Fish Room

[John]

This thread will talk about my Fish Room (which I've been talking about in my user journal "John's Jungle" in the user journal forum), which I'll be setting up in my basement (once it's dry walled, insulated, etc.) over the next two or three months. So here's a basic diagram of the room. The shelves will have all kinds of tanks (breeding tanks, rearing tanks, "display tanks" which are just finished tanks, live food tanks, and a few paludariums and amphibian and reptile tanks. The awesome thing about the pond is that it goes around the perimeter of the room and extends through the wall on either side of the door (at least that's the plan).

Any comments and tips and anything else are very appreciated - the planning stage is the most important!

Here's the diagram:

[Lexus]

So what are you going to breed? What are you going to do with the babies once they are grown up?
How many tanks are you planning to have? just curious!

[John]

I'm planning to breed some livebearers (mollies, platys, swordtails, fancy guppies), some cichlids (not sure which species), some bettas, paradise fish, and possibly comets or koi in the pond, and attempt to breed some harder to breed fish like spiny eels and some rare catfish (which will be a lot easier to sell to the fish store than more common fish). About 1/4 of the tanks will be set up for breeding/rearing, but a lot of breeding might happen in community tanks. I'm looking at about 25 tanks, ranging from 2 1/2 gallons to 60 gallons. It'll be a work in progress
I'll also breed/raise/culture live foods, including crickets (for the reptiles and amphibians), mealworms (same reason), fruit flies, earth worms, brine shrimp, infusoria, feeder guppies, and feeder goldfish. This will all take place over the next four years, and I am hoping to have all this set up within a year, but begin setting up in 2 or 3 months.

[John]

Oh, I forgot to add that my friend and I are saving up for a small business liscense, so we can sell fish we breed. I'm not sure what other permits we might have to get, anybody else know/have an idea? How much would the liscense cost?

Also, I'll give some of the offspring away to my friends. I am not planning to euthanize any of the offspring.

[Z Man]

Sorry John but I don't want to burst your bubble but I ran a fishroom with 80 tanks and bred at different times well over 200 different species if fish. I never made one penny over my costs. I sold to one store that gave me one half of what he sold them for. They took all I could produce! The cost of electricity, water and mostly food far exceded what I got for the fish. I never needed any type of license and was never questioned about one. You have a long time ahead of yourself so just be careful on how involved you get when there is not that much of a return money-wise.
P.S. The hardest and most expensive part is raising the fry to a saleable size so you can get the most money for them. And this store has well over 400 display tanks & for the 10 years I did this, I'm not going to say how many I sold but you can take a good guess yourself. It was a LOT of fish.

[atltk]

Any waterfalls planned? If I were going to the expense and trouble of setting up such an elaborate room, I'd probably have one in a corner, possibly with a few cascading species pools.

[TANKER]

Zman has it absolutely right. I am running 35 45 gal breeders atm with some pretty unusual stock and I consider myself as successful in the fact that the stock pays for all my upkeep expenses and if I am real lucky maybe a little bit more. You deffinately won't get rich raising fish.

[John]

I was thinking of possibly putting in a waterfall for the koi/comet poind, maybe with a fountain dropping water into overflowing pools. ****Maybe some minnows or feeder guppies in the pools? ****I'm just not sure where I'd put it - there're a couple of good places. ****Any ideas? ****There will also be waterfalls in some of the tanks (like the paludariums) but that's not nearly the same ****The really cool thing about the pond (some kind of bizzare day dream I just had) goes something like this: ****My family might be lounging around in the new Rec. Room on Christmas Day (my Grandpa "passing out" on a recliner after all the commotion of unwrapping presents and Christmas Morning Breakfast), my cousins and uncles and I sitting on the couch and watching the Packers/Bears game on the big screen (they are Bear fans, my Mom and I are Packer fans - we live in Wisconsin, while they are in Illinois), while my Mom and Grandmas and Aunts examine all the beautiful flowers in my Mom's part of the basement and my other Grandpa happily serves up drinks at the bar and a few members of the family play pool, when one of the relatives, perhaps my baby cousin Juliana, points out one of the large koi in the pond at the top part of the diagram where it is jutting out into the Rec. Room, then my Aunt, who's holding her hand, notices a little later that the same fish is in the "other" pond (the bottom section that juts out into the Rec. Room), and asks me how it did that, allowing me to reveal my awesome fish room; my family will look in it in awe and point out my beautiful African Cichlids, my huge school of Neon Tetras, my creepy slithering Garter Snake, my mating bettas, my cool paludarium, my green anoles climbing around their cage, my huge Red Slider aquatic Turtle, the way the pond is layed out around the perimeter of the room (letting the koi move from the "top" area to the "bottom" in my diagram), my immense shelves full of tanks, and the overall coolness of the room with its many tanks and posters lining the walls (with a sign on the door that says "John's Jungle - enter at your own risk"). ****Wow, if that's not a run-off sentence I don't know what is! ****(But try to find a single grammatical error in it and you'll fail, lol). ****So, you see what I'm saying? ****The whole room will be magical - hopefully. ****Yes it will. ****


