Fish room buildout

[BadgerCichlid]

Inspiration

It’s all about this guy. For me, it always has been. The nicest LFS growing up in Milwaukee was Aquatics Unlimited, and they had a gigantic tank (years ago, now gone) with multiple arowana, oscars, etc. Ever since that pairing has been my dream tank.

I’ve tried growing out arowanas a few times and have not had success. Wrong tank mates too soon, too much flow stressing them out, etc. Finally, decided to get a dedicated 6’ just to grow this black aro out. Like any good fish-keeper, if I was going to do one 125g tank, why not fill up the whole space and do 4. That would allow me to consolidate some other tanks, buy some new fish, let’s go for it.

I’ve got it all built now, but still a ways to go to final stocking. Started this process running 9 tanks. Right now, I’m at 13 at just under 1,200g. After finishing my consolidation I’ll be at 10 for ~1,000g. Plan is to use this thread to talk about the journey. Over the years, I’ve really enjoyed following many of the threads others have posted on here and used them for inspiration. In that same spirit, I’ll try to write these up and post steps to the process every day or so until I catch up to where I’m at now.

 

[BadgerCichlid]

The room, the tanks, and the stockings

I have a 15’x9’ water room in my basement. It leads to another back storage room. Its conversion to a fish room started with a 225g aquarium in the nearby finished part of my basement. Of course, over time the water room becomes a spot for a 20g for quarantine, then a 55g too, then the 75g when I upgraded my office from it to a 135g. It was always a bit random and the tanks weren’t ones I was necessarily proud of, but they were the easiest to take care of because they were in close proximity to each other, there’s a drain in the floor, and a sink in the corner. I also have an 80g in an upstairs bedroom that was just a pain to clean and had run its course. That plus the desire for a proper Aro grow-out tank is what had this all come together.

Tanks before

• 225g – CA/Oddballs; As part of this process I’m also resetting this tank, maybe I’ll write a post on this one when I get to it.
• 135g – Peacock all male
• 80g – EBA/Angels/Tetras (closing this one)
• 75g (fishroom) – Mbuna (closing this one, maybe)
• 70g (fr) – Oscar & peacocks – reset tank for those getting beat up elsewhere. Strange tankmates for now, not ideal.
• 55g (fr) – Ngara harem (closing this one)
• 20g (fr) – Growout/quarantine (closing this one)
• 20g (fr) – Juvi female Trimac (closing this one, maybe)
• 5g – Pea puffer

Tanks after

• 225g – Festa/Trimac/Ornate Bichir/Atabapo Pike/SD/Black aro (once ready and until too large), we’ll see how they all play together.
• 135g – Peacock all male.
• 125g (fr) – SA #1; Aro grow-out + Green phatom; eventually Oscar home.
• 125g (fr) – SA #2; EBA/43xOrange Von Rio Tetra/8xRoselines (ik, not SA but they match the look and vibe)/L46/L134/L471/Long-fin red bushynose
• 125g (fr) – Afr #1; Ngara harem
• 125g (fr) – Afr #2; Mbuna + Syn. Petricola
• 75g – Maybe going away, maybe flowerhorn.
• 70g (fr) – Peacock all male #2
• 20g – Maybe going away. Maybe apisto’s after I move the trimac.
• 5g – Pea puffer

Writing this out, I’m realizing I may have a bit of an addiction I'll have more tomorrow on the design for the room and racks.

I don't have a ton of great pictures of the room below, but putting the few I have to show the evolution of the room:


Upgraded from just the little tanks to a 55g and 20g underneath. The 55g has been our "blue" tank. Rocks blue, decor blue, EBA. Was fun for a bit, but I really prefer closer to appropriate biotope. This being the backroom the kids were more involved in picking the decor. Below pic I was using it as a quarantine before I introduced a few peacocks into one of my main tanks. Later, I added a 20g tall, 70g, and another 75g, so the room was full.



Finally, a picture of the room with all but one tank moved out:

 

[jjohnwm]

Before: a bunch of tanks and only one single small quarantine/hospital tank? Bad idea.

After: a bunch of tanks and no quarantine set-up at all?? Monumentally bad idea!

Whatever else you do, you should have at least a couple of those tanks you are closing down ready to set up for quarantine purposes. Have a couple of sponge filters set up and mature in one or more of your bigger tanks, and be able to just fill up an empty tank and drop in one of those mature sponges every time you buy new fish. If you buy a lot of fish often, you need even more. If you see sad, sickly, emaciated, near-death fish in stores and just absolutely need to bring them home to "rescue" them...and we know you do!...then this critical plan becomes even more so.

 

[Sassafras]

I see empty, available wall space. Unacceptable!

I do totally agree with jjohnwm on the quarantine tank. It took me 30 years to set one up, but now I'd never be without at least one.

 

[BadgerCichlid]

Don't worry, pictures of full walls will be up once I get to writing next couple posts .

Thanks both for thoughts. On quarantine tank, I was going to say I don't normally have unplanned purchases, but I was at J4 Flowerhorn tonight picking up the petricola + L46 and they just happened to be unboxing a shipment from Sunshine Cichlids in Thailand, so I got the pick of the litter and grabbed the two guys pictured below - so I guess I'm out of credibility saying no random pick-ups, haha. They are both quarantining in my "blue" 55g I've kept running for now in my back room. As a side note, unreal color, never seen one that's almost highlighter orange. Almost looks like a glo fish in the picture, but he's not, and that's not my style. They promised no juice, we'll see. They also had some amazing albino gars if anyone is looking.

