Super Fish Breeding Tank!

[werehatwere]

So for the last little while, I have wanted to create a tank, specifically designed for the breeding of fish, and housing of fry. I'm still not quite sure on the dimensions, and am currently looking for a tank. I know for sure that it will be 72 inches long. 

     The purpose of the tank will be to breed different types of fish, mainly easier species until I get experience,
and share them with the club! I have a few designs that I've drawn up that ill include below.
I'm thinking of a 72 inch tank, divided into 10 different sections. Each section will be independently filtered and heated. I'm still working out a few small kinks in the filtration system, as I am planning on having each section independently filtered and heated. 

I submitted a design to custom aquarium builders in Ontario (Miracle Aquariums & I will look up the other one) and waiting for a quote. If they don't pan out, i'll look for a tank in the classifieds.

Each section is shown in a different color. Since they will all be watertight and independently filtered and heated, the water chemistry can vary from section to section. The last 3 dividers will be removable to create one large tank need be.

As soon as I work out the kinks of the filtration, I'll post my plans and diagrams. I want to document this project from start to finish. I hope to take 10,000,000 pics along the way. 

[werehatwere]

[lucius]

Wouldn't it be easier if you use the same water and heater throughout?  This way, you can simply transfer your fish from one section to the other without wasting time acclimatizing them.

Right now, I have a bunch of baby BN pleco's in my 90 gallon.  Every other night or so, I fish out a few and dump them into a separate 5 gallon holding tank.  I change the water from the 5 gallon with water from the 90 gallon and I keep the heater set at roughly the same temp for both.  This way I don't have to sit there waiting for them to acclimatize.

[werehatwere]

I thought about that but I realized that I am planning on transferring my massive amounts of Krib fry and their parents to a section. I can give them a different water chemistry then say baby guppies to make them grow/ be more comfortable. Also, I am planning on (trying ) to breed my betta that I bought a while back. I have a nice mate for him, and I payed $34 for him so I would like to try and breed him. Their tank will need a lower water level, and no current. I can manage this all if the sections run individually.

My filtering method is really quite economical. Luckily, I found some good deals on bulk filters.

[Shawn84]

So you want to build a 6 feet tank and divided into 10 section with 3 being removable to suit your need also you will be running different filtration and so on. Wouldn't it be better to just used separate tank? Like let say 10 10G tank or 7 5G and 3 10G. Save you money on custom building a tank. Also fish are jumper. I do a lot of my breeding in 2.5G, 5G and 10G and I have build a fish rack to make it easier on maintenance. 


Shawn

[Stussi613]

I have a 72" Miracles tank, it's 135g total volume. I think Shawn s right, it would be cheaper, and easier to get 10x10g tanks if you won't be doing common filtration and heating.

[werehatwere]

I have decided to change my design to 5 sections instead of one. I was orignially going to do 10 10g tanks, but  I learned that this tank will be sharing its room with a grand piano. The room I wanted to make me fish room was an old music room in my house. All of the instruments were reloacated to a new music room, on the other side of the house. My aunt recently passed away and left my mom a Bosendorfer grand piano, and anybody who knows there piano's knows that you can't just throw one of those out on the curb. Its being restored in the old music room and the place my tanks were going to live, has been greatly reduced. Thus, I came up with this plan!

[magnosis]

I know a bit more about music instruments than I do about breeding fish and I would strongly advise against putting a 72" tank AND a grand piano in the same room - unless you have excellent humidity (and temperature) control. Otherwise you could easily transform your grand piano into a 50$ worth piece of wood and strings...

Sorry I don't mean to burst the bubble

On a different note (lol) maybe it's true that 10 x 10G is cheaper, but this project of yours is so much more interesting from a DIY / Novelty perspective

[werehatwere]

When we moved into our house, my parents had room to room heating, air conditioning, and humidifiers put in so that all the rooms could have separate air conditions. The reason being, my passed away great grandmother left an extensive art collection to my mother. We have two galleries in our house, and they are stored in there. That being said, each of the music rooms has its own climate control. The piano dose not do well with humidity due to the old paint. It starts to peel. So we decided to do a test. We put 2 humidifiers in the room on full blast and turned the rooms dehumidifier on. It was able to maintain a humidity of %10. Needless to say, the humidity will not be an issue.

On another note, I have updated the design of the tank. This is a top view

I am looking for someone in the Ottawa area who might be able to construct something like this. Dose anybody know anyone? Where is the best place to get materials like lexan or Plexiglas?

[werehatwere]

So the tank design has changed again. It will actually be two separate tanks on the same stand making a faux L shape. The little square where the two tanks meet will be part of the stand where the plumbing for the tanks goes under the stand.

[Shawn84]

You could get a 6 feet tank and then a 4 feet tank make it into an L shape. Drill and do your pluming. You can look into making your own stand so it can look like its 1 tank. 

[werehatwere]

Im already thinking making my own stand/ having a custom stand is the way to go.

The tank design has changed yet AGAIN but only the dimensions this time. The larger of the two will be 66x24x12 and the smaller will be 42x24x12. I am now looking for a good place to get plexiglass/ acrylic. I have looked into a few places, but i am waiting on responses.

[werehatwere]

So I have been working on a design that keeps my water clean with minimal work on my part. I came up with this idea. This can be applied 4 or 5 times a day, on say a 20 gallon tank. A few simple calculations are necessary to figure out how big the holding tank should be and the time the timers should be on.

If you had a 10 gallon tank, and wanted to do 3 %10 percent water changes every day, for a total of %30 water changed a day, then you would need (assuming you will be topping up the water holding tank once every 7 days) a 21 gallon holding tank. (I would probably be using 200 gallon troth's and filling up multiple tanks at once)

A. A timer switches on (Lets say at 12:00) and turns on a pump.
B. The pump draws a calculated amount of water from the tank (Ill have to figure out how much is taken from the tank per minute and do some math about the timing)
C. Water is drawn from the tank and hooks into drain system for the rooms dehumidifier (NEED HELP WITH THIS SEE BELOW)
D. The timer switches off at lets say 12:10, killing the pump
E. The second timer comes on at say, 12:11
F. A pump turns on drawing water from large tank or troth in the stand, that is heated and has same water conditions as tank above. This tank would be topped up once a week, and condtioned and heated.
G. The pump shuts off when the tank has filled again, or in case of overflow, the float valve will shut off
H. Water flows back into tank
I. In some weird emergency, a float valve will stop an overflow.

PROBLEM FROM C.
I need to figure out a way to get water out of the tank to a certain level, without creating a siphon effect that bypasses the pump. I get that if the water level goes down below the outflow tube, the siphon will break all on its own, but whats to stop the water from flowing into the tank from the tank below from creating a new siphon in the outflow, draining all the water in the bottom tank. I have an idea, but there may be a simpler way.
     
If I make the water go through a slight uphill, the top of the uphill being slightly above the top of the tank, will the pump make a strong enough suction to draw the water up over the hill, where it will fall and begin a siphon effect? This would then be broken as the water level goes lower than the opening of the pipe.

The dashes represent the uphill from the tank, and the l's are where the water would fall.

Let me know what I can improve on!
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