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Fish Room Renovations

Started by Guest_Yeahson421_* , Sep 16 2013 12:36 PM

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#1 Guest_Yeahson421_*

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Posted 16 September 2013 - 12:36 PM

Hello everyone! I am currently looking at renovating my fish keeping arrangements. At the moment I feel that I have many more tanks than necessary and I also feel that I am not putting my space towards is most efficient use, so, I am going to share my ideas for renovation to possibly inspire some ideas for others.

1. Live Food Closet
I have a small closet in my fish room that I am going to devote to culturing live fish food. The dimensions of the closet are 30"x60"84" tall. There are three shelves which I will culture Grindal Worms and Red Worms on. On the floor will be Greenwater, Daphnia (Moina or Russian Red, can't decide), Ramshorn snails, Cambarellus Shufeltdi, Heterandia formosa, Gammarus Scuds, and Neocaridina heteropoda var. red. On the opposite wall to the shelves I will culture blackworms.

a.Greenwater, Daphnia, and Ramshorn Snails
I will use 4 10.25 gallon wastebaskets as the culturing containers. The two further back will be placed about 4-6 inches higher than the other two. Each of the higher two for Greenwater will be equipped with blue LEDS, a led plant bulb, and a solenoid. The solenoids will be plugged into a timer, opening for a few minutes a day to feed the Daphnia cultures in the lower containers. The Daphina cultures will contain Ramshorn snails as well.

b. Mixed Culture
I have a low sitting tub that is about 20-25 gallons. I will have an in tank sump for filtration and circulation. The tank will be filled with PVC caves and fake plants to allow hiding spaces that can be easily manipulated when searching for the inhabitants.

c. Scuds
As for the scuds, I am not terribly sure. I have heard that they do well in tall containers with an air stone and leaves at the bottom and many spawning mops or rolls of plastic mesh.

d. Blackworms
For the Blackworms I plan to have a series of rain gutters which zig zag down the wall (The area for the Blackworms) until falling into a 10 gallon sump filled with bio-media. There will be an extra iceprobe chiller that I have lying around in the sump also to slightly cool the water. A pump will send water back to the top of the system, and it will continuously flow, which is ideal for Blackworms.

2. Darter System
This is a combination of aquariums for the sole purpose of reering Darters. A picture will explain much better than words.

Breeder Rack.png 162.62KB 12 downloads

3. Quarantine, Nursery, Holding, and Shipping tanks
Underneath a section of the large counter that runs the length of my fish I will have 4 10 gallon aquariums, all planted and equipped with HMF filters, will serve the purpose of housing new fish, raising young from my pond, holding fish while tanks are being moved, and housing fish prior to shipping them.

4. Replacing my 125
I am very unhappy with my 125 gallon. I have had a very hard time getting proper filtration on the system. I am completely incapable of drilling any of the tank. I have had many problems with electrical due to me being forced to jury rig everything because it is a homemade tank that isn't quite square in the corners. It is also very ugly with it's inch and a quarter thick glass. So, I have decided to get rid of my 125 and instead build an 8 foot plywood and Pond Shield paludarium. The water section will be 16-18 inches deep, with the upper portion of the tank having sliding panels for easier access. This tank will be stocked similarly to my pond, allowing me to enjoy the inhabitants of my pond during the winter and it will allow me to observe how the fishes interact more closely. The tank will be filtered by plants, an HMF filter, and a DIY canister as you can see here:
I will have a rough sketch of the tank shortly.

5. 47 Gallon Sunfish Cube
For the few sunfish I'm not being forced to get rid of due to problems with my 125, I will be combing two 20 gallon longs into a 30x30x12 cube which will be planted and filtered via some form of high power filtration, likely a canister filter as they are more quiet and this tank will be in my room.

Thanks for reading my ideas. If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

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#2 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 16 September 2013 - 01:02 PM

Why do you have so many different kinds of live foods? (It's not a bad thing, I'm just curious. I grow only microworms and grindal worms myself, one worm for adult fish and one for fry.)

