Girlfriend and I moved from the Midwest to the East Coast about a year ago. Bichir-girl wanted to buy a house so we could just move in. So, while I worked and held down the fort in the Midwest, she and her mother found a house. We wanted to do a fish room in the new house, so having an appropriate basement or other room to devote to fish was a must in the search. Now, I should note that my role in the fish-relationship is to make the fish tanks work and everything look nice. That means the Bichir-Girl doesn't think out everything it takes to make a fish room work. So, she came back home with the perfect house picked out, she and her mother loved it, but couldn't tell me anything about the plumbing, drainage, or electric in the basement 
Come-on... lets figure out the important stuff ladies!! 
So, jump ahead to last summer... time to move across half the country over two days, with fish, setup a fish room on the second day of the move, and just hope there's an electrical outlet to plug in to. Fish and house-plants in the back of the truck, tanks in a u-haul towed by the truck, dogs in the front with me.... off we go to meet up with Bichir-Girl in NJ! Lost power on the battery operated pumps overnight in a torrential downpour woke up on the start of the second day with a bunch of dead/hypoxic fish. Overall, lost about 1/3 of what we tried to transport
.
Upon arriving in New Jersey at our new place I found a chest-high drain, a washing machine hook-up and one power outlet in the new fish room. No time for good solutions... we need solutions in a hurry. A quick trip to Home Depot and here's what I came up with.
Split the cold-water from the washing machine and ran it across the basement ceiling and into the fish room with a potable water hose
Put two new trashcans under the stairs to mix water with. White hose is cold supply. Green on left if hose to the drain. I mounted a transfer pump on the wall (on the right) here and used it to pull mixed-water out of the trashcans and push it out to the tanks. A quick switch-around of the hoses and could pull water out of the fish tanks with the pump and send that water to the drain. I had initially intended to use a big submersible pump to send water to the garden, but my pump shorted out and I was stuck with what home-depot had in a pinch.
For the drain, I had to cut down the stand-pipe, and put in a wider extension to fit the drain hose from the fish room as well as the existing drain hoses from the HVAC and washing machine.
We got through the night with a couple tanks setup and some fish still in the coolers. The next day I built a stand and setup a few more tanks so that everyone was out of the coolers. We were still in a bad spot though... if you look carefully at the picture, you'll see some VERY odd tank mates. Ever kept a 13" bichir, 7" feather-fin cat, 5" severum, 5" Mbuna, and a bonded pair of festivum in a 45 gallon tank? How about 20 mixed-juvenile African cichlids with angelfish and tetras in a 56?
I sealed up the wall around about 1/2 of the fish room with dry-lock and hydraulic cement. This was actually a lot of work, but it did come out really nice. I then built another stand and got two of our larger tanks up and running. We then started budgeting/saving to get some proper electrical and plumbing figured out. Five tanks from 30 gallons up to 90 gallons running off of one outlet at this point... not good
Fall brought with it budget-draining surprises. Bichir Girl has still not forgiven them for messing up one of her gardens
. In all seriousness though, they did do a bunch of damage to our driveway which continues to drain the fish-room budget
In the meantime, I found a fella with a storage locker full of fish tanks in DE, so I drove down and filled up the truck with as much as I could carry. Ended up with 5 full setups plus a 110 gallon rr tank for cheap. I then proceeded to flip those tanks over the course of the fall and into the winter in order to fund the fish room.
I went to Ohio on business in January. I was passing through an area where I knew a bunch of LFS's were, so I used the flip-profits on a box of fish to surprise Bichir Girl with. She had no idea what I was up to, so it was a big surprise for her.
Found another fella suffering from MTS and looking to get clean... so I cleaned him out. Plan isn't to flip these... gonna use them!
Finally, in March we got the electric and plumbing figured out. We ended up delaying a little bit to save up and do some other electric and plumbing elsewhere in the house at the same time... cheaper that way in the long run. At any rate, the plumbing is somewhat unique. We installed a utility basin next to the water-mixing trashcans. The sink drains into a commercial sump pump. It has a head height of like 45' with a 2" pipe... it's BEEFY. Running full bore with hot and cold water on and water coming in from water changes causes the pump to kick on about three times per minute and it runs for about three seconds every time it kicks on.