In all seriousness though, I'm going to keep the 20g, just will eventually have it be dry unless needed. I've found that size to be sufficient for most incoming QT (and all spontaneous purchases as I pre-plan for bigger guys). I have the 70g as my "cool off/get right tank". I've just found that of the fish I have, the ones that most often end up in it are sub-dominant aulonacara males, which is why I listed it that way. I also have plenty of sponges and seeded media, so I am able to set up a larger tank if ever needed. Heck, I'm setting up 4 big ones right now.

 

[BadgerCichlid]

Design

My goal was to completely fill up the room and make it seem like a mini-public aquarium. I never really liked the “Blue” tank (please don’t judge me too hard there), and I wanted tanks that felt more biotope accurate that I could be proud of. This all led me to goal of having two racks directly across from each other with my existing 70g staying where it was against the far end. Stocking wise this also lined up well with what I wanted to do: two SA tanks, two African tanks. Few challenges I worked around: 1) Given constraints on doorways, I needed to do final assembly in the room; 2) For my desired aesthetic, I wanted to do canister filters under the rack.

This meant wood over metal and the tanks would be high. I like the tanks being high, but I wanted to be confident in them, and I didn’t want too wide, so I went with 4x4’s for the posts. I watched every youtube I could find of other folks doing similar, but ultimately it was ChatGPT conversations that helped me the most. I’ve found it to be an awesome tool as a thought partner on design and stocking lists.

One of the biggest choices I made was 2x6’s for the decks. I wish I could have done 2x4’s to save the vertical space, and the conservative in me felt like I should have done 2x8’s. Ultimately, I decided to sister the 2x6’s for a balance between the two. I did 1.5” notches in the 4x4’s, and it’s worked out so far with minimal sag. The other hard choice was how to distribute the vertical space. It is very tight vertically, which has made maintenance and set-up harder, but worth it to have the full wall feel I wanted. If I would have changed anything, maybe I would have cut a half inch out of the filter area so I’d have more space between the top tank and ceiling, but overall I’m happy with it. Put a picture of an FX4 under the bottom deck to show how tight it is.

 

[BadgerCichlid]

Build phase

Started with moving the existing tanks to the back storage room. Then, I painted the floors. I used a Rust-Oleum one part epoxy paint and primer, and I’ve been disappointed in it. If I could go back and change one thing this would be it, and I’d do a proper two-part floor epoxy. Then, I moved the sink location, which allowed the racks to directly face each other, and I was able to upgrade a bit to match the nice aesthetic I was going for.

Other than that the build was fairly straight forward. Took me two half days alongside my dad. Really pushed to get as much of this done over the holiday when my day job was lighter. It was my first time doing notches, wasn’t too bad, just need to be very precise on measurements. All the weight must be on the posts, but it made me feel better to also go with high quality structural screws as well to connect posts to decks, so I did that (pictured below).

One other change I had was I originally stained one of the racks, and it just did not look good. Maybe that’s because I’m bad at staining, or just using stock lumber, but I quickly pivoted to black paint. Final finishing touch that really upped the quality was I bought some acoustic slat panels and cut them down to size to cover up the section where the canister filters are. I’ll show those when I get to my next post and show some pictures of everything built.

Original sink:



New sink; worked out perfectly that it fit below the stack on the top and stack on the bottom. Couldn't have gotten any better even if it was custom built. You can also see how much of the floor has already been ripped up from me standing at the sink with wet feet. Poor adherence, maybe should have done an extra layer of primer, but the rust-oleum wasn't marketed that way.



My dad doing some cuts and my daughter carving out the notches. It was about 20F at the time, so it was cold but not horrible to build in. Cold has impacted my ability to use outside hose to rinse sand and bleach rocks from landscape supply, so I'm a bit behind where I would prefer to be on my mbuna tank scape.



One of the racks where you can see the notches up closer, and a view of the other rack that I stained. Stain looks ok in the photo, but didn't look great up close, so I painted it. Finally, pic of the screws I used.

 

[BadgerCichlid]

Assembly

Everything is assembled now! Very happy with how it came together. No sag on the top deck, which was my main concern during planning. I love having the long tanks side by side. So much fun to sit on a bench in the middle and watch fish on both sides. Finished it off with some acoustic paneling on the bottom that hides all the mechanicals. Painted the backgrounds on the African side deep blue and the SA side black to differentiate a bit. Finally, some tanks that are more biotope correct that I am proud of - though my wife says she misses the "blue" tank and the ship wreck scenes.

Waiting on weather to warm up above freezing so I can prep the rocks for the Mbuna tank, and then that'll cause a bit of a domino effect on moving around fish and allow me to reset the 70g in the back (going to white sand, cleaned up stone, used for bulking up aulonocara for now before they go into my show 135g), a 75g where the mbuna currently are, and then eventually my 225g.




Awesome to see him patrol the full 6' run. The full harem has settled in nicely. Pictures don't do him justice when he's lit up.



Few other pictures from the assembly process:

So many lights. Doing the multiple tanks at once, I just had so much equipment arriving each day. Lots of fun. That 20g in the background is one I'm thinking of doing a planted Apisto tank in once I move the juvi Trimac into the 75g before the 225g.



Egg crate in my Mbuna tank to prep for the rocks. Wish I would have done egg crate in every tank, so I would not have had to use so much sand. My least favorite task in the hobby is rinsing sand, especially the Aragonite sand. No matter how much you rinse that stuff, it always seems to cloud up the tank for first few days.