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#3 Guest_Yeahson421_*

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Posted 16 September 2013 - 01:27 PM

I plan to have so many different kinds of live foods for sake of just mixing it up. I really like having the ability to feed an incredibly varied diet to my fish. It also makes it so I can minimize use of each, as I can use some of each culture every day, spreading out my fishes consumption.

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#4 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 16 September 2013 - 01:45 PM

Also consider that grating up a frozen unbreaded cocktail shrimp, buying cubed frozen bloodworms for $5/30 cubes at Petsmart, and ordering a pound of live blackworms for $35 on ebay including shipping are inexpensive alternatives to live culture. Ken's fish .com has some great custom flake, pellet, and particulate foods that can't be found elsewhere. I did the math and the flake food on ken's fish is half the price of the flake food at Walmart and Petsmart even considering the cost of shipping, and you can buy things like 'earthworm flake'. How cool.

I have four plastic shoeboxes of grindal worms and five hand-sized tupperwares of microworms and sometimes I'm like, "Ugh, I don't want to do culture maintenance today" but I have to because I have so many creatures clamoring for care. Multiple furry pets, quite a few fish tanks, and the live foods on top? All that maintenance adds up. I'm so glad to have flake and frozen food that can be ready-fed so that if the cultures crash or I don't want to deal with them that day, there's something to fall back on.

By the way, continuous culture is sooooo much nicer than batch. It's the difference between making cookies on a conveyor belt or making one dozen after another in the oven. A conveyor belt doesn't stop. You don't have to wait the 12 minutes for this batch of cookies to rise; the conveyor belt is already carrying fresh cookies down to you. By analogy, a continuous culture container doesn't have to be bleached, started over, and its yield compromised like batch cultures do.

Also, on an unrelated note, I recommend powdered algae instant greenwater for your daphnia cultures. I had great success with my copepods using that.

And never underestimate the power of surface area. I made a video a while back to show people how important surface area is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uIvjlV6Z38
Strange though it may seem, that bucket tank has proven to be stabler than my 55 gallon. There's actually less fish death in the bucket tank. This led to me being suspicious of taller setups, and of how sometimes surface-clinging floating plants like duckweed can block off air exchange.

I have seen people use tupperware boxes as their culture containers and stack them up easily on a shelf.
Imagine something like this but with cultures in it instead of tools:
Posted Image

http://i1059.photobu...pg?t=1353432693
I saw a video on youtube where someone plumbed those short plastic bins together using inexpensive PVC overflows so they were all on the same filter. Smart. That could make the difference between batch and continuous culture

Long story short I'm not a fan of 'cube' or 'tall' style tanks. Turning two 20 longs into a 47 cube makes me sad. Meh, though, your choice. That just means you'll be heavily reliant upon mechanically induced water movement. I could suggest you take advantage of surface area in your live food design to decrease your reliance on filters, but I actually don't advise any aquatic cultures at all. I like my damp cultures. Grindal and micro worms don't take up tank space, which is good, because they're way less entertaining than fish and a plastic shoe box is all the space I want to give them.

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#5 Guest_Yeahson421_*

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Posted 16 September 2013 - 01:59 PM

I will certainly have flake and powdered food on hand at all times just in case. Thanks for the heads up on culture maintenance. Luckily most of the water cultures are pretty low maintenance, but I will have to keep an eye on my Grindals and Reds. I also wholeheartedly agree that continuous culture is better. All of my cultures will be entirely continuous. I also like the idea of instant greenwater, but if I can grow it, I'd like to. I am a strong believer in surface area. You must be confused, but I plan to have 30x30" for my surface area, and having the tank only be 12 inches tall. I can't stand tall skinny tanks like 55 gallons. Thanks for your advice about aquatic cultures, but I'd like to maintain them anyway, because not only can I just dump them in the tank and not worry about whether they are eaten or not, I also find them fascinating.

