Fish Room Advice

[alan3513]

I'm hoping to build my first fish room shortly but just doing costings for the build, and looking for some advice.
1.What is the best insulation for the walls and ceiling, i.e. - Fibreglass,Polystyrene,or other.
2.what is the best material for the walls, i.e.- Hardboard,Plywood,or other.
3.What is the best material for the floor, i.e.- Lino,Rubber, or other, and do you insulate the floor.
4.A suitable air pump to supply air to 15-18 tanks
Thanks in advance for any advice, Alan.

 

[curlyriff]

I'm hoping to build my first fish room shortly but just doing costings for the build, and looking for some advice.
1.What is the best insulation for the walls and ceiling, i.e. - Fibreglass,Polystyrene,or other.
2.what is the best material for the walls, i.e.- Hardboard,Plywood,or other.
3.What is the best material for the floor, i.e.- Lino,Rubber, or other, and do you insulate the floor.
4.A suitable air pump to supply air to 15-18 tanks
Thanks in advance for any advice, Alan.

1. This depends on the room really. What is your current wall/ceiling construction? The Polystyrene is the cheapest but not as good etc so depends on budget also. If you are retrofitting to the wall face rather than in the cavity then you have to allow for whatever thickness of material you use.
2. Are you building your room within a room or is this seperate in design. This answer will make Q1. easier to answer too. In short if you are putting a new skin to an existing wall over the insulation then plasterboard and painted would be fine for what you need.
3. This is preferance, if you want something easy to clean then Lino works but it is slippy when wet. Rubber tiles would work great and are easy to install. The insulation to the floor again is dependant on the above answers to my question as that will decide what you can/can't do.
4. I don't know the answer to this off hand. I would have thought for ease of use then you would be better to either keep all indiviually or only run one per 3/4 tanks as this means should you have to do maintance or anything you don't have long airlines to try and mask or if you get a leak it would be easier to control without having to turn them all off.

Kind Regards,

Adam

 

[alan3513]

Thanks for the reply.The building will just be a wooden shed. Was thinking about Fibreglass on the walls and polystyrene on the ceilling with possibly P5 chipboard for the wall covering (If it's not to expensive)which is supposed to be moisture resistant. The rubber tiles sounds good.I was hoping to get a bigger air pump that would do all the tanks.

 

[Dudfield]

Thanks for the reply.The building will just be a wooden shed. Was thinking about Fibreglass on the walls and polystyrene on the ceilling with possibly P5 chipboard for the wall covering (If it's not to expensive)which is supposed to be moisture resistant. The rubber tiles sounds good.I was hoping to get a bigger air pump that would do all the tanks.

hi i would put p5 on the floors not the walls, yes they are moisture resistant but thats it and will be to thick for the walls 18mm or 22mm so stick it on the floor with 25mm polystyrene under for insulation (if you really want it) then a covering over the p5 like the rubber tiles

personally for a shed wall i would use again polystyrene again prob 50mm as any more and it would be a sauna in any warm weather for the walls itself if it dont need to look pretty then OSB 11mm would be cheapest but then if you got spare cash i would use a 9-12mm wbp board which is a better water resistant than p5 and has a good face either to paint or leave as it is.


cant help with the 4th one sorry

 

[alan3513]

Thanks for the reply. Didn't realise that you couldn't get P5 thinner than 18mm.
Will have a look at OSB and WBP board, Cheers, Alan.

 

[curlyriff]

Thanks for the reply.The building will just be a wooden shed. Was thinking about Fibreglass on the walls and polystyrene on the ceilling with possibly P5 chipboard for the wall covering (If it's not to expensive)which is supposed to be moisture resistant. The rubber tiles sounds good.I was hoping to get a bigger air pump that would do all the tanks.

What size shed you looking at?
Tank Sizes?
Filtration For Tanks?

With sheds this can be as cheap or expensive as you like really. I would make sure you get the highest quality shed you can so that it lasts. Check out this Shed Site as they have one of the best ranges to pick from in terms of size and quality.

