boundaries of possibility in my ongoing quest to reconstruct Mother Nature within glass,

and guys, you will be mindblown by what I have planned for this next tank, Vivarium 5!

Please SUBSCRIBE to the channel and hit the BELL ICON! Welcome to the AC Family! Enjoy!

As Pantgea’s Creator of Worlds, I’ve come to learn that building these ecosystem biomes

within glass requires a great deal of planning and research in order to work. It requires a clear

understanding of the biome under construction, a plan for what types of living things would

call it home and how they would all interact, a knowledge on the needs of these species,

and what environmental factors need to be replicated for them to thrive. But most of all,

it requires an understanding of the role the biome plays at keeping the planet alive.

It’s why I’ve been studying for this next vivarium, tentatively called Vivarium 5, or VIV 5,

for years now and have been canvassing for the right team to help me, because I always knew that

when I was ready, and was crazy enough to actually attempt to pull off such a hard and complex world,

creating this particular ecosystem vivarium would be the coolest, most ambitious, most biodiverse,

and greatest opportunity for learning in a single vivarium yet. Soon you’ll understand why I say it

is an understatement that Viv 5 will be unlike any other vivarium we’ve ever made, and to the

best of my knowledge a first of its kind. So what biome will this new vivarium be? Well, it’s quite

specific and a bit on the complex side, but you guys will love it, so let’s get to it.

One of the things that will make this next giant vivarium different is that it will offer more

ecological niches for its residing creatures than any of the other existing vivaria in

Pantgea. How so? Well, to put it simply it’s a compound of habitats, that can be divided into

four different “zones”, which will be home to different sets of creatures. So let’s start by

talking about the first zone. It’s maintenance day for Godzilla,

my young spectacled caiman. He eats once a week and poops once a week, and when he does,

my team and I go in to give Godzilla and everything in his enclosure a good cleaning.

We take all precautions to ensure our safety during this potentially dangerous operation,

but every time Godzilla is highly cooperative and anticipates his favourite part of this maintenance

day routine, which you will witness shortly. Now as a crocodilian, he’s got some really sharp

teeth and is capable of a nasty bite, which is why, if you’ve been following the channel, you

know he’s been undergoing human desensitization training in this very open holding tank,

which has been a temporary home until he gets transferred to his next home. As you can see,

his training has been effective as he is totally calm around us now, and this comfortability around

humans is important to instate while these caiman are young and small because a full

grown 5 foot caiman that is scared of humans can lead to a lethal situation rather quickly.

We start by doing a water change, scrub down his rocks, and tank, as well as scrub his back,

and this is the part he loves the most! Arching his back so we can really get in there

with a good scrubbing, with his mouth wide open, this back scrubbing session

takes him to crocodilian ecstasy! Oop! Tickles! Sorry, Godzilla.

This scrubbing helps keep algae off his back and also removes dead scutes, the boney scales that

cover his body. As you can see, he’s really come a long way from wanting to bite our hands off back

when he first started this training program, to now looking forward to this weekly scrub time.

Once the tank is completely clean, it’s time to go in and add some floating lettuce which

will help with keeping nitrogen levels in the water down until the next week’s water change,

and also reintroduce beneficial microscopic life which will assist in keeping the water clean.

Now as much as he’s come to love this holding tank, as mentioned, he’s ready to move on to

a larger home, with a larger land area on which to bask and a new set of aquatic microorganisms

in the waters. Now, I’ve been planning to have Godzilla move into Viv 5, because Godzilla’s

species can actually be found in Viv 5’s biome in the wild, so I can’t wait for him to enjoy

life in Viv 5 after it is completed, at least for a little while before we move him to either my 60

ft outdoor pond in my yard, or to a friend’s zoo to live and breed with other spectacled caimans

like him. He will particularly love what I have planned for Viv 5’s first zone.

The first zone of Viv 5 will be a rocky jungle, and I plan to have a variety of

tropical plants growing around a volcanic rock hill, onto which he can climb and bask under,

just as he does in his current tank, but with a lot more land space. Also, Viv 5 will provide a

huge swimming area for him with a tonne of microorganisms swimming around in it,

and get this, no more water changes needed! I know you tank folks are scratching your

heads at this, but more about that in a bit. He’ll also be able to hunt for prey, like crickets

and roaches migrating from the other vivaria, as well as those he manages to catch in the other

three zones. Now on to Zone 2, which I think you guys will find truly interesting.

I’m a beach guy, and have been able to visit some incredible beaches around the world. Each beach

is different, and not all beaches are powdery sands and walkable. In fact, a lot of them are

dangerous, rocky, and hard to navigate, but it’s these hard to get to places that I find are the

most biologically interesting to explore. Tide pools are isolated pockets of seawater that

form in rocky depressions along the coastline as the tide recedes, creating thriving,

miniature ecosystems. These dynamic habitats harbour hardy marine life such as anemones,

sea urchins, starfish, crabs, and seaweed adapted to drastic daily changes in sunlight, temperature,

and water levels. AC Family, Viv 5 will have a tide pool zone, where water can be trapped

and creatures can take advantage of these high nutrient bowls of wet living space. I definitely

plan on introducing tide pool creatures to Viv 5, which will truly make it a unique vivarium. I’ve

seen a few interpretations of tidepools simulated in tanks online, but I don’t think I’ve seen them

quite like how we’re going to create ours. I truly plan on replicating nature with this zone! I’m

so stoked about this! Now about not needing water changes, on the topic of nutrients, this brings me

now to Zone 3. Oooh you guys will love this! Hydromeda, the wetlands vivarium has been pretty