I'm healing up from surgery right now, but once I'm more mobile the next step is to finish sealing up the walls, build another custom stand, and start getting all the tanks we've been hoarding into place.... we've got way more gallons dry than wet right now
Come-on... lets figure out the important stuff ladies!! 
So, jump ahead to last summer... time to move across half the country over two days, with fish, setup a fish room on the second day of the move, and just hope there's an electrical outlet to plug in to. Fish and house-plants in the back of the truck, tanks in a u-haul towed by the truck, dogs in the front with me.... off we go to meet up with Bichir-Girl in NJ! Lost power on the battery operated pumps overnight in a torrential downpour woke up on the start of the second day with a bunch of dead/hypoxic fish. Overall, lost about 1/3 of what we tried to transport
. Upon arriving in New Jersey at our new place I found a chest-high drain, a washing machine hook-up and one power outlet in the new fish room. No time for good solutions... we need solutions in a hurry. A quick trip to Home Depot and here's what I came up with.
Split the cold-water from the washing machine and ran it across the basement ceiling and into the fish room with a potable water hose
Put two new trashcans under the stairs to mix water with. White hose is cold supply. Green on left if hose to the drain. I mounted a transfer pump on the wall (on the right) here and used it to pull mixed-water out of the trashcans and push it out to the tanks. A quick switch-around of the hoses and could pull water out of the fish tanks with the pump and send that water to the drain. I had initially intended to use a big submersible pump to send water to the garden, but my pump shorted out and I was stuck with what home-depot had in a pinch.
For the drain, I had to cut down the stand-pipe, and put in a wider extension to fit the drain hose from the fish room as well as the existing drain hoses from the HVAC and washing machine.
We got through the night with a couple tanks setup and some fish still in the coolers. The next day I built a stand and setup a few more tanks so that everyone was out of the coolers. We were still in a bad spot though... if you look carefully at the picture, you'll see some VERY odd tank mates. Ever kept a 13" bichir, 7" feather-fin cat, 5" severum, 5" Mbuna, and a bonded pair of festivum in a 45 gallon tank? How about 20 mixed-juvenile African cichlids with angelfish and tetras in a 56?
I sealed up the wall around about 1/2 of the fish room with dry-lock and hydraulic cement. This was actually a lot of work, but it did come out really nice. I then built another stand and got two of our larger tanks up and running. We then started budgeting/saving to get some proper electrical and plumbing figured out. Five tanks from 30 gallons up to 90 gallons running off of one outlet at this point... not good
Fall brought with it budget-draining surprises. Bichir Girl has still not forgiven them for messing up one of her gardens
. In all seriousness though, they did do a bunch of damage to our driveway which continues to drain the fish-room budget 
In the meantime, I found a fella with a storage locker full of fish tanks in DE, so I drove down and filled up the truck with as much as I could carry. Ended up with 5 full setups plus a 110 gallon rr tank for cheap. I then proceeded to flip those tanks over the course of the fall and into the winter in order to fund the fish room.
I went to Ohio on business in January. I was passing through an area where I knew a bunch of LFS's were, so I used the flip-profits on a box of fish to surprise Bichir Girl with. She had no idea what I was up to, so it was a big surprise for her.
Found another fella suffering from MTS and looking to get clean... so I cleaned him out. Plan isn't to flip these... gonna use them!
Finally, in March we got the electric and plumbing figured out. We ended up delaying a little bit to save up and do some other electric and plumbing elsewhere in the house at the same time... cheaper that way in the long run. At any rate, the plumbing is somewhat unique. We installed a utility basin next to the water-mixing trashcans. The sink drains into a commercial sump pump. It has a head height of like 45' with a 2" pipe... it's BEEFY. Running full bore with hot and cold water on and water coming in from water changes causes the pump to kick on about three times per minute and it runs for about three seconds every time it kicks on.
I'm healing up from surgery right now, but once I'm more mobile the next step is to finish sealing up the walls, build another custom stand, and start getting all the tanks we've been hoarding into place.... we've got way more gallons dry than wet right now
