breeding racks

[Andy123]

hi guys n gals
i am thinking of making a 3 tier, 3ft breeding rack out of metal. i wood like to get a pair of discus(when mine pair up) and then place them in this.
the top tank wood be for the pair to breed in, the middle tank as a growout tank and the bottom tank(which wood be on the ground) wood be a sump. so i will hav all the tanks connected.
will this design work?
anyone done this b4?
anyone got some pics or links toshow me on how to make this and the final result?
any info i need to know is welcome as i wood like to do this idea.

thanx in advance

[tzwms]

This will definitely work. There are commercial sumps that you can buy or you can DIY. One caution I would put to you is to have a UV unit on the return line from the sump in order to sterilize the water and thus prevent cross contaminating in case of illness in one tank.
Also, make sure that you can isolate each of the top tanks by using a ball valves. Makes it a lot easier if you want to take the water out of one for some reason. You only need the ball valve on the return side.

Good luck,

[Andy123]

any other suggestions or ideas that i will need to know of? any pics? or links?

thanx again

[Hassles]

You will often see setups (as described in the post above) at your LFS if you visit enough. The plumbing ain't always on show however and the tanks are usually drilled to allow water to drain from above to the sump. I have also seen a three high tank rack all draining into the bottom tank which was than filtered by a huge Eheim unit which pumped the water back to the upper tank.

[aussieorchid]

Here is a picture of the rack I used to have for my discus setup. It had three levels with 4 tanks on each. The tanks were actually placed with the short side facing the front so although the tanks look small they were actually 2foot x 1.5 wide x 2 foot high. I used top row for 4 breeding pairs and middle and bottom row for growing out babies. I had sheets of blue paper between each tank so the breeding pairs could not see each other. They will try and attack each other though the glass. I would not advise hooking all the tanks up to a central filter system. The breeders will need the water rather still ie just a sponge filter or similar otherwise you risk sucking out the babies.

[aquatester55]

Would you be moving the babies to the middle tank or will there be a screen or something for the babies to swim through to get seoprated from the parents?

[fishgeek]

dont place the lowest level tanks on the floor

purely because it makes using a syphon to drain this difficult

i use overflow waste pipe for the exit point in each tank and then larger bore pipe work for the rest
easy option if you are happy to drill tanks

andrew