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#6 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 16 September 2013 - 02:02 PM

You must be confused, but I plan to have 30x30" for my surface area, and having the tank only be 12 inches tall.

Niiiiice

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#7 Guest_Yeahson421_*

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Posted 16 September 2013 - 10:15 PM

4. Replacing my 125
I am very unhappy with my 125 gallon. I have had a very hard time getting proper filtration on the system. I am completely incapable of drilling any of the tank. I have had many problems with electrical due to me being forced to jury rig everything because it is a homemade tank that isn't quite square in the corners. It is also very ugly with it's inch and a quarter thick glass. So, I have decided to get rid of my 125 and instead build an 8 foot plywood and Pond Shield paludarium. The water section will be 16-18 inches deep, with the upper portion of the tank having sliding panels for easier access. This tank will be stocked similarly to my pond, allowing me to enjoy the inhabitants of my pond during the winter and it will allow me to observe how the fishes interact more closely. The tank will be filtered by plants, an HMF filter, and a DIY canister as you can see here: https://www.youtube....h?v=UVWqq73mW_4
I will have a rough sketch of the tank shortly.

Here is that rough sketch!

8 Foot Tank.png 21.59KB 0 downloads

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#8 Guest_Yeahson421_*

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Posted 16 September 2013 - 10:19 PM

Also, if anyone can help me locate a small grain sand/gravel similar to Flourite Red or Flourite Original for cheaper, please let me know.
Posted Image

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#9 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 17 September 2013 - 08:28 AM

Also, if anyone can help me locate a small grain sand/gravel similar to Flourite Red or Flourite Original for cheaper, please let me know.

Substrates I have used successfully to grow plants:

Special Kitty brand pure clay cat litter, $4 for 25 pounds. A bit dusty, benefits from being rinsed in a bucket outside. A $2 paradiso synthetic sea sponge in your filter will collect the dust particles and can then be wrung out into the sink or toilet every few hours. Get the water flowing through it pretty well, and ring it out for a few days, and your tank water will be crystal clear.
Aragonite and oolite sand. These aren't just silicon dioxide, they've got a lot of nutrients in them. I use it for my neolamprologus multifasciatus tank and the rooted plants don't do half bad in it. You could also bury a Jobes fertilizer stick once a month near the base of each plant for additional nutrition. It cost about $100 to put the sand in, though, since I wanted about 5 inches deep of sand for the cichlids to play in, in a 75 gallon tank.
Play sand (pure silicon dioxide). Crayola play sand comes in all colors and is aquarium safe. Pool filter sand is also useful. Any of these sands is the right texture for plants to send roots through, but doesn't have nutrients, so you definitely want to fertilize. I find that some plants, like our native najas guadalupensis, grows just fine without fertilization. Other plants need a bit more help. Jobes fertilizer sticks are $1 for a pack of 30 at Walmart and work pretty well. They seem to be fish safe, although I don't have any scaleless fish and I didn't test it on anything marine. In my limited experience, fish safe. It's not that much effort to fertilize the roots once a month. I don't know if I have it in me to liquid fertilize every week, though. That seems like too much effort. *shrugs* The initial sand will cost you $4 for 50 pounds of play sand or more for Crayola brand with all the red, blue, purple, green colors. Then fertilization will cost a minimum of $12 per year. The Jobes sticks are the least expensive commercial safe-for-fish plant fertilizers I've found. If you buy a product marketed for aquariums, fertilization could cost you as much as $12 a month.

I've never tried it myself, but Diana Walstad (author of Ecology of the Planted Aquarium) recommends soil capped in gravel. Specifically, Miracle Gro Organic Choice Potting Soil capped in gravel. I've never tried it like she recommends, capped in several inches of gravel. Nope, I tried that uncapped. Long story short: don't do that. The mulch in it floats and in my opinion it's not a good idea to put poultry litter in an aquarium because it rots and bubbles sulfurously. Yuck, but I guess if it's capped in gravel you won't necessarily notice it? I don't know. It was not an expensive experiment in terms of money, but the mulch in that stuff makes my water really yellow really fast. I'm anti-mulch in substrates now.