As far as making money off this, my plan isn't really to make money but to make a little money to buy more equipment - sort of a self-establishing cycle that pays for itslef. ****What I meant was being an independent seller, like a mini fish store. ****I can probably get away with doing it without a liscense. ****I'm thinking of naming it "John's Jungle," lol. ****Hopefully, I would also sell some stuff back to the store, just to make sure I don't lose too much money. ****Plus, I have an "investor," my friend Justin, who I plan to go into business with and start "John's Jungle." ****(Look for us in 10 years - either on National Television or on the corner near the grocery store begging for food). ****Boy, life sure seems so big and grand when you're only 14, lol. ****

Being a resident in my mother's house (I'm only 14), she says she'll pay for all the electrical and water bills, as long as they don't get out of hand and I pay for all the equipment/tanks/fish/etc. (unless she wants to buy a fish that I don't want and put it in one of the tanks, although I'll probably buy it for her anyways). ****Of course, I'll still give her most of the money I make if I get a job this summer (hopefully at the LFS - just depends if they still need some extra help once summer comes), and continue to do all the chores plus a few more.

I know the plans seem a little too risky and ambitious, but what's life without taking a few risks? ****I just hope I don't (gasp!) lose interest in the hobby, with a bunch of tanks in my basement!

[John]

Originally Posted by TANKER @ Fri Apr 29, 2005 3:53 pm

Zman has it absolutely right. I am running 35 45 gal breeders atm with some pretty unusual stock and I consider myself as successful in the fact that the stock pays for all my upkeep expenses and if I am real lucky maybe a little bit more. You deffinately won't get rich raising fish.

I don't intend to get rich - not raising fish at least. But I will have a better shot (maybe) if I sell as an independent fish store and not just to the fish store, like I meant. I hope I didn't make it seem like I'm doing it for the money. I'm doing it for the fun (but I don't want to lose a whole bunch of money either).

[John]

One of the cool things about the pond is that the kind of people who like to see beautiful setups without any equipment and obstructions in site (people who like the image of it - I'm one of them, as I'm sure most of you are) and the kind of people who find interest and beauty in the equipment and system itself (I'm one of them also, as I'm sure most of you these too), can both enjoy the pond. ****It will have the two sections that come through the wall of the fish room on either side of the door, and they will be beautiful because all the equipment will be "hidden" inside the fish room and all you will see is the plants and fish and nature. ****Plus, there is the illusion that those two areas are separate ponds, when in fact the fish can swim freely between the two behind closed doors. ****These things will be interesting to the casually onlookers that are perhaps enjoying the comfort of the Recreation Room. ****The probably more curious individuals, or just the fish and equipment and construction fanatics, might be interested in what is behind closed doors (what's going on in the fish room), and how the fish are able to get "from one pond to another". ****So, regardless of what type of visitor we have, or even if they are both types, it will be cool to see how they are interested in it and it will hopefully provide them with some entertainment.


So that brings me to what's behind closed doors - the filtration and the other equipment. ****Basically, my question is how I'm going to make sure that enough filtration is provided. ****Also, I'm wondering if I will have some added worries about algea and diseases and mosquitoes, etc. if the water in some areas is too slow moving due to a lack of current. ****Plus, I am trying to decide how minimal the amount of oxygen can be (because I want to provide it all with filters, and I'm worried about whether that will be enough).

To combat those problems, I obviously would have to provide adequate filtration that keeps that water moving a little bit, and also provide enough oxygen.

So, I'm thinking possibly four small filters that provide "fountains" of water into the pond (because they are from a signifigant height above the water. ****I was thinking of maybe one filter in each of the corners on the right side of the diagram, one filter in the top left corner (inside the fish room) and one in the bottom left inside the fish room. ****I don't want to have any equipment outside the fish room so it looks very natural on the other side of the wall in the rec. room (like I mentioned above).

I will tackle other problems like how I'm going to keep the koi from jumping out a little later. ****(I'm not worried about heating - I'm only keeping coldwater fish like koi and the room will be warm enough from all the heated tanks and electricity).

Right now, I'm just worried about filtration/oxygen/keeping the water current moving a little. ****Any ideas/comments/tips/questions/concerns about my filtration plan? ****Plans of your own?

[John]

Thanks for the ideas over in the indoor pond thread

I try not to let my mind wander too much when I'm excited about a project, because I get ideas that I eventually lose interest in. I lose interest in them because I have too much on my plate or I give myself an idea for another project and lose interest in the old one.

However, I let my mind wander a little bit about gerbils. I have had gerbils twice before and I was relatively successful, but I didn't want to start having them again for this room because what I wanted was hard enough, and I didn't want to get involved with a totally different group of animals for this room. But I let my mind wander nonetheless, and the result, although pretty obvious, was cool.

I had been planning on having a shelf (probably about half a foot wide) on the wall slightly above the top of the shelves along the walls of the room. I got to thinking about gerbils, and those cool plastic tunnels that I had always thought were fun (I loved to make mazes and complex layouts for my gerbils out of them). I decided that I could get some gerbils and put some of that colorful tubing along the shelves, connecting two or three tanks in different parts of the room. The gerbils would love it, and it would be pretty awesome. I already have one commercial gerbil cage (with all the accessories that gerbils need). I could set up one or two other tanks for gerbils on different shelves and connect all of them with the tubing (I already have a lot of it). I would probably get 2 gerbils and breed them.