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New fish room/breeder!!! NEW VIDEO 11-11-13!!!!!

113K views 574 replies 143 participants last post by  Clear Water 
#1 · (Edited)
In the process of building my own fish room something i always wanted to do. I am setting up 20- 75gallon, 30- 29gallon, and 20- 10 gallon. I am going to breed angels, discus, rams, and guppies mainly. I plan on doing some oscars but i have heard they take a little time. The water by me is from a well and has ph of 6.5 so its perfect for South American ciclids. Im getting building spray foamed next weekend and then i will start racks and order tanks.

LIGHTING... All tanks will get cfl bulbs..some 1, some 2.
HEATING.... All tanks will get a heater determined by size of tank.
WATER CHANGES.... I am going to put 1" bulk heads in all tanks and run a water inlet f9r each tank. That way all i have to is turn water on and let it go out. I am going to use a 50 gallon water heater and put a valve on the hot and cold outlet of tank. Then i am going t9 put a temp probe and adjust valves till water mixture is 78 degrees. From thereit will go to water lines throughout the room.
FILTRATION.... setting up central air using linear pump and using sponge filters.

Heres a couple pics of my work so far... any suggestions or concerns will be helpful.









 
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#510 ·
Hey guys its been awhile but your not gunna believe y I have been gone. I couldnt remember my password to login. Well as u can see I figured it out. Fish are doing find. For some reason I am losing a few adult African fish. Don't know why. One day their eating fine then the next their swimming funny and then die. What is boggling me is the fact that not all the fish in the tank are affected. So I cant see it being ph issues. I do regular water changes like atleast once a week so I doubt ammonia. Any ideas?
 
#515 ·
This was worth the hour of reading. And for what it cost you, I think I'll do a shrimp *WALL* someday with a price point of $5000 in mind for my first house.

Kudos and thanks for sharing the amazing journey.
 
#517 ·
Just went through and read a lot of this thread... Definitely an amazing setup!! Have you started selling fish yet? Got local fish stores interested in buying up your "stock"?

Once my 40b is set up and running, and stable of course, I want to add GBRs, do you think you'll be breeding those?

Thanks
-Scott
 
#520 ·
Since you've been so up front with us on money before, please do tell us how much your returns are on your first sale.

I hope within a year you recoup what you paid for the building.
 
#525 ·
As of now I'm only using half of my tanks.
As far as breeding the africans, their all the same. Female gets full of eggs and then deposits them on sand. As she picks them up and puts them in her mouth the male sprays sperm to fertilize. I can tell she is ready to be moved to her own tank when she has a pouch under her neck and she doesnt eat when I feed other fish in tank. Once I move her it will take roughly 14 days for eggs to hatch. After about 25 days the female will begin to let the babies out of her mouth and she will begin eating again. About another week later the babies are too much of a handfull for her to keep in her mouth. By this point the babies are completly independant. I wait another couple of days for the mom to strengthen back up and then put her in tank with me and start all over.

The midas were very simple. They did it all on their own.

Angel fish are a little more complicated. Much to much to type lol.

Not sure what u mean by efficiency numbers.
 
#526 ·
i'm totally interested in the business end of this... specifically, what's the break even point? How many fish do you need to sell before you cover the investment plus the operating expenses? And... what's the expected useful life of the equipment before it needs to be replaced, including costs to maintain the building? I know, this is boring stuff to most, but for me it's pretty fascinating.
 
#529 ·
I agree with you the business aspect of this fish room would be highly interesting to know more about, but I know it will take you a while to figure it all out.

Anyways, I've read through this thread a few times and have never posted, but wanted to say what you are doing is pretty amazing! Best of luck to you, and I look forward to reading your future posts!!
 
#527 ·
I'm guessing that he won't know all of that till he really starts getting sales of fish going. Will depend heavily on how fast he is able to turn fish around, and at what price point. Not all fish go for the same $$ of course, and overhead on each type will be different based on equipment needs, length of time he has to spend feeding them, maintaining their tank, etc... It will all play in, and logistically it's probably something that will be trial and error at first, cause I don't know that fish will be an easy business model to create.
 
#528 ·
I couldnt have said it better myself. As of now it is costing me $130 a month in electricity. Everything else is paid for. I am invested a lil over $20k. So as far as knowing how long till its paid for itself, I have no idea. I didnt expect the first year or so to go extremely well since I knew I needed to get breeding pairs of fish and work out any kinks.

As far as maintaining the building, its all metal outside and bare walls with spray foam. Only maintenance I do is sweep and mop floors almost every week.

As far as equipment goes I anticipated tank heaters being the first to go out. Right now I only have one of two alita 80 air pumps running and from what I heard they run a long time. I do use the mini split ac to control room temp so tank heaters hardly have to run.
 
#530 ·
Interesting. Thanks for answering the questions.

130 a month will be hard to overcome!

Dwarf cichlids are also very popular and yield good returns.

So do many livebearers. Guppy breeding, Endlers as well as least killifish.

They all sell equally to hobbyists here and pet stores.

If you ever master Cory/Otto breeding, you're golden.
 
#533 ·
I may have missed the answer to this question but what is the purpose of the black and the red handled valves located behind each aquarium?





I know that you are adding water to the tanks for water change purposes but I wonder why there are 2 valves for each tank rather than only one.
 
#539 ·
Np. Another question for you guys. I have an angel that's not eating like the others and looking a lil thin. I believe it to be an internal parisite and it seems that angels are prone to this. I have moved him to his own tank and raised temp to 90 degrees in order to speed up metabolism. I also put him on a food containg garlic. Is there any medicine that can be used?
 
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