It's really all about what you want out of your substrate. I want cheap and low effort, so I go with the pure clay kitty litter. It really is important that you use a particulate filter that is actually functioning well to scrub the water. But, yeah, as long as you have that, it works great. And thankfully a scrubber can be as cheap as a $2 synthetic sponge in your waterfall filter. If you read this article on Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) you'll see that clay retains its nutrient content over time: http://www.thekrib.c...rate-jamie.html

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#10 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 17 September 2013 - 10:20 AM

so Erica says Kitty Litter... that means I have to say... dirt out of my backyard (which is red georgia clay)... capped with playground sand or whatever gravel I want to look at.

as an added benefit, you can keep chubsuckers, jumprocks, and (proabably even) hogsickers and the like over such a soil plus sand substrate... I have had pretty good success just over feeding the tank and letting local jumprocks 'sand sift' as they would naturally. Would be very cool to have a few alabama hog suckers in that 8 foot tank!

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin

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#11 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 17 September 2013 - 11:29 AM

so Erica says Kitty Litter... that means I have to say... dirt out of my backyard (which is red georgia clay)... capped with playground sand or whatever gravel I want to look at.

as an added benefit, you can keep chubsuckers, jumprocks, and (proabably even) hogsickers and the like over such a soil plus sand substrate... I have had pretty good success just over feeding the tank and letting local jumprocks 'sand sift' as they would naturally. Would be very cool to have a few alabama hog suckers in that 8 foot tank!

There would be nothing stopping a person from capping either clay kitty litter or soil in sand. *nods* I agree that enrichment is a very important thing for maintaining the behavioral patterns that the fish would enact in the wild.

The Greensboro SciQuarium keeps their geophagus (a non-native fish similar to our native suckers, they sift the ground) in a cement-bottom aquarium. I sent them an e-mail saying, hey, maybe if you put down some cheap sand substrate, I think it would enrich the fish's lives to have something to sift through. The director responded, " First of all thank you for the suggestion of the sand, we have gravel on order to put into that exhibit it just isn't in yet. But I would also like to let you know that I have had them in tanks without substrate for years and they are still perfectly healthy and still breed readily. Enrichment is a bird and mammals thing not so much with fish but I can assure you that any way we can provide our animals with a more natural environment we are striving to do that."
He is of the opinion that enrichment is a 'bird and mammals thing not so much with fish', but I think that enrichment is important for fish, too. They don't just float there; they've got things they want to do.

Behavioral enrichment is definitely something to consider when thinking about substrate. Chubs might want some smooth edged rocks in the tank so they can build their own spawning site. They might want to pick them up and carry them around in their mouths.
Posted Image

Picture source: William Roston and http://www.thefisher...-nests-and.html

Male sunfish might enjoy a deeper substrate so they can mound it up to make nests.
Posted Image

Picture source: lovshll from http://apps.acesag.a...fish-nests.html

Our native crayfish often enjoy burrowing, and might benefit from a deeper substrate as well, maybe with some fine gravel mixed in so it would be strong enough structurally to support a burrow.
Pygmy sunfish can benefit from a fine grain versus a large grain substrate (large pea gravel can trap their eggs and reduce hatch rate versus sand substrate or fine clay).
Stone rollers roll mussels around, as seen in videos available here: http://unionid.misso...sma/default.htm
(this sometimes results in the mussel grabbing their face, also available on that website. I highly recommend watching that video; I was as shocked as the logperch when the snuffbox mussel it was rolling grabbed it and wouldn't let go. Clampirism is crazy)
so putting a mussel-sized rock in the aquarium would likely amuse them.

