designing tank for museum

[chefjamesscott]

so for the temp diff the solution I have come up with is to set up a 100g in the fish room which is solely going to have water running in it with a heater and a filter and I will take it to the gar tank and mix the pipe water with the heated water should be able to equalize the temp. Makes for a longer water change but what the heck.

Here is a couple of other shots of a museum attraction they have that is totally cool.
Animatronics Trex, push a button and it goes into movement

 

[chefjamesscott]

well according to the latest email from the designer, there is a very good chance that I will be able to restock this tank with a complete fresh breath of air.

I have lined up 2 black congo knifefish, 3 bichir, 2 nigercats, 2 dwarf snakeheads and a needlenose gar. I will rehome the spotted gar in my 300g here at the restaurant, if that is the direction it heads. I hope it does because it would be so good to be able to start this tank off fresh with tankmates not big enough to eat each other as I am very sure the gar that is presently in there would have no problem gulping down new tankmates.

will update tomorrow night as to yea or nay

 

[fishman646]

sweet job they are the worst fish keepers ever!!!!!!!!!!!1

 

[chefjamesscott]

sweet job they are the worst fish keepers ever!!!!!!!!!!!1

actually there is a killer story behind the museums tank

I will save the detail of last nights 3 hour cleaning stint, but suffice it to say I felt I was an archeologist with cleaning up the one tank that had been allowed to evaporate completely leaving skeletons et al.

On the turtle tank I felt as if I were doing a csi lololol

One very cool thing is that the museum gave me the go ahead on my agressive plan to totally clean up the fish room and gave me permission to remove 100% of what I had stacked to the side and suggested needed to go.

Now here is the killer story. In my looking about before I tore the place apart, I got the sensing that the person I was replacing was not the person who started the whole thing, because in one closet I found stacks of fish magazines and monthly's dating from mid 1940's to early 1990's.

when I asked them about the magazines they told me I could have the whole lot to me what a blessing, I will post pics of them in days to come.

It seems that the first fish keeper of the museum is also the person who did the display descriptives you see in the photos. He was a killer killer killer naturalist who did a fantastic job. It seems he passed away very suddenly and the state of affairs went on a downslide ever since.

It is my firm hope and belief that I can restore this set up to its former glory.

I wanted to share a quote that totally summs up my heart for fish keeping, I got it from someone elses sig and my copy got water splashed to I hope I got the name of the author right.

"FISH KEEPING ISN'T A HOBBY, IT'S A WAY OF LIFE! 2 DIFFERENT TYPES OF LIFE FORM UNITE, TO HAVE ONE INCREDIBLE EXPLOSION OF CREATIVITY AND LOVE. BECAUSE ONE CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT THE OTHER!"
-Edwin G. Auhar

 

[Silk]

Awesome!! I'm having a lot of fun following your experence, your detail is greatly appreciated, looking forward to your next post and pics!!!

 

[chefjamesscott]

ok so tonight was my final clean up in the fish room, tomorrow the janitors will be coming in to totally clean and wax the floor, so that it is a room becoming of being a museum fish keepers room. I am also going to see if they will go for a fresh coat of paint along the wall from 5 feet down just to freshen up the room.

ok so the plan is this after they do the floors and after I give it a good shot of paint, I will bring back in the two steel racks and set up 2 75g tanks one will be feeders and the other will be heated water to be used for waterchanges, the 20g tank on the counter will stay as well. Gone is the nasty turtle tank, and I told them the 100g was way to much for a feeder tank, so we worked out a deal and I was able to clear out all the extra tanks. As of tonight the room looks like this

when I shut down the feeder tank just to see what the senegal bichir would do with a goldfish feeder tankmate I put 2 of them in the 20g, and almost immediate came on the predator mode. I have been watching this tank ever since I first secured the contract due to an interesting tankmate that was with the bichir. I have no idea what it is, but, I rehomed it to my buffalo head tank here so that it would not suffer a feeder fish fate. Any help iding the fish would be great

I thought I would take you all on a photo tour of some of the exhibits that the tank shares the area with so here are a couple of pics

I just wanted to show yall the high caliber of the displays that this tank is surrounded by. It is my high mission to make sure this tank is equally as good as the fake life around it lol

I also wanted to show you one of the magazines, and ask if anyone would be interested in a color copy of cover? I had this idea come to me that a high quality copy suitable for framing of some of these magazines would make a killer treat for a fish keeper. Imagine this one given to a betta keeper

and I found this add so dang funny from inside it

"If you did not get your shipment PROMPTLY blame hitler and not us- we now have 3 employees and could use 3 more"ahahahahhahahahhahahahh

well yall have a great nite and please let me know what ya think about the copy idea

 

[chefjamesscott]

ok so got permission to restock the tank, so I thought I would show pics of the stocking I intend to put in

2 niger cats but im thinking they might get to big so I might sub them with 2 striped raphael cats

needlenose gar

2 spotless clown knive

2 dwarf rainbow snakehead and 2 ornate bichir

2 senegal bichir along with the 1 at the museum grow out

just another pic of the ornate that I thought was cool

 

[EllieGreene]

Absolutely awesome fish. You need a sign above the tank..

Caution: Ancient Monsters

-ellie

 

[Will Hayward]

Chef, you ask for input, so I will give it. It seems like the Museum is of creatures that exist or existed at some point in time, in or near Saskatchewan. I know it may seem like a cool opportunity to keep a tank of your favouite fish and show it off to all the museum goers, but why not continue with the theme and use fish native to the Canadian Prairies?

 

[chefjamesscott]

Chef, you ask for input, so I will give it. It seems like the Museum is of creatures that exist or existed at some point in time, in or near Saskatchewan. I know it may seem like a cool opportunity to keep a tank of your favouite fish and show it off to all the museum goers, but why not continue with the theme and use fish native to the Canadian Prairies?

A very true idea and thanks so much for the input

There are two issues I have come across with trying to get creatures that existed. I have tried and tried to get certain archaic fish and have run into one major blockade govt restrictions on shipping or even possessing certain fish(to which I am in process of attempting to obtain certain paperwork permits). There are also many regulations prohibiting the traffic in indiginous species. On this note a great many of the suppliers I have talked to either don't get involved with said species due to lack of money to be made as a result of all the hoops or worse yet shipping to saskatchewan from many places they just laugh off due to our being the armpit of the fish world.

As I look about at the legislations about this there is one angle that I will be able to leverage to assist with the end result of this tank, this being that it is for the royal sask museum which will enable certain allowances.
Even more is the nature of my contract, since in effect I am now an agent of the queen of england working to emblish and enrich her institution called THE ROYAL SASKATCHEWAN MUSEUM, there is a very interesting bit of punch to what I am about to do. Yet, it will take me about 6 months to get it to materialize.

One thing about this tank.

It is most certainly not a tank that I am doing to house and show off my personal favourites, because, if it was not one of those fish would be in there. If it was a tank meant to house my personal favourites I would have ask them to renovate so I could drop my 420 in there and then we would be cooking.

Rather this tank is about doing what the museum wants. A updated publicly appealing tank that follows the fossil record of saskatchewan, yet since roadblocks are apparent the secondary objective comes to the fore.
Make it a tank with fish that fall in the category of ancient fish. To this end I sourced out some bichir and some channa, and I had a couple of oddballs in my personal collection that I added.

When the time comes that I get all the ducks in a row they will fall with an interesting bang.