Tanks and Equipment
My fish room is in my golf cart garage and built using 2 x 4's and cinder blocks. Because of its size, 18 x 9 tank space is limited to only 48 five and half gallon tanks and about 60+ Tens and one 20 long. I use the smaller five's for breeders and fry. Fry are fed heavy with frequent water changes and providing I have a newly set up 10 are moved to a totally new ten gallon tank. All my five's have one small rectangular box filter and my tens two have larger box filters each. All my tanks are all glass construction with the outside bottoms painted black and the rear outside glass painted blue. This is my personal preference from many years of fish keeping. I have observed that when tropical fish are housed in bare bottom tanks that have clear or non painted bottoms, the fish begin to swim with a “nose down” condition that can induce stress and or make the fish skittish. I use 5 1/2 gallon tanks for most of my breeders and fry rearing for the first 4-6 weeks. Most litters are raised entirely in 10 gallon tanks from birth and litters are rarely mixed for lack of tank space. I will establish sell tanks by placing males and females of the same strain but not siblings to insure shipping pre-hit females. At about one month to 6 weeks I may separate 4 to 8 females for my breeding program and place them into a small mesh holding container within the same tank as their siblings. These mesh containers were once sold by Lustar as a “picture window” box. I have been using this means of isolating females to keep virgin for many years. I use inside box filters in all tanks with a combination of crushed coral and natural gravel in place of charcoal and polyester cotton. Crushed coral or natural dolomite act as a water buffer that helps maintain pH and stabilizes water hardness. In tanks that have only one filter I replace the filter by visual observing the density or how dark the polyester is. In tanks where I use two filters I change one on alternating dates usually two to three weeks apart. I have tried using sponge filters in the past but prefer the simple box type filter. I suggest using whatever works best for your particular situation. If you are planning a fish room that will house over 50 tanks I suggest purchasing an air pump that is rated to supply enough air for all your tanks, brine shrimp hatchers and water storage tanks plus a little extra. One pump of decent air output is more economical then using several small pumps. A small set up of less than 20 tanks may not require air piping or special valves. A well thought out fish room makes the time you will spend maintaining your guppies more pleasurable. In my new fish room I purchased a Linear Piston Air Pump that draws about 75 watts of electricity and supplies enough air to run over 150 filters, my eight brine shrimp hatchers and several large box filters in two 75 gallon tanks of aging water. Compared to a 1/8th HP Regenerative Blower the cost is but a fraction in dollars to run each month. The cost for either pump is about the same. Both pumps require running at least 1 inch PVC piping with inline air valves that should be piped in a grid like fashion to allow the pump to be more efficient.