I would suggest using 50mm insulation to the ceiling and walls in this case. Polystyrene sheets would work alright or anything like the Kingspan stuff which is better and may be needed in the colder months. Do not need to worry about the floor. Heat rises so once it is to tempurature you will loose minimal heat at the floor and assuming that you prep the ground first with some hardcore and concrete mat with a resiliant layer to stop moisture rising from the floor.

You need to decide if you want to think about cooling your shed in summer or heating it in winter really. If you want to put heating in for the winter months (Will be needed with 50mm poly sheets) a stand alone heater would be more than up to the job for anything up to 20'x20' shed size.

Use 25mm WPB (£30 a sheet)as you are looking to place allot of load on the floor with all the tanks and 12mm (£15 a sheet) for the walls as again I would assume you would want to tie the racks back to the wall as well for stability assuming you are going that way in design. You don't need to use anything other than a standard hardwood although ideally for the floor Marine ply with 2No. 15mm sheets laminated together would be ideal. But that is costly at around £45 per sheet.

I am assuming you are loading your shed with 18No. 3ft tanks at moment as we haven't got any details and can adjust your floor construction dependant.

The Concrete base I mentioned is simple. You would require 150mm of compacted hardcore with anything between 150-300mm concrete slab. Maybe with A393 Mesh in the top to stop stress cracks from heavy loading.

Place a DPC membrain over the top and lap it up the sides of the shed about 150mm above ground level. This would keep any moisture from being absorbed from the ground/slab.

I don't know if you can get a pump for that many tanks but as said I only wouldn't as maintance issues with long air runs. Leakage problems and should it fail all of the tanks would stop. Running a tetratec or similar per 4 tanks means that you could keep runs minimal with air cabling and if one should go faulty you don't loose it on all the tanks.

Kind Regards,

Adam

 

[alan3513]

Hi Adam, Thanks for the great reply and link. The shed will only be 8"x6" but will be a good quality one.

Was thinking of 2 foot tanks but i'm thinking of changing that to a combination of 2 foot and 3 foot ones.

I was thinking of sponge filters for each tank but have four Tetrtecs (2x600's +2 x700's)that i use on my current tanks that i could incorporate.

The WPB sounds good and will need to price it up here in Scotland. The floor will be wooden but on a concrete base with the supports under the floor being thicker at 95mm x 45mm with more of them, fixed closer together,

Thanks again,

Alan.

 

[OldMan47]

Using traditional building materials, look for the drywall that is used for bathrooms where moisture is always a concern. In the US it is called green board because the paper cover they use to make it easy to identify is green. Instead of the typical gypsum center, this stuff has an oily clay center. By oily I mean that when you cut and break it you never get the dusty effect of cutting normal drywall. It makes the stuff almost impermeable to moisture, which is what you want.
Everything you do in that fish room should be aimed at easy care. By the time you fill a room with tanks, you will find the maintenance onerous unless you have planned ahead for easy care. When it comes to costs, individual tank heaters are quite expensive to run compared to simply heating the room and running your tanks without heaters. For filters, you can either use a small amount of electricity for each tank to run a filter or you can use air operated filters, such as sponge filters, to make a single air pump run the whole room's tanks. Sponges have the added benefit of being safe for newborn fry.

 

[Dudfield]

hardi backer is a product in england that people use which is water proof comes in 6 or 12mm

or there is the moisture resistant wallboard which is plasterboard with green paper

unless you want to send some money you could buy mermaid panels which is a finish board only like 10mm thick and thats all you will need......http/www.mermaidpanels.com/

 

[always4lora]

I hvae a large tank outside in the shed, to insulate it i covered the windows with plastic sheets so it had like double glazing;
I brought some large sheets of MDF and covered these in bubble rap, i then got some loft insulation and put this onto the walls, i then covered this in fiberglass sheets. In the winter the only bit what gets cold is the door, i cover this with sheets at the bottom to stop a draft coming through. I do have 6 heaters heating the tank but these are barely on due to the good room temprature in the shed.

 

[alan3513]

Thanks everyone for the great advice, much appreciated, Cheers, Alan.