Ted’s Fishroom

August, 2008

 Some aquarists know how to do it right!  I had the pleasure of visiting John Niemans and seeing his set up while on a trip to give a talk to the COAST club in southern California.  John has dedicated a lot of time and effort into his hobby, and his attention to detail shows in spectacular fish house.

 The tour begins in the human house, however, where John has built a 1000 gallon, 8′x4′x4′, aquarium in his living room.  This tank is very well designed and adds to the decor of the home.  I have seen equally large tanks that look out of place in other homes, but John’s display tank fits right in.

 

The aquarium is built into the corner with the larger viewing window facing the entry into the room.  The side window faces in towards the furniture.  There is a service area behind the aquarium where John can access the filtration.  The tank is filtered with a rolling wet dry filter.  A large inline water pump moves water from the filter back up into the tank.  It is lit from above with three solar tubes through the ceiling and roof above the aquarium.  Here are some images of the mechanics behind the aquarium, and another of the front of the tank.

      

This display tank has a South American cichlid community in it.  There is a group of peacock bass (Cichla sp.) and some HUGE Gymnogeophagus balzani from Uruguay.  John and his friends have visited Uruguay to collect fish on several occasions.

John’s fish house is a long building built behind the main house.  The facility consists of two rooms linked together through a small hallway.  Each room has four rows of tanks in two aisles.  Most of the aquariums are 50 gallons or larger.  Here are a couple shots of the layout of the rooms.

                  

The tanks are plumbed for flow-through automated water changes.  Most of what John keeps can handle the hard, alkaline water from his tap.  John does not make RO water for his few softwater fish, but he does store waste water from his air exchanger.  This is as good as a distiller.  Here is an image of the air exchanger and the reservoir he uses to store the soft waste water in.

         

There is also a blower to provide air for sponge filters.  The rooms are heated with hanging space heaters.

         

The tank racks are welded angle iron and fit three rows of aquariums.  Larger tanks are located lower on the racks.  The top tanks are shorter.  I asked John about risk from earthquakes (there was a pretty big one the week before I visited).  Apparently the racks sway a bit but have not fallen over.  Scary stuff!!!!

John keeps a wide variey of fish, but most of his collection is comprised of cichlids from the rift lakes of Africa.  He has some of the really cool ‘hap’ types from Lake Malawi, many of which I have only seen in books.  Here are some of the Malawi fish in the fish house.

              

        

John also keeps a lot of fish from Lake Tanganyika.

              

         

West Africa is also well represented in the John’s collection, including this very cool and rare-in-the-hobby Sarotherodon melanotheron melanotheron.

              

John has several species of fish that come from Uruguay.  The many varieties of Gymnogeophagus are well known to most cichlid hobbyists.  But have you seen this undescribed eel?

         

John has a few other odds and ends swimming around his fish room.  One of the neatest fish in the place is this small grass pickeral John collected when in the southeast USA.  He also brought back a pretty blue form of dwarf crayfish.

Here are a couple of the other miscellaneous fish I managed to get decent pictures of.  As is usual, I did not get images of everything.  I ran out of memory for the camera!

    

Visiting a hobbyist many times more deeply invested in the hobby than I am is always a pleasure.  It gives me ammunition to use in ’discussions’ with my wife.  So thanks John… I am now one step (unfortunately a really little step) closer to getting a fish house like yours someday.  I really hope that I get a chance to visit with John again in the future… and bring a couple more memory cards for the camera.