non-problematic, save a few leak incidents at the start. The water environment is completely stable,

and insects travel from other vivaria, and end up drowning in the water, feeding other creatures

below it. It’s actually an aquatic paradise down here, but it does come at a price. It’s pretty

high maintenance to keep things stable. Once a week, Hydromeda requires a 25% water change to get

rid of the nitrogen produced from fish waste and decaying material in the water. This nitrogenous

waste is poisonous to animals if it builds up to certain levels, and many creatures like Valentino,

my Green Tree Python who drinks from the water on a regular basis, depend on Hydromeda’s waters to

be clean. A powerful sump filter and an awesome team of plants help remove some of the nitrogen

and nutrients from the water, but not all, hence the weekly 25% water changes. However, after

discussing with my team, I’m excited to share that once Viv 5 is up and running, we no longer will

have to worry about these weekly 25% water changes in Hydromeda, as we will have a place to siphon

off all the dirty water to, where a special set of organisms will gladly eat it all up!

Mangroves are among the most productive and biologically complex ecosystems on Earth,

serving as a critical bridge between land and sea in tropical and subtropical regions. They’re

“superheroes” of coastal ecosystems, acting as natural buffers against huge storm waves and

erosion; they’re biodiversity hotspots, providing a home for a tonne of species; and are climate

change warriors, as they trap hundreds of millions of tonnes of C02 gas from the atmosphere.

The mangroves themselves are highly specialized plants that have adapted to live in salty water

or brackish water, i.e. a mix of salty and freshwater. They’re able to filter out the

salts via salt glands in their leaves and have roots that can filter it out as well.

Mangroves also help filter the water of pollutants, and eat up a tonne of nitrogenous

waste and nutrients, and so I plan on having water from Hydromeda travel through some clever piping,

to emerge as a small drip stream, into Viv 5 to eventually feed the mangroves, and simply

top off Hydromeda using special water level sensors, with freshwater directly from my tap,

which comes from a well, so no chlorine. In this way, both Hydromeda and Viv 5 will not require

partial water changes, and will be truly stable with little to no human maintenance required,

plus this is actually what happens in nature, where freshwater travels through the tropics,

which is what Hydromeda represents, and eventually makes its way to the biome of Viv 5.

Now, the mangroves will also provide essential habitat and hunting ground for other cool

creatures like mudskippers, which are the cutest predatorial fish that can live in water and on

land, as well as archerfish, which spit droplets of water out to snipe bugs traveling on the

mangroves so they fall into the water to eat. I know a lot of you have been asking for both these

neat creatures, so this should be a real treat if we pull it off! The mangroves also provide

essential hiding spots for fish and other small critters hiding from predators, like Godzilla,

as well as other key predators that I’ve been told could be properly sourced where I live,

and would reside in the 4th and final zone of Viv 5.

I live in the Philippines, which is an archipelago of over 7,600 islands,

home to some of the most stunning beaches in the entire world,

and my favourite beaches I’ve ever visited are found here in the rock islands of Palawan.

Massive towering walls of black limestone jut out of the ocean like gothic castles,

cutting up the ocean into sections of shallower turquoise bodies of water, some of which are

hidden estuaries where fresh water from lakes and streams meet saltwater coming in from the ocean.

These estuaries, bordered by mangroves, tide pools, and rocky jungle, are protected

from the harsh ocean waves and are too shallow for larger predators to enter,

which makes them peaceful, biodiverse sanctuaries known as “Nursery Grounds”.

Every time I visit such nurseries, I always try to spot baby sharks and have been lucky

on several occasions. This is a nursery ground I visited several years ago where I spotted baby

black-tipped sharks hunting for fish. In these nursery grounds, one can find a

tonne of truly neat aquatic life, including seagrass and kelp, coral and sponges, various

species of schooling fish, hunters like lionfish and mudskippers, crustaceans like amano shrimp

which are found in Hydromeda, but that require brackish water for their larvae to hatch, weird

invertebrates like sea cucumbers, larger creatures like stingrays, and my ultimate favourite: baby

sharks, doo doo doo doo doo doo, who flee to these nursery grounds after hatching from their eggs, to

escape predation from other sharks and fish. AC Family, for those of you screaming at your

screen right now at the prospect of having stingrays and sharks in Pantgea, I won’t reveal

too much more, but bid you all to make sure you’re subscribed to the channel, because like I said,

Viv 5 will be unlike any other vivarium we’ve ever made, and to the best of my knowledge a

first of its kind in the entire world, and I’d love for you guys to be part of the journey

as we build it and learn along the way. So now you may be asking, after all we’ve seen:

a jungle zone, a tidepool zone, a mangrove forest zone, and a nursery, what exactly is

this biome we’re building in Vivarium 5? Well, AC Family, there is a name for it.

It’s a place where the jungle, the tidepools, the mangroves, and the nursery, all converge into a

single key habitat, offering a very specific set of niches for a massive array of life,

a dynamic world shaped by the tides, where fresh water meets the salty in a brackish cocktail,

creating a biologically rich and geologically complex cradle of space, tucked away in some of

the most remote tropical parts of the planet, that a lot of people don’t hear much about,

but is absolutely vital to all life on Earth, and after having visited and experienced this

incredible biome and studied the insane array of specialized species that call it home, I,

your Creator of Worlds, am committed to rise to the challenge of replicating it, as the newest,

beneficial integration to Pantgea, and so, in this 100th episode of the Ecosystem Vivarium Series,

AC Family, I am proud to announce that our Vivarium 5 shall be… a Lagoon… and

you better believe we’re getting a shark! Vote in My Community Tab to affect this story!