Rorie's Fish House Project

[Tizer]

I use 4 tropical's in mine, its pretty #40## bright truth be told. Looks nice though!

 

[balajake]

I use 4 tropical's in mine, its pretty #40## bright truth be told. Looks nice though!

just been looking at your tank (again as it's a great thread) and its bright. ive ordered 2 39w twin hagen glo t5 starters. i m assuming it will be less bright as its 39w

 

[Rorie]

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

Good info, thanks. I have a thread on the marine part of the forum listing the equipment i have and asking if it would work or what i'd need to buy.

How do you work the hang on skimmer? Is there a hang on unit you buy?

I guess i need to buy new lighting rigs then IN which case, i can buy what ever i need.....but i was hoping not to spend much on equipment.

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?

serious diy skills? haha, thanks. I think its a bit average, but my motto has always been "i don't do DIY"

I am going to have (having just measured it out now) 16 tanks where i will have plecos, barbs, danios, killies rams etc and then i will have a few tanks with my discus pairs

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.

Well this is the thing.....this is going to be purely a fish breeding room. I can put the partition wall up where ever i like, but the more room, the more the cost of heating it. Also, the other side of the room is going to be my games room!! With a BAR in it So the sofa will be in there.

The lack of display tank is the reason i am thinking about marine...

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

There is a good write up about using different colour spectrums in your tank - My link

 

[Tizer]

Fish room AND games room? Bored of the wife or you dropping some big hints??

 

[phoenix2081]

Could you not add a marine or tropical tank into the partition so you can see that one in the bar?

I am envious of this amazing area you will have. The mans area! I must have one, one day maybe.

 

[Tizer]

Could you not add a marine or tropical tank into the partition so you can see that one in the bar?

I am envious of this amazing area you will have. The mans area! I must have one, one day maybe.

Its called the local pub

 

[phoenix2081]

aha the local pub though is not your own personal relax area and is often these days tainted by the sound of crying kids, kids running around and mouthy birds. Or is this just in Newcastle?

 

[Rorie]

aha the local pub though is not your own personal relax area and is often these days tainted by the sound of crying kids, kids running around and mouthy birds. Or is this just in Newcastle?

mouthy birds.... i have two parrots.....one is very mouthy lol.

i am thinking the display tank is going to stay in the main house - in the dining room... but not too sure yet. maybe the cost of running a fish room and a marine tank will push my allowance over the edge haha

 

[balajake]

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

Good info, thanks. I have a thread on the marine part of the forum listing the equipment i have and asking if it would work or what i'd need to buy.

How do you work the hang on skimmer? Is there a hang on unit you buy?

I guess i need to buy new lighting rigs then IN which case, i can buy what ever i need.....but i was hoping not to spend much on equipment

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?

serious diy skills? haha, thanks. I think its a bit average, but my motto has always been "i don't do DIY"

I am going to have (having just measured it out now) 16 tanks where i will have plecos, barbs, danios, killies rams etc and then i will have a few tanks with my discus pairs

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.

Well this is the thing.....this is going to be purely a fish breeding room. I can put the partition wall up where ever i like, but the more room, the more the cost of heating it. Also, the other side of the room is going to be my games room!! With a BAR in it So the sofa will be in there.

The lack of display tank is the reason i am thinking about marine...

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

There is a good write up about using different colour spectrums in your tank - My link

thanks for the link

 

[ainsy]

You can get skimmers that hang on the back (or side!) of the tank or you can get bigger ones that sit external to the tank. In either case you will have to pump water to them.

(I have a couple that I was going to put on ebay if you are interested?)

 

[IainMac85]

looks awesome mate!! these are the kinda threads i like to read! manly stuff haha! dont know how ive missed this thread until now! just out of interest are u a joiner? your work is very professional looking!

A joiner?! haha, nope! But i will take that as a compliment! I am a Structural Engineer - i sit infront of my computer all day long and normally protest "I dont do DIY". My dad is a jack of all trades when it comes to DIY, and annoyingly, Master of all as well haha! I guess i have a little of his skill passed down to me.

haha thats similar to me mate, im a spark but my dads a car mechanic to trade (well he was 30yrs ago) and hes a master at everything similar to your old man, it must be a dad thing!! i myself am fairly handy and can turn my hand to most things aswell but i doubt ill ever be as handy as my dad lol

 

[Rorie]

Week 7 -sigh!

Well, i had planned to get the electrics finished off, the plumbing finished and the last of the plaster board up on the walls....

1) My new shelving arrived so i got a chance to lay it all out and see what the room would look like. On the right hand side we have my water inlet. I am going to have a bit water butt on top of the table for my RO water. I will then have a 3 ft tank on the bottom shelf where the water will be heated and treated (so i will always have one tanks worth of water ready.

The back wall will have 8 4ft tanks (on the three metal stands). These will be split in two giving my 16 2ft tanks.

The left wall has a deeper stand. This is the best space utilisation which allows me to have my discus in the room to. So i will have two or 4 cubes with pairs in. Below that i will have 3 ft grow on tanks. which i will not put any non-fry in (the whole reason i have so many tanks now haha).

2) After the water line was connected up, a quick check showed water was p***ing out everywhere! I had to strip it out and redo the connections - these 'push fit' and 'twist to compress' kind of joints are not the easiest things to work with. No idea what happened with it, but some rework fixed that up. The copper piping (old school style) worked perfect....obviously!

3)) The electrics. My Dad fitted an RCD consumer unit as its in the garage and there will be a lot of water floating about in there. HOwever, issue a) RCD doesn't work with florescent lighting, so it keeps tripping! The sockets also trip....so there is an issue with one of them - my Dad is on the case!

4)) Now to dig down to fit the drain....about an hours job.....but wait, some smart #14### decided to put concrete everywhere!!! No less than 4 inches of the dam stuff either! Thankfully its a beautiful day today (19 degrees would you believe!) so i was smashing through that today.


So needless to say, nothing much looks like its done....but there has been a lot of blood sweat and tears.....well, no tears, but the other two stand

 

[Xraymark]

Your not work shy

 

[dgwebster]

I use a plug in RCD to my tropical setup after one of my cats pissed on the extension sockets, setting fire to stuff while my doh was the only one in with the kids it works no problems with an old style starter unit.

Digital starters will reduce the problem you see with the rcd tripping (about £5 each from Wickes) but more importantly, you are probably seeing the problem as its loading higher than the rating for the rcd/ring. you should really aim for only loading a ring to about half its maximum I.e. if 10A try not to raise more than 5A continuously. Add a second ring with another rcd, and switch to digital starters, you may get the result you are looking for.

 

[Rorie]

I use a plug in RCD to my tropical setup after one of my cats pissed on the extension sockets, setting fire to stuff while my doh was the only one in with the kids it works no problems with an old style starter unit.

Digital starters will reduce the problem you see with the rcd tripping (about £5 each from Wickes) but more importantly, you are probably seeing the problem as its loading higher than the rating for the rcd/ring. you should really aim for only loading a ring to about half its maximum I.e. if 10A try not to raise more than 5A continuously. Add a second ring with another rcd, and switch to digital starters, you may get the result you are looking for.

Thanks for the info

The ring main is new - i just wired it. It trips with even just one light wired up tp it, so no problem with utilisation. However, we checked with one of my aquarium lights which has its own ballast.....and it worked! The ones in the garage are old..... so some research needs to be done into why old ones are tripping and aquarium ones are now. Which is the opposite of what you suggested..... just adding to the confusion haha