Styrafoam keepers. will it work?

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mudskipper

Feeder Fish
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Feb 16, 2006
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Happy holidays everybody. our family were digging out boxes of christmas stuff to decorate the house for the holidays. I found 2 thick styrafoam boxes that were originaly used for mailing stake.

It got me to thinking. foam boxes like that retain water well, and they are dirt cheap. maybe i could use them for smaller things like betas, and baby turtles, and livebearer breaders and such. they might contaminate the water, but i can put some kind of protective cover to sheild the water from the foam. they are insulated, and keep there temp well, but i could not use a heater, so a heating lamp could work well. i could get/ make in-tank filters or sponge filters, or if its extra hardy just use an airstone, and swap out the water every week.

i could even get creative and buy a styrafoam block, and carve the landscape myself for things such as tiny toads, baby turtles, and maybe some dwarf/indian mudskippers. cave a staircase, attach some slate, and make it look great. make some space for air tubing, get crafty with some tubes, Pumps, and filter bits a build a cheap miniwaterfall into the styrafoam
What are ur thoughs of my cheap minitanks? things i should/should'nt do? I am just looking for some cash savers.
 
I've been wondering the same thing. I think you can get things that hold up to like 30g, so you could breed or keep a considerable amount of things if this works. Hydro sponges+Styrofoam Box+Fish+Water = Fun?
 
styro won't leach anything into the water. Go for it. If you're concerned about the heater burning the styrofoam you could get or make a guard for it, or even put tiles on the bottom of the box and bury the heater in the substrate.
 
I tried to transport a fish in a styrofoam box once. It was probably a 10 to 15 gallon box and the walls were over 2 inches thick. I filled it up about 3/4 full and it immediately started to seep through the styrofoam . If you do get it to hold water, remember, it only takes one bump to crack it and you will have a helluva mess to clean up. Not sure I would trust styrofoam to hold that much pressure for a long time.
 
frnchjeep;1294638; said:
I tried to transport a fish in a styrofoam box once. It was probably a 10 to 15 gallon box and the walls were over 2 inches thick. I filled it up about 3/4 full and it immediately started to seep through the styrofoam . If you do get it to hold water, remember, it only takes one bump to crack it and you will have a helluva mess to clean up. Not sure I would trust styrofoam to hold that much pressure for a long time.
Click to expand...

I will probably only go for a couple gallons, and reinforce the walls as a precation
 
Use a HOB filter and put one of the short 50 or 100 watt heaters in the media chamber along with the pad. AC50's work well for that.

Most LFS's... (not the big chains by the way they claim there is a deposit on the boxes and that they HAVE TO ship them back...BS...that would double the shipping cost for the fish all to save a $2.50 container.) ...have so many styro shipping boxes laying around on shipping days that they toss them away. Ask when they get thier shipments and show up.

It might even be possible to cut a few plexi glass windows or even use the pannels from a cracked 10 gallon tanks or so and silicone them into a slot cut in the styro. Might look a little Ghetto...like a home window AC unit hanging out of the back of a PU truck window but who can argue with $6.00 20 and 40 gallon breeders.

In fact... if you go with air driven sponge filters like Hydro 3's or 4's and inexpencive air pumps you could set up an 8 tank breeding operation for less than $150.00.
 
so are saying stich the heater inside the filter? i thought of this, but thought it might melt cheap plastic. whisper in-tank fiters would be my best friend right now, if they didn't get clogged every single week
 
No the water flow will keep the element cool enough to use in a wisper. you can reinforce the outside walls of the containers with duct tape and even line them for next to nothing with any variaty of thin rubber and some vynal materials.
 
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