Dave Schieltz’s Fishroom
A Visit to
Dave Schieltz’s
Fishroom
August, 2007
One of my favorite aquarium clubs to visit is the Colorado Aquarium Society (CAS) in Denver. Not only do I get to look at the mountains (longingly), but I get to visit friends who I have known for a while. Dave and I have met at ACA conventions and fish club meetings over the years, and I finally got the chance to visit his fish room on a recent trip to the CAS.
Dave has a LOT of hobbies, and he is good at all of them. He maintains a beautiful garden with a pond on his hillside lot. This water feature is located just off his deck. There are also smaller tub ponds on the deck.
 
 
 
 
The only aquarium in the house outside of the fishroom (that I saw) is a large 150 gallon display tank in the living room. This tank has an interesting community of large fish, including species that are not normally supposed to get along. Just goes to show that fish cannot read. Here are some fish in that tank: a jack dempsey, a gold severum and a school of silver dollars. There are also frontosa, various plecos and other types of characins and barbs in the tank.
 
The driftwood in that tank is all collected by Dave from local rivers. The wood is a very weathered cedar. The color does not look all that great when it is dry, but after it has been soaked for a while it turns a deep reddish-brown color. Here is a piece Dave had lying outside by the deck.
Dave’s fishroom is located in his basement. The room is an L-shaped space that is approximately 20 feet on its longest wall. Half of the room is about 8 feet wide and the back end of it is about 12 feet wide. There are tanks on all the walls and a small island of tanks in the middle of the wider section. Here are some views around the room.
 
 
The sponge filters are powered by a linear piston air pump. The delivery pipe is a pvc curcuit around the room and across the middle. Dave uses an interesting method of keeping the pipe up above the tanks… they are suspended on wire.
Dave is known for his ability to make interesting fishroom gadgets. In other people’s fishrooms I have seen his sponge filter cleaner and his auto refill shut-off made from a water trough float valve. Dave showed me one that he has been working on. This is a small German siphon. This is an over flow that would permit an auto water change or central filtration system to be used without drilling the tanks. This siphon is different because it is small and could be easily hidden on the back side of a rack.
Another cool apparatus in the fish room is the egg tumbler. I have seen these before, and would love to make on of my own, but the round bottom plastic bottles that are needed are no longer made. I have seen a similar system recently that uses tall pilsner glasses as egg chambers. This system works by using a powerhead to pump water through a piece of rigid airline tubing with a valve to control flow. The end of the tube hits the bottom of the round-bottom plastic chamber just off center. Eggs or larvae on the bottom of the chamber are slowly tumbled with water, which rises and exits the chamber through a screen at the top. The pilsner glass system uses a mesh over the top of the glass that lets water overflow but keeps the fry inside.
Most of the fish in Dave’s fish room are cichlids from Lake Malawi. Here are a few of them.
 
 
 
 
Not everything is a rift lake fish, however. Dave also raises a LOT of Ancistrus sp. plecos. Here is a picture of one of his breeder males.
This long-nose farlowella is a rare fish in the hobby. Dave brought it back with him from his trip to South America a few years ago.
Unfortunately I was not able to spend enough time at Dave’s place to see or get pictures of everything. I look forward to another chance someday when I am in Colorado again. Thank you Dave for opening your fish room for this tour.
