Rorie's Fish House Project

[phoenix2081]

Now that would be funny. Six pages on building a fish room then put a Roma 90 litre in it

.

or a fluval chi.

 

[balajake]

it will hopefully be a 3000 gallon shark tank

 

[Rorie]

haha.

Well at the moment i am planning on having 6x 18" Cubes for discus pairs ....or maybe two cubes and two larger grow on tanks -may be the safer option. I will also have about six 4 ft tanks which i'll split up. On top of that i'll have my water treatment bays

Total water quantity should be......2500L. BUT, i may be able to get another two 4 ft tanks in - size dependant....thats size of the room...not the tank

 

[balajake]

You need at least 1 six footer with a tiger Oscar

 

[Xraymark]

I notice your thinking of having a saltwater tank. Have you made your mind up yet?

 

[Rorie]

So today i am going home after work to build my new shelving. I will arrange it and take a photo so that you can all see what the room is going to look like before the partition wall goes up.....excited? haha

I figure this is the one time you will be able to see the scale of it best, as once the wall is up, photographing the whole toom at once will be impossible.

RE the marine tank.....i dont know! I have posted on a marine forum and they have just confused me more haha.

When I went into my LFS, I was quite open to buying a whole new marine tank – a small one – but the guy said if I had the equipment which I do, then its really not worthwhile. He suggested using my box filters, existing lighting units etc and talked me through it. He would have been better getting more money out of me, but for some reason he didn’t.....so I wonder if he has good intentions!

When I asked on the forums, I have been advised that box filters ‘can’ work, but I’d be better with a sump. They said my lighting rigs probably wont give enough light, so I will need new ones. I have been told that basically everythgin I have is of no use, and that its really expensive to run.

So, I don’t know what I am doing now!!

I would like to know how much light I will need and can start working out costs of running from there.....

 

[ainsy]

I would like to know how much light I will need and can start working out costs of running from there.....

It's kind of the other way round really. You need to decide what you want to keep and then buy lighting to suit the animals.

Fish only - T5 is ok
fish + certain soft coral - can get away with T5 but you will need more of it (at a guess at least 4 tubes)
hard coral - Metal halide - these come in 3 strengths 150w, 250w & 400w (over a 4 foot tank I would have twin 250's)

This is a little simplistic but gives you a basic idea of where you may start

 

[Rorie]

Simplistic is GOOOOOD!!!

That is the exact info i have been trying to find haha. Just now, my 5 ft tank has 4 T8s. The longest ones.... I want to keep fish and basic soft coral, so not bothered by super high lighting.

You say T5 - why T5 and not T8? Are they stronger light?

My tank is 2 foot deep, so will the 4x T5 still be enough?

 

[ainsy]

Like I said I am not an expert in this as I always used Halides!

My understanding is that T8 aren't powerful enough - you will need T5 & specialist marine bulbs (whilst colour spectrum isn't important in FW it is vital for coral)

I would guess that 4 x 5footers would be ok to start. Just make sure that you go to a LFS that knows their stuff and get softies that don't require high light levels (or check here!)

If you find that your coral isn't flourishing then you can always add more tubes.

HTH

 

[bae1994]

T5's disperse there light better so the same watt t5 is the same power butt shines more into the aquarium so you could run a tank on t8's but. You'd need a lot more of them

I ran a 5ft tank on twin 54w t5 and 3 40w t8 and kept soft corals successfully and probably could of gone abit more tougher corals IMO and I ran a external filter on that ( with no sponge just small bits of live rock in it ) with the skimmer and uv all on the back of the tank with power heads and that ran very well in fact there's a lot of us on here that never use a sump I've had 5 marine tanks all run fine without a sump and I've kept hard corals soft corals and filter feeders etc and had a metal halide over one of those too

If you need a list of equipment you would need to setup a 4 ft tank put a thread up in marine and we can write one up

 

[balajake]

check out iquatics for t5 tubes

 

[Tizer]

check out iquatics for t5 tubes

Tiz where i get all my tubes too. Buy 2 get 1 free

 

[Million]

Epic Man-Cave! It deserved capitals I feel. You have some serious DIY skills too, I dream of doing something like this one day. So now that you have space for some super tanks, what new creatures will you be entertaining? Sharks with #140## laser-beams?

EDIT: wait, f r i k k i n is not a swear-word! #40## you autocorrect

EDIT 2: oh come on! really?

 

[phoenix2081]

Are you going to have the comfiest chair in the world in there and take in a nice book and some nice malt whisky or whatever your tipple of choice is once it is complete? Enjoy the quiet and relax.

 

[balajake]

check out iquatics for t5 tubes

Tiz where i get all my tubes too. Buy 2 get 1 free

can i ask which of their tubes you use in your tropical tank Tizer / i was thinking of using 2 marine whites and two tropicals. i want it quite bright but not "burn your eyes out bright" will 4 marine whites be too much for a new world cichlid tank or should i mix them up with tropical tubes ?. the iquatic marine whites have a 14000k output