Saving Money and Labor in the Fish Room
by Lou Baldus
November/December 2005 Issue #33
After my first visit to a privet fish room I told the friend that was with me. I WILL NEVER HAVE A FISH ROOM. So what did I know? My fish room has a total tank compactly of over 700 gal.
I joined G.V.A.C. about 7 years ago and had my first aquarium at the age of 12. Like most I started with some guppies and thought getting baby from them was so cool. Now after joining G.V.A.C. I have turned in over 40 spawns to B.A.P. and as part of the requirement to move up in the breeder class I need to turn in some articles. So here is one!
After hearing story of it costing $200 to $300 a month to run a fish room. And how much time it takes to maintain all the tanks. It will scar off most people but after seeing a number of rooms I come up with some ideas to save on cost and labor in a fish room and I would like to pass those ideas on to you. Some ideas I have stolen from others and changed to work for my fish room.
First thing you need to do is get some space with a strong floor and a floor with a drain. Your floor will have a lot of weight on it and it will get wet. I think that is way a lot of fish rooms are in basements and besides that it is usually the only space you can get from your spouse. In my case I was building a new house and never explained the 12’ X 13’ space in the basement to my wife. Not Good. If you can, insulate the side walls and the ceiling this will help keep the room worm reducing the heating cost and keep the noise down believe it or not a fish room makes a lot noise.
When laying out the fish room put in some kind of work top and a sink for cleaning filter, bagging fish, preparing food and other things. This will saves a lot of time. Running to some other room makes for a lot more work. Include a place for storage food, filter, exc. Think of the future plan on having tanks from floor to ceiling. Or at less make plan on adding more tanks later. I worked one day just to add 3 more 10gal. tanks to my fish room. Trust me you never have enough tanks. Remember you are heating the room it cost the same for 25 tanks, as for 5 tanks.
To keep the operating cost down I set up single four foot florescent lights with reflector a total of 3 in the room all on one timer. The lights are on about 13hr a day, with other lights on a switch for when I’m work in the room. By building the tanks stands like stair steps light goes into each tank. This works quite well for me I don’t have live plants and fish of the most part don’t need a lot of light to be happy. Heating the room is cheaper than tank heaters. Tank heaters cost a lot and take a lot of eclectic to run. I use a vent less gas heater in one corner keeping the room about 78 to 80 F. The water stays about 75 F.
I have well water and it is not good it has a lot of iron and sulfur in it. I must filter all the water. So I use a circulating system with small water changes about 5% three times a day. 90% of the tanks are drilled for drains that return the water to a holding tank with a wet dry filter this system comes on 3 times a day for 1hr each time. This saves on eclectic and allows for the water changes. Each holding tank is equipped with a drain and a float valve that adds water ever time the pump come on. The water level drops and water is added. When the pump stops the water overflows in the drain and out of the system. Now the water change is done saving more labor. This will also save on water cost for city water. The other 10% of tanks are used for quarantine tanks all new fish spend on less than two weeks in quarantine before being added to the system of tanks.
More next time……...
The End