There are a whole bunch of behaviors that our native fish need substrate interaction in order to perform. Despite what aquarium directors and other individuals may say, I still think that enrichment is definitely something to consider when choosing substrate or substrate cap.

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#12 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 17 September 2013 - 02:53 PM

agree that enrichment applies to fish too...

suckers have been traditionally thought of as difficult to keep, but some of us have had success with deep substrate systems (yes, anything will work, I just like digging my own, and poking at Erica) with a sand layer on top. These suckers feed primarily this way, so in other types of systems were not getting enough to eat and were wasting away over time. By having a sand substrate they can eat their natural way. Also, the deep natural substrate under that helps with plant growth and nutrient processing that allows you to over feed the tank somewhat so that these grazers can then feed off the bottom.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin

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#13 Guest_Yeahson421_*

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Posted 17 September 2013 - 02:56 PM

I most definitely will be using capped soil, I was simply referencing the flourite as my desired color for the cap. I entirely agree about fish enrichment, and I will certainly be doing my best to create a natural environment.

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#14 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 17 September 2013 - 03:44 PM

referencing the flourite as my desired color for the cap.

The red crayola sand is probably the closest color match to red Fluorite.
Pictures: http://www.exoticfis...-playsand.5897/
The bags are $8/20lbs and are sold at Walmart. You can also order them on this site: http://www.coloredsa...m/online-store/
If you can get lava rock to sink that would work too.
Black sand is fairly common at pet stores, hardware stores, hobby stores, etc and you probably wouldn't have to pay shipping.

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#15 Guest_Yeahson421_*

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Posted 17 September 2013 - 03:58 PM

That Crayola stuff is neat, but far too unnatural for my tastes. When we were in Michigan there was this red sand/fine gravel that covered a huge beach and it looked incredible, and I would have loved to take some home but I couldn't. It looked like something in between the red Flourite and the normal Flourite, but slightly more fine. If anyone from Michigan is reading this, I believe the beach was called Agate Beach by Copper Harbor

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#16 Guest_Yeahson421_*

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Posted 17 September 2013 - 04:02 PM

I actually found some pictures! Some people referred to it as Red Beach, other's Hunter's Point, and a few Agate Beach. Anyways, here's what it looks like!
Posted Image

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#17 Guest_EricaLyons_*

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Posted 17 September 2013 - 04:32 PM

That is pretty. It's also pretty large grained. Red aquarium gravel would probably be the closest way to replicate that. Maybe something like this?
http://www.dtpetsupp...CFZRj7AodhSAAXQ Your local pet store would probably have some in stock.

But I'd only use gravel as a cap over a calcium, magnesium, and iron rich layer; plants need nutrients and gravel's just silicon dioxide.
Alternatively, you could root the plants in nutrient rich substrate in a terra cotta pot and then place or bury the potted plant in the gravel.

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#18 Guest_Yeahson421_*

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Posted 17 September 2013 - 04:36 PM

Yeah, thos are both just pictures I found online. On the beach in the first picture, closer to the water there's a bunch of really fine grain gravel along the shore. It's not much larger than sand. I may just have to use the Flourite because of the mix of dark colors with the red, it's just a shame it's so expensive. Thanks for your help though, Erica.

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#19 Guest_Yeahson421_*

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Posted 22 October 2013 - 09:23 AM

2. Darter System
I've got the tank siliconed, the background installed, and to be finished tonight.

CAM00428.jpg 126.54KB 1 downloads

CAM00464.jpg 190.27KB 0 downloads

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#20 Guest_Irate Mormon_*

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Posted 22 October 2013 - 10:42 PM

I notice that in your homemade tank, the bottom glass is, well...on the bottom. There's a good reason for raising it slightly. Not just to accommodate a bottom frame, but to prevent stress fractures due to an uneven support surface. I generally raise the bottom panel by 1/4 inch for my home-brews.

I made some wooden jigs (triangles) to ensure 90 degree alignment - a bit more precise than soda cans.

Scrap glass - you gotta love the stuff!