Best Way To Insulate Fish House And Other Tips Please!

[capester]

Hello all,
After many years of dreaming it seems that I am finally on the verge of my very own fish house! It is a concrete sectional garage that is 16'x9'10" but after careful consideration and a few reality checks it is going to modified to an 8' x 10' ish size. The roof is metal.
Main concerns are-

1. The best way to insulate the walls and ceiling. It would be handy if the up and over door could be kept in place as a way of getting tanks in and out but insulated over the rest of the time.

2. Space heater on thermostat and heaters in tanks or just heaters in tanks and no space heater?

3. individual filters or run the whole lot as a system?

4. If individual filters, simply foam ones or powered? Also, what size/ volume will a sponge filter cover?

Thanks everyone. Any other advice would be greatly appreciated. I will (all being well) be putting together a photo diary of my trials and tribulations during the construction.

 

[OldMan47]

2. Use a space heater. It will cost you far les than using individual tank heaters.
3. Each filter requires some power to operate. Unless you have fish with very heavy solids production, air driven filters will work fine and the air pump will require far less power than the total of the individual filters.
4. Sponge filters are sized to particular tank sizes, just like any other filter. I run this one as the sole filter on a 40 gallon tank.

 

[capester]

Hi, thanks for the information. Heating the room does seem to be the best option and I suppose that once warm it will keep fairly stable without the heater kicking in too often. I am looking into the best place to get sponge filters from. Any suggestions? Thanks

 

[JoshuaA]

Hi, thanks for the information. Heating the room does seem to be the best option and I suppose that once warm it will keep fairly stable without the heater kicking in too often. I am looking into the best place to get sponge filters from. Any suggestions? Thanks

eBay, a sponge filter is a sponge filter perhaps a few might been more basic than others (some with a place to actually attach your air hose), You'll pick up bargains on eBay for example this or that. Not sure what part of the sponge is the Chemical part like though! There's a tonne of those sort on eBay for rock bottom prices. At the very least you can get a large diameter tube stab it into a sponge block put an air hose into your tube and you've got a sponge filter.

Edit: Managed to mess up the links lol.

 

[capester]

Thanks mate, I didn't realise they were that cheap! I'll definitely be getting them of ebay!
Now, next question...
How many litres of air per hour would I need to power say, 20 tanks? Cheers!

 

[Tolak]

1 lpm at 2 psi per outlet is usually pretty good at depths of 24" or less. Figure out how many outlets you will be running, and leave room for extra for expansion, smaller fry tanks that eventually get wedged in & such.

 

[capester]

ok, I'll keep my eye out for one at the right price! Cheers