Aquarium Racks
Racks and Tanks
(The content on this page was originally written in the Fall of 2005, then the room was not fully built out.)
What makes a fishroom a fishroom? The FISH! All of the infrastructure systems (air, water, electricity) could be used to do just about anything in this basement (ok… not including the air). The systems in the fishroom that will define what can be kept and bred, however, are the tank racks and the tanks that go on them. The planning of space usage is most important when planning racks. The best fishrooms I have been in all have one thing in common… a well designed layout of racks with tanks specifically chosen to meet the needs of the species being kept.
The problem in my case is that I have never met a fish species that I did not find some redeeming value in. I even like oscars. How do you plan for a fishroom that can keep, breed and grow out ANYTHING? If space is limited then that goal is very hard to accomplish. Just one species will require more than one tank if you seriously want to reproduce it. The investment in glass, lights and racks is going to dwarf every other aspect of the fishroom (unless you plan on being the world’s zebra pleco king and need breeding stock), so you had better know what you will need before you start building.
Let’s think about angelfish. I used to breed a lot of angelfish. I like angelfish. I am going to breed some angelfish in my fishroom. Here is how I planned for raising angelfish.
I want two breeding pairs of angelfish. Each pair will be housed and spawned in a 20H aquarium. When I raise angels I artificially incubate the spawns that I want to raise a large number of fry from. I anticipate that once I have my pairs breeding that I will pull a spawn from each pair once every two - three months. I need one ten gallon hatching and fry rearing tank. I like to step angel fry into sequentially larger tanks as they grow. I will cull undesirable angels at each transfer. My goal is to only transfer about sixty angels from the hatching ten to a growing 20H… so I need a third 20H. When the angels are large enough to be moved again, I plan to move forty to a 40Br. They will stay in the 40Br until they are saleable as small angels, at which point I will thin the group down to twentyfive by culling and taking some out to sell to a LFS. Since I will be working two spawns at the same time, though they will be staggered in age, I will need two 40br aquariums. A breeding pair of angels does not last forever, and I prefer to grow my pairs rather than buy them. I like to purchase a dozen of a specific variety from two unrelated sources, grow them separately until they start to spawn, then pair opposite sexes from opposite groups to get a good outcross. This growout process requires about six months if I start with small angels, and will require a 40Br per group.
I figure that I will need four 40Br, three 20H and one 10 gallon just to accomodate my desire to breed and raise a few angels. I seriously doubt that I will raise and sell more than 100 angels a year. With the current layout plan for my fishroom, the angelfish program will take up a sixth of the available tank space in the room.
The fish rack systems that I am building in my fishroom are being built in phases. I seriously considered building everything from day one and buying it all while my wife was smiling and nodding. If I were opening a fish store that would be the way to go, but if I filled tanks with water before I had fish to go into them I would be wasting time and money. The links below will take you to each of my rack systems by the phase that they were built in. Some (phase 1 and 2) are already built. Future phases will be posted as they are completed.
