Fishroom: Planning starting.

[parkap]

Hi All,

Will shortly post photos of the area I'll be converting to a fishroom. I'm starting the planning stage now. Does anyone have good tips or web links to point to thigns to look out for when planning and designing? ie. anything from, heating source (room heating versus tank heaters, ie. accuracy versus cost), tried and tested and recommended components to use, ventilation, drainage design, water change considerations and plumbing, filteration design, etc, etc, etc.

The main purpose of the fishroom at this point will be to breed apisto's. But might also extend that to angels and rams.

I spoke to Barry at BNC (B&C) Aquarium at Matraville a couple of weekends ago and he gave me some great initial design ideas so I'm really looking forward to seeing somemore great tips from all of you and other people's fishrooms (photos and designs). Please feel free to post photos of your fishrooms and your experiences to date in regard to what worked and what didn't.

Regards,
Peter.

[Th0mas]

Peter,

I think room heating is economically better than tank heating. That's because after my recent tank expansion and seen the power bill for the winter quarter.

As for the room - can't offer much advice as you know I don't have one dedicated room to tanks.

Thomas.

[fishgeek]

where will the room be?
inside the house? condensation and moist warm air will be an issue

external gargae/shed/dedicated space , then best investment will be on insulating so not such an issue with power costs

then water individual air driven tanks have better flexibility and less chance of disease spread
central filtered system larger water volume, imo is easier to maintain, less temperature fluctuation and is what i would go with

prehaps have 2-3 smaller systems , with individual uv's on return

irrespective of the fish side of things , leave room for a chair to sit and watch the fish , you need to still enjoy them
a sink for water and cleaning etc
a fridge for frozen/live foods etc

i would if using a water filter, hma,r/o or such just have a storage tank elevated for this, then drains down hill to fill tanks
and can have permanet syphon(filter hose U tube with tap below tank level) over the side of a tank as drainage , this can be run again without need for pump and swapped from tank to tank and even be attached to long hose to void where you like

filter needs to be easily accessable and maintainable.. most important thing is making things easy to keep up with
too much work and it wont get done or want be the hobby you intially liked

andrew

[parkap]

Hi All,

Here's some details of my proposed design so far and some photos of the area I'm intending on converting.

The room will be under my house. My father's an electrician and I've got a mate who's a plumber who told me he'd help out on the design and plumbing work.

I was planning on using cool room wall material for the walls and roof as insulation. Has anyone used this? Does anyone know where to buy this stuff from?

The room is kind of dog leg shaped. I was thinking of building metal racks, say with three levels of tanks on them. Alternatively was going to look at the locking metal rack systems from Bunnings. I don't like how they've got that light weight wood shelving though.

The room itself is just over 2mtrs high. It's longest wall is 363cm long, with extra room at the ends and sides for room for internal wall wiring and plumbing, if we want to go down that route. There's a large fridge just outside the room and we're planning on putting a sink and shelving within the room.

Under the house it stays fairly stable in regard to hot temperatures but it does get pretty cold.

One design I've thought of for filteration was recommended to me by the owner of Barry from BNC. It's a central sump filteration system but with each tank able to be segregated from the rest in case of disease or treatment issues. I'm also thinking of drilling holes in tanks to put taps in for water changes / draining.

p.

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f71/parkap/IMG_5495.jpg

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f71/parkap/IMG_5494.jpg

http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f71/parkap/IMG_5493.jpg

[wickedglass]

the hammerlock shelves are great ... the wood doesn't actually carry the weight if the tanks are large enough to reach to the weight-carrying beams ... I built the tanks into my rack so they're supported on the front and back beams, with the usual thin sheet of polystyrene underneath them. I made the tanks 80Lx40Wx30H cm and the shelf unit takes 4 of those. the tanks are sub divided with the water flowing between them, so I only need one heater per shelf, as a sump system was impractical for me.

great space you have there, btw, show some pics when it's all done!

[mistakes r crucial]

Planning it and getting it together to build it is great fun but if I had my time over again there is one thing above all others that I would do very differently and before I put pen to paper. I would go and visit as many fishrooms as I could, have a chat to the owners, find out where they went wrong, what they could improve etc and you'll be miles ahead of the game. It could also, depending on the size of the room, save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars. I was told to but like most teenagers I didn't listen!
Cheers
MAC