advice needed for fish house.

[intrepidmax]

Hi everyone.
Im needing some advice on the most economical and best filtration for a fish house.

I will be running 18x 3ft tanks (per house as im looking to having 2)

I was originally thinking of having every tank running on an eheim external.....but Im now thinking a large piston pump on a ring with some bubble filters....like the huey ones.

Im not sure what to do.....I could easily run a centralised filtration system...but I know exactly how easy a disease spreads. and this wouldn't give me the water changes I want.

so please give me some input.......

 

[intrepidmax]

all tanks will contain on-growing or breeding pairs of hypans. nothing else.

 

[st24rsap]

personally concidering how hard and expensive hypans, especially breeding groups are to obtain and will probably stay that way for many years i would not even think about running tanks on a central system. yes it may not be cheap running an external per tank but thats the way i would go running eheim 2213's or similar on each tank

 

[thegeeman]

Rack it and stack it with low power Eheims:clap:

I have 10 tanks running at the moment all will externals which totals less than 200watts. Led main lighting 32 watts, Air pump enough for 20 tanks 25 watts so hardly any power at all. If the misses whinges then tell her that her hairdryer uses 2000 watts and she will quickly crawl back into the kitchen:lol:

Insulation is where i spent my money though max. Make sure you over do it


Cheers

thegeenius

 

[intrepidmax]

sorted Geeman thats exactly the advice Im looking for.

eheims it is then.

Insullation is a big priority......im going to have to lose a few inches for it...but it will be worth it. I will be insullating under the floor too this time....i found alot of cold came from the ground in my last fish house.

thanks guys... I really appreciate the advice.

 

[intrepidmax]

Been looking into eheim 2213 and its an 8 watt.....thats mega low.....so im having these....im gonna buy them all up from ebay in the next few months.

 

[Paul_fox]

noooo google hamburg style filter!!!

this is ripped off (borrowed) corydorasworld and all you need is an air pump and some foam!!

An addition to my sponge filters I have also started to use a type of filter that has been used by German aquarists for many years. The system was first devise by aquarists in Hamburg and has bee know as the "Hamburg filter" ever since,. The German aquarists themselves refer to it as the "Maten filter" because that is exactly what it is. A medium grade open cell inert sponge of around 40 to 45 mm thick, is cut to fit snugly across the end or back of the tank, this is cut so that it is high enough to be above the water level when the tank is full of water. A hole id cut in the centre of the sponge at water level, this is to accommodate the top of a air driven uplift.

 

[bikerman6660]

I am setting up an identical fish house for mainly hypans. Where a lot of flow is needed I,ve used eheim classic externals. I have an air ring main set up with a 500ltr huey hung filter in each tank (ive deliberately gone for overkill most tanks are around 120ltrs) and also used eheim aquaball filters in addition to the sponge filters. I,ve also set up a water feed to each tank from a central storage tank to make water changes easy
Hope this helps

 

[intrepidmax]

Bikerman. If we put our heads together we could come up with the ultimate hypan house. Join the hypancistrus appreciation society (under communtiy in the tool bar) and have a look at the thread on my fish house.

P.S. do you have any pics??

 

[intrepidmax]

Ha Ha paul....I built almost the exact same filter when I was 15.....never seen it being done before until I looked it up (30 secs ago). I have seen others simular but the water falls into these and the whole surface area isn't used.

I also tried koi filter mat under an under gravel but it didnt work too well, where the most pull from the water (closest to the uplift) got clogged quickly.

also I made a curved filter out the koi mat but I found it clogged on only one side.

Oh and I found them a nightmare to clean and couldn't get the whole mat in my bucket for cleaning.

please don't get me wrong....It is a fantastic idea but it can be hard work.
I used glass strips to hold the mat in place (because it kept falling over) but found I needed more flow and tried 2 or 3 uplifts.....the powerhead only dragged the water from a small area.

the best filter I ever built was a manky old coke bottle covered in holes and the top cut and inverted. a tube attached to the bottle neck where a air stone was inserted and the bottle was filled with pea gravel. this filter really worked well. by the time I stopped using these filters I had plants growing from them. lol.