Fish room finally in sight.

Hi TASA,

So my wife finally agreed I can take over the second spare room and make it my fish room!! No I have quite a bit of space to fill and my brain is working over time. Im super excited!!

I'm busy with my 150l sump tank for now to get the ball rolling. My 120l tank will move soon.

If you guys want to give some setup ideas feel free.

 

Sorry for the error in the thread name. Made a ballsup lol

 

Well done with getting the fish room. Best advice I can give you is to start negotiate for the other room now, you will run out of space very fast.

Plan the tank positions on paper first. It's much easier to move them around that way. Consider viewing and ease of acces. After this plan your electricity points. Add more plugs than what you will need, you will need them somehowe.

Lastly. This will be your sanctuary where you hide from all the crap in the world. Enjoy doing it from the start and it will be a joy in the end.

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Start planning a auto water change system. MTS=lots of water changes!

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@TetraJacques , Tell me what you want the thread to read and I will change/correct for you

 

Congratulations @TetraJacques , well done!!!

Yes... very much agree with what has been said regarding planning the layout on paper first
If you think you would ever be tempted to setup a BIG tank, leave the space for that as well

Power points with plugs that can be switched off at the flip of a switch are more convenient and a lot safer
Over and over it happens you busy with something and suddenly want to quickly switch off a pump or heater and your hands are wet
Flipping a switch is much more convenient and safer than pulling plugs in and out a socket

Automatic water changes, b this i mean you just open and close taps.. no pipes, is a blessing when you have big tanks or lots of tanks

My son has been setting up the auto water changes on the big tanks as well as drip system
He did the first auto water change yesterday morning on a 4500l tank and all in all took 20 min for a 80% waterchange

All the best and we look forward to the updates!!

 

Thanks for the advise so far. This is a very exciting project as I wasn't even sure I'll be having two tanks running by December.

I will measure the room and draw it out on computer and start with the design there. One good thing of being a draughtsman I suppose. I'll add in plug locations and some sort of plumbing system for auto water changes as well.

But first ill need to check which tanks I want and where I would place them. I was thinking of putting three 120 litres on a rack (tank size is 92cm(L) x 32cm(D) x 38cm(H), they pretty cheap. Comes with a low tech light and I don't want to go much smaller than 120 liters. The one 120l will stay the same as it is, one I would like to make a Iwagumi setup because its not so deep. And the other one Im still thinking about.

The main goal is display tanks only, I don't specifically want to breed but if it happens then I can always resell to my LFS.

Photos will follow soon.

 

Thanks @MariaS, please change to
FISH ROOM FINALLY IN SIGHT!
Sorry, created thread late last night when I finally had time after clearing the room.

The outside tap is luckily very close to the room so I'll have my main cut of valve right outside the window and then my taps on the inside branching to each tank from there. The one side of the room has quite a wide wall where I would like to put a 1,5m - 2m tank.

Im not 100% sure what I'm gonna with the filtration on the tank stand with the 120l tanks but I though maybe I should get a big enough sump to run the three tanks together. The sump also makes it a lot easier when it comes to water changes.

 

Thanks for changing the thread name @MariaS

 

Ok here a photo of the room

This is where I would like to place the 1,5 - 2m tank

Here I want to place the rack with 3x 120l tanks


And here's the 150l setup with my Congo and Buenos Aires Tetras a head tail light tetra and Rainbow shark, say hi to the other members of the family lol

The substrate in the tank is aquatic plant soil that I got at the nursery capped with play sand. If this soil is gonna work for the plants I don't know. Worst thing that could happen is a huge algae bloom. If the plants grow I'll be happy, if it doesn't its not a problem. I don't really want this tank to be planted. The tank is also not dedicated to these fish. It's just there house for now.

Note this was a quick setup just to gettl the tank running and the fish back in the tank and out of the bucket. I like the look of the play sand so I'll keep it as is.

 

Its a pleasure

One bigger sump to run the three tanks is obviously convenient and makes for easier maintenance, just remember one thing though, if anything breaks out in one tank ( disease wise) it will immediately spread to all three so, to do this you must ensure you have a quarantine tank ( maybe you already have, then all good) and make sure that anything you add to those tanks has been properly quarantined

Love the room... lots of space to go wild!!!

 

I made a quick sketch up of a stand for the 3 120l tanks and I don't think I'll go for a sump because I want three different setups and water qualities will differ and I will be loosing pressurised CO2.

I've kind of decided on the other two tank.

Tank 1 at the bottom, amazon biotope setup, with play sand as substrate and almond leaves. I just need to find the right pieces of spider wood but I have the picture in mind what I want it to look like.

Tank 2 in the middle, my planted tank in my other thread.

Tank 3 at the top, this one will be about eye level so I thought it would be best suited for a Iwagumi setup. I will also need to split my CO2 to this tank and use proper substrate if I want to grow carpet plants.

For now I will focus on these three tanks. The tanks won't cost that much but the substrate for tank 3 will cost a bit as well as the steel stand. I'll have to get someone to build it unless I do it with wood.

The other side of the wall is 2,7m so there is plenty space for a nice big thank or two 1,2m tanks. Hmmm, will decide on that when I get there.

 

Might just be me thinking like this but I will make the stand out of wood, just make sure it will be able to handle at least 500kg. Reason for this is that if you change your mind, later on, it's way easier to convert it compared to a steel stand.

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O and another thing. Make sure you leave enough space between the tanks to be able to work in them.

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If I may add some advice. look at adding some sort of temp & humidity sensor to the room with extractor fans. Condensation is an problem with an few tanks in an closed room with sumps.

 

Awesome project with so much potential.
Think I must convince wifey that the blank wall in the office could be put to some better use

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My biggest concern is having enough space above the tanks for easy access. The sketch up I made last night had about 20cm above each tank but I think I must push it up another 10cm. I don't want to the 3rd tank to be to high either. But that's why designing and layout is critical. If I go with wood it will cost a lot cheaper and I can do it myself then.

Thank you @Barry Roux, the more advise and suggestions received is much appreciated. I didn't think if this and I will definitely take it into consideration. The room is situated on the other side of the house and there's lots of trees covering that area. There's no sun coming in that room at all so it stays cold during winter and summer which will cause a problem with condensation I suspect.

Once thing I have learned now is once you have one tank it's not gonna be enough. There's so many different setups you can do so my advice is, convince her and set up more tanks.

P.S, have a back up plan in action if she says no lol. This should do the trick.

 

The biggest question here is what is the aim of your Fish room Breeding/Keeping or an little of both? In my opinion you nee to answer the purpose Question first to determine the layout. Then Electrical most houses some plugs are combined on your db so the rating for an circuit breaker there is 20A . On your 2m if you have 2X 500w heaters pumps on the sumps all running on an cold night then you plug in an Hairdryer(2000W on average) Vacuum cleaner heater you risk tripping. Keep that in mind.