Livebearer breeder tank

[PaulLamb]

I've designed a breeder tank for my livebearer selective breeding projects. The basic necessity is a way to keep individual fish, pairs, and litters seperated in order to track lineages. This requires multiple compartments to seperate fish, compartments for mothers to give birth, compartments for fry to grow up in. Additionaly, my design will have multiple lids to keep fish from jumping into neighboring compartments, a whole-tank filtration system that will not suck up the fry, and an automatic feeding system.

I recently began construction of the first prototype (I'll eventually be building a dozen or so of these when I get the setup right). I thought I would start this thread here to let people know how/if it works out, get feedback, and discuss the benefits/drawbacks of this type of setup and any problems I run into along the way.

To start with, basic idea is a 36"L X 24"W X 12"H aquarium divided into eight main 9"L X 12"W X 12"H compartments. I'm not a great artist, but to give you a visual representation:


For water-flow throughout the tank, Each of these eight compartments will be divided by two pieces of plexyglass about an inch apart. They will be about 11" in height, one aligned with the top edge of the tank, the other with the bottom edge. The floor of each main compartment will be made of a mesh glued in about one inch from the bottom of the tank, with gravel on top of that. This will allow water to flow down through the gravel, up the side, and over into the next compartment. Visually:


Then, to get the water circulating though the tank, I will place a common aquarium filter on the back with the intake pulling from one compartment and the output pouring into the neighboring compartment. This will cause gravity to force the water to flow through every compartment in the tank in a counterclockwise direction. Visually:


Now, each of those eight main compartments will be further divided into two parts (along the 9" length so as to not interfere with the filtration system). There will be a smaller 9"L X 4"W X 12"H behind a larger 9"W X 8"W X 12" H. Pairs will be brought together in the larger compartment for breeding, then the male will be moved to the smaller compartment when the female is due to give birth. At that time, the female will be placed in a mesh cage that the fry can fit through but not her until she gives birth. While the fry are growing up, she will then be moved into another tank, or into the smaller compartment with the male if additional litters from this pair are required. Visually:


Finally, there will be an automatic feeding system, which is currently still in the planning stages. My basic concept is to make some home-made rotating feeder drums like you can buy at a pet store. Flakes are placed inside the drum, and each rotation it lets out a pre-set amount of food. They look something like this:


I am thinking of designing some kind of axil and belt setup with drums that can be snapped on as needed. It would be controlled by a motor and timer circuit that will rotate the axils to feed the fish twice a day. I'm not the greatest engineer, though, so I'm still ironing out the details on that one ...

I have begun constructing the first prototype breeder tank (just finished cutting and glueing together the main tank). I'll post some real pictures as I make more progress.

[PaulLamb]

I've uploaded some pictures of my prototype breeder-tank in progress. So far I have the main braces drying in place, which divide the tank into four parts. A couple of views:



I've learned a couple of important things so far.

The first issue is with the corners. I made them with two 90-degree metal border pieces, one of them notched so they fit together:

The side border pieces sit against these pieces. The problem was that I forgot to tape the side border in place while the glue was drying, and it slid behind the bottom border. I didn't notice the problem until the gule had dried completely. Here is a closeup:

I think this will be ok, though, because I plan to reenforce the corners anyway. If this does become a weak point or leaks, I will have to pull up the glue and redo it. In the future I will know to be more careful about the corners.

The second issue is with the glue itself. I smoothed it down by hand, and it came out rather messy and uneven. Here is a closeup:

I'll look into using some kind of tool for this in the future.