How much of my life will I lose??

[clarkey]

Hi All,
I am in the process of setting up a number of tanks (12 to be exact, 4 x 4ft, 4 x 3ft, 4 x 2ft) after not keeping Discus for 20 odd yrs. My wife who has never been subjected to this wants to know how much of my life (time in other words) will she lose my to this 'hobby'? They are essentially 3 banks, each bank run of its own sump. I will be buying sub adult quantites of a number of different colour types and letting them pair up naturally with their own colour types (my preferred method) before going into individual tanks when I want to try and breed them, so hopefully I will end up with half a dozen breeding pairs. I have explained to her she wont lose me for too long each week but I need some others to explain to her I wont dissapear in the garage too long each week!! So if some of your could explain this to my wife via replies it would be much appreciated!!!!

Jason

[swampy1972]

If you set the systems up correctly to minimise the fuss and to make water changes simple, then an hour a night (average) would more than cover it. Obviously some nights you'll do nothing, others you'll spend a couple out there - hence "average".

Of course that doesn't account for the hours you spend out there just watching them ;)

[mscott]

hell, you shouldnt be gone for more than 15min a day if that, it would take 5min to feed them, then perhaps 30min one day a week to do a little water change

[Ben75]

Hi Jason,
It really depends on your setup mate. I have renovated my fish room slowly over the last year or so and have got it right for my lifestyle , work & family commitments. The trick is to set it up so the day to day work of changing water is automated. I now have 20 tanks stocked with my breeders & growout fish and it takes me 30mins or so each night to syphon the bottoms of tanks and walk away. The tanks fill themselves back up, and also another 3 times a day the auto wc comes on and flows through the tank and out overflows to the yard. Once a week i wipe down inside the tanks and clean sponges, about two hours in total for this part.
I don't really count the times i pop in the shed to drop a bit of food in.
Put in the time & money to start with setting up & you won't be stuck in the shed for hours at night.
Regards,
Ben

[ILLUSN]

Jason seriosuly budget at least half an hour a day for checks and feeds another 30min a day for maintence and miselanous fish stuff and a hour to hour and a half every other day for water changes ph testing etc

so call it 12 hours a week

mine takes 12-16 hours a week with ~4000L of fish

[swampy1972]

****, you shouldnt be gone for more than 15min a day if that, it would take 5min to feed them, then perhaps 30min one day a week to do a little water change

I'd agree if it was just for 1 tank, but 12 tanks would take a bit longer.

[mscott]

you guys must be slow then, im running about 5 tanks atm, it thates me less than 30 min a day to do everything inc. water changes, filter cleans feeds, gravel vacs ect

[ILLUSN]

LOL i wish i could change 2500-3000L in 30 min

[mscott]

simple, while its draing do something else, that way your using your time better, i also cheat my water changes by using a 3300lph power head attached to a hose

[ILLUSN]

LOL, i fill while i siphon (i move the siphon from rack to rack while i fill), the problem is the head height, my tallest tanks are 2.1m high, my eheim 1262's, flow @~1100l/h with that height, so even using 3 of them takes 1 hour to move that much water. I could go bigger pumps but i'm too cheap to pay the extra power (bill stands at $1700 a quarter).

Still even after that by time i set my BBS hatchers, check every catfish cave (42 in total) with a tourch for eggs, do the ph adjustment of my aging barrels (i run the room at 6.0-6.5, 5.5-6.0 on the altum tank) its about 1/2 an hour a day.

Breeding fish takes ALOT longer then just keeping fish, especially if your doing your daily changes on discus fry and running a few vessels of BBS for them (it takes 10 min to allow the bbs to settle before you can feed which is a PITA at 6:30 in the morning), just the way it goes, its also why i dont breed discus anymore, angels are enough work.

remember i'm the tool who lost over 2200 fish (bout $45K) in my wipeout last year so now i refuse to be lazy or complacent.

just saying if you tell your wife it will take more time then it actually does, she'll be much happier then if you go the other way round.

[mistakes r crucial]

remember i'm the tool who lost over 2200 fish (bout $45K) in my wipeout last year so now i refuse to be lazy or complacent.

I had no idea Jothy, sorry to hear that mate, it hurts don't it!. Don't worry, I reckon I'm the founder of the "Tool" Club.

For us running about 7000ltrs, 15 breeding pairs and more than often 1000 fry hanging around you could count on 30 hours a week but that was changing around 21,000ltrs of water a week and feeding fry 4-6 times a day.

We had about 39 grow out tanks and wiping them out every other day (our choice) and siphoning is what takes the time. We were able to flush both our systems so changing water was quick, 3000ltrs in 20 minutes.

Just play dumb mate, "did I really spend that much time down there this week? Not that much surely!"

[SLS]

Currently I have approx 30,000Ltr over 300 aquariums under management.

You could always turn it into your livelihood and get the whole family involved...... :roll:

Dont worry Jothy/MAC, we all have our own fair share of TOOL experiences...

[mistakes r crucial]

G'day George

Hope all is well at SLS. Who's got the best imports these days?

[clarkey]

Thanks guys for all the replies. I am still waitng for the tanks, sould be too long hopefully. They are coming from my local LFS who is chaning their shop around. They haven't been set up with automatic water changes so I have to do a bit of reading on setting that up (never had it before) so it will cut my time down. Luckily I wont have all the tanks running at the start so it will be a gradual thing and the wife wont hopefully notice as more tanks get started that my time out tere slowly increases.
And yes I would love to have a hundred or so tanks set up and run it as a second job with my family (always been a dream of mine), especially since there are no Aquarium shops here on the coast who sell anything other general run of the mill fish

[SLS]

G'day George

Hope all is well at SLS. Who's got the best imports these days?

Were well thanks Nigel,

Well thats always a matter of opinion, and based on what your looking for. :wink:

[mistakes r crucial]

So if some of your could explain this to my wife via replies it would be much appreciated!!!!

Jason

You dead yet mate?

[clarkey]

No mate all good. I'm lucky that I have got my wife hooked on fish now too. Just waiting for the fish shop to tell me to come and get the banks of tanks so I can start setting them up