Here is a video tour of my fish room. Warning… this is the longest video I have ever posted.
Category Archives: Fishroom
10-gallon Planted Nano Makeover
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We were snowbound on Thursday this week, so I decided to to a much needed makeover in my 10-gallon planted nano tank. This aquarium is an unfiltered tank that sits on my work bench. Honestly, it gets neglected a lot, which is why it was a bit over grown. Some of the plants were so think that they were shading themselves. And I had let the foreground plants get too large and obstruct the midground plants. This simply would not do! I received a shipment of plants on Monday (hint hint… check out the livestock page), and there were several that I wanted to play with. Most notably the Cryptocoryne tonkinensis and the Myriophyllum matagrossense. I have never done much with myrio plants, so I incorporated two in this cleaned up aquascape. I also put in different fish, including the very cool neon yellow Microdevario kubotai. Check it out…
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Fry Rack – Part 1
The most recently completed project in the fish room is a rack of plastic bins for growing fry. I needed more space for small fry, and I wanted to design a system that would be faster and easier to change the water in. The end product is a rack of twelve 6-gallon bins plumbed to permit flow-through water changes. Since plastic bins of shallow water are hard to control the temperature in, the rack is also equipped with under-bin heating. It has been up and running for just about two months, and I am very happy with the results. This project will be presented in two parts. The first covers how to assemble the rack, and the second how to install the bins and water change/heating systems.
Filed under Fishroom, video posts
Ted’s Fish Room – Water
At long last!!!! Here is the next installment to the Ted’s Fishroom series on the topic of water. There is no way the topic of water can be covered well in an hour-long video, much less a five minute video! This is just the basics of what to think about, and one way that I make the onerous job of water changing just a little easier. One of my New Year resolutions is to automate water changing in my fish room this year, and if I manage to get it done I will be sure to post a video blog series about how I did it.
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Aquarium Racks in a Fish Room
Finally! Episode 5 of the Ted’s Fishroom series. Sorry to take so long, but the trip to Gabon and subsequent trips all over the place put me behind in making videos. This installment is about building racks for aquariums. I use three different types of racks: wood, commercial shelving and angle-iron aquarium stands. The video talks about each briefly and then goes into detail about how to build a basic stand with dado joints. One thing I mention is the cost effectiveness of wood stands. I priced a 24″ metal aquarium stand this week, and was quoted $65.99 (retail). The stand that you will see me make in the video has a total cost of $7.35 in materials…. enjoy.
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Air in the Fish Room
The fourth episode in the fish room series is about supplying air for filtration. There is really only one basic system, which consists of a blower or pump and a delivery system. There are several ways to set that up, however, and the differences begin with the type of pump or blower. There are too many different scenarios, so the video presents the basics and describes how I set up the air system in my fish room.
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Ted’s Fishroom – Electricity
The third installment of my fish room series talks about the basics of electricity when setting up a room. There are two basic concepts to consider. First, make sure that there is enough capacity in the room to meet projected needs. Second, take steps to reduce the energy consumption of the room. Electricity is the most expensive consumable in a fish room. I know more than a few people who have been caught by surprise by a higher-than-expected electricity bill after turning on a new rack of tanks. As with anything, there is a way to go cheap and a way to go expensive. When it comes to electricity, however, paying up front for more energy-efficient equipment (air pumps, space heaters, appliances and especially lights) will earn their money back in energy savings.
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Ted’s Fishroom – Temperature & Humidity
The topic of this second installment of Ted’s Fishroom is controlling temperature and humidity. Temperature is well understood, but humidity is something that many first-time fish room builders do not consider. Humidity is the factor in a fish room that will most negatively affect your home and health.
Please remember that these videos are not intended to be a complete guide to building a fish room. They would need to be much longer to do that. My hope is that by watching these videos you will be introduced to the major considerations you need to think about when building a fish room, and then go out and find some other resources to fill in the details. There are a lot of people on the web documenting their fish room. Some of the best places to start looking are on the many web forums where you can ask questions and get feedback from a lot of different sources.
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Welcome to My Fishroom
This video is the first in a series of blogs about my fish room. This one is a quick look at the room and a preview of the segments that I plan to add to the blog. I have no idea how many videos I will add to the series. I will start with the basics: insulating the room, adding electricity, the air sytem, racking, etc. I will also produce some videos about how the tanks are filtered, how I go about doing water changes, making and using R/O water, growing live foods and whatever I else I can come up with. Feel free to make suggestions.
When we were looking for a house, my wife concerned herself with things like closet space, the washer and drier hookups, local schools and the distance of her daily commute (I only need to go as far as the basement). She went on the tour of the house. I went in search of the fish room. The basement was completely unfinished. Bare cement walls and floor, and all the household machinery (furnace, water heater, etc…) are all located in one corner of the room. There is a utility sink and a sewer clean-out in the floor that can double as a floor drain. The only flaw I could see was that it is not a walk-out basement. No room is perfect.
We closed on the house in early September and the room had its first racks operating by the end of October. During that time I added three 20 amp breakers to the room, insulated the walls, installed an air system and build fish racks. What you see in this video is the current arrangement after five years in operation. The room looks quite a bit different that it did at first (I did a big remodel last August).
The first thing I did when building the room was to build the framing for the insulated walls and then wire the additional electrical circuits. The next video will cover electricity, which is probably one of the LAST things people think about when building a fishroom… but it should really be one of the first!
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