I've been mulling over my fish keeping recently and think I want a rack. It started by seeing a random facebook marketplace advert for a rack all the kit and 6x 2 foot tanks and I thought 'huh that would be cool... but what would I keep in all those small tanks with my hard water' so I started thinking about it and I got a pretty cool list... I'd need to swap some of the 2 foot tanks for a bigger one, this rack would allow a 70cm x 60cm foot print tank and height up to about 40 maybe 50cm height so some ok volumes there. I got to about 4 species/groups I'd want to do (one of those might get sorted in an other tank) which are a Lake Inle biotope, Shell Dwellers, Livebearers and a Red Congo Puffer, leaving 1-2 tanks for raising fry from the live bearers and cichlids, possibly the Inle fish if I got them to breed.
The cichlids and live bearers could provide an income source for the hobby which is always appreciated, not sure which live bearers I'd want to do maybe a rarer natural strain or try and get hold of some really nice line bred species?
Now the rack I saw is too big to get in my car but a few cm which is annoying but its made a bit of an itch as it feels like something that I can achieve for not loads of money. So thats where I need some help, does anyone know of a simple racking system I could use for the tanks to go on? Preferably with metal shelves as a lot of the ones I've seen have MDF shelves that feel like they would fail at a bit of water. I want to achieve about 6 tanks and I want a stand that could accommodate a 90cm tank.
And does anyone here know where to get quite cheap, basic tanks - possibly optiwhite and rimless but lets see on cost.
Any advice on setting something like this up would be greatly appreciated
Wills