Fish Room

[Ged]

I am thinking of plumbing my 2 foot tanks (6) into the sump that filters the 3 foot tanks (10). Initially I was going to run the 2footers on corner/sponge filters and use them as grow out tanks for fry. The idea is to plumb them into the sump to ensure the same water parameters as the breeding tanks and then turn them off the sump line as they become occupied. Is there any other advantages or disadvantage to this idea?

Gerard

[Chuckmeister]

Hey Ged Sounds like a good idea to me. The main problem I see with plumbing everything together is you run the risk of losing everything if you have a major catastrophe. Always quaranteen new arrivals and you'll have to keep an eye out on things like stress,temp etc that can cause white spot etc. If your careful and good with maintanence I dont see a problem though if it were me I'd plumb them into their own sump.

Chuck

[Josh]

Also that would be one very big sump IMO to run all them the tanks. I would run the two foot tanks on air driven filters. That way you would atleast have 6 quantine/fry tanks. Getting the same water parameters wouldnt be that hard if water changes were done by aging water in large drums.

[anchar]

Hi Ged,

I agree with the above two posts. Mine are all air driven and I use corners sponges as filters. This way there is no chance of contaminating the whole population if disaster strikes. If you run them all through a sump I would advise adding a UV steriliser as a precaution. It is very hard to reverse the effects of disease once it has entered the system and affected all tanks . Air driven is a comparatively cheaper option than mechanical filtration too

merjo

[canerod]

i gotta agree with everyone else. When i bought my tanks second hand they were already drilled for plumbing. I chose to prevent spreading problems through the system and glued them up and went for air driven sponge and corner filters.

Bob

[Luke]

Another vote for simple air driven filters

[Matthew]

G'day Ged

I suppose the key component about this situation is disease

If you use excellent quarantine procedures and keep the water in good condition, use a UV steriliser and have a bit of luck then the central sump works well.

For me I am setting up a fish room that is powered by air only (well mostly). I have researched and spoken to many others that have far more experience than I. They strongly suggest that each tank stand alone, that way when you get a disease outbreak it is limited. Their knowledge is usually directly learnt, as most of them have had multiple tanks and suffered as a result.

Another option is to possibly split the central sump idea over just a few tanks. Eg, one sump per every three or four tanks, this will lesten any disease outbreaks to only those tanks on the sump.

Do what you are comfortable with. I recently lost some of my treasured brachybranchus, for no apparent reason (maybe it was temperature???) but if it was disease I could have lost my entire room.

Losing one tank of fish is bad. I cannot imagine losing a whole room of fish.

HTH

[Ged]

Thanks everyone for the advice. In my original plans I did not consider the implications of disease control in plumbing it all together. I think a slight adjustment to my plans are in order.

Gerard

[davez104]

I don't think that spreading disease would be much of a problem. From what I can gather the fish that are going in the two footers will come from the three footers,(which are all plumbed together anyway) and then they will be isolated and filtered internally. If the fish are going to contract any sort of disease, it will have allready happened in the breeding tanks. I think there is a lot of merit in this idea.

[BaZ]

I'm currently setting up 12 2ft tanks here, and chose a sump and plumbing over individual filters.

My reasons:

I hate doing water changes. This way I just empty the sump and re-fill, and the whole system has had a 25% water change. Otherwise I'd be doing a change from each tank.

I hate cleaning filters. I will only have 1 filter to clean.

I hate running lots of heaters. This way I will only have 2 or 3 in the sump instead of 12 in the tanks.

I'll have to be careful of disease, but the time and cost savings long term made me choose this method.

[nannat]

i was wondering on the relevence of quarantine for fry grow up as well.im with you baz.also the total capacity of a combined system has gotta be as positive with temperature stability.id run air filters [withsubstrate media type] and tap off a tank if i needed it for quarantine.maybe just cycle a few air substrate filters in the tanks to use when needed.

[rosco]

hi ged,

I have a combo I have 11 (9 2x18x18 and 2 fry tanks ,going to increase to 6) with air driven filters and 5 on a sump system (2 6x2x18 and 3 2x18x18). I originally wanted to put another 3 2x18x18's on the system to less my water change load, because like baz I hate water changes but I once complete I will be the envelope with the sump and my current space restriction does not really allow me the room to get a bigger sump anyhow.

The advantage of having both is if you want to set up another air driven tank all you have to do is make another hole in the air conduit you have chosen (for me it is 19mm black poly pipe) and run an airline with a valve down to the tank plug in a new or cycled air filter and you have a new tank ready to go in less than 5 minutes, you cannot ask for better than that.

For my system each tank will have a 25 mm inline tap on them so I can isolate the tank anyhow so if I want to remove a tank off the system for what ever reason I can as long as you have risers or a weir or the drain hole at the top of the tank the water can only drain to that level. So if you have an air driven system as well you add air filtration in 5 minutes as mentioned above. That is the way that i have done it it may not be the right way but I have gone after quizzing everyone I could mainly off this forum

HTH

Rosco

BTW I intend to add a UV sterilser as well.