Phirefase

Update on the spawn. 170 eggs counted in soft water, 48 fry counted. 140 eggs counted in hard water, 55 fry counted. Now to put an asterisk in this, I put the soft water ones in a specimen container for a day and had a bunch of eggs fungus over. Now I put the hard water ones directly from the spawning tank into the Deans Fry System I have. Since this was successful enough by just dumping them into the fry system, that is how I will raise them from now on.

Moved my Snow White Bristlenose Pleco to a fry tank to wait for the little ones to hatch. This is the 5th time they have spawned and hopefully the third time I will get the fry to raise up. Still amazes me how comically large the female gets when she's full of eggs and how small she is when they are all laid.

I would say your luck with the more commonly available apistos will be better with your hard water. Cacatouides, agassizii, panduro, mcmasteri etc. will do fine in hard water as long as it is kept clean. When I was cranking out cacauoides, I would breed them in RO water and grow them out in hard water for ease of water changes since I have hard water out of the tap.

I have 2 of the rubbermaid stock tanks and they come with a bulkhead in the bottom (if you get it, buy a spanner to tighten them, they leak if you don't). One of my saltwater buddies has 2 roto-mold containers (75 gal each I think) that also has spots for bulkheads. I'd recommend looking at saltwater forums for tank storage since they seem to do more of it than freshwater folks. For getting the garden hose outlet upstairs, my first thought is to run some pex tube from the basement to under a vanity in the upstairs, throw on a quick connect fitting for garden hoses and have a hose that you run from the vanity to your tanks. I would also run a wire with the pex to turn the pump in the basement on and off too. Granted this is all without knowing much about your house.

+1 for this. They also make a dolly for the brute trash cans if you want to be able to wheel the whole thing around.

I'll preface this with my experience. I have been in the hobby since Sept 2020, I have had 2 proper fish rooms, and moved the fish tanks 4 times(life has been hectic) My current setup is a manual water change system with 60+ tanks, in around 300 sq ft. and it has been running for just over 2 years now. Below is a mix of my opinions and advice I have received from fellow hobbyists (shoutout to Minnesota Aquarium Society and its members). First thing to ask yourself is what is the goal of the fish room. Are you looking to just show off cool fish, do aquascaping, breed for fun (or "profit") etc. This will guide you in making your decisions further along. I would recommend writing all your thoughts down to keep track of them. The goal of the fishroom may change as time passes too, and thats ok. The hobby is for you and you have to figure out what you like to do with your aquariums. Now to the fun stuff. Planning. Take your time and research other peoples fish rooms. Look on here, google around, and check youtube for fishroom tours. For my current fish room it took about 6 months from moving in to having a 90% plan of how I was going to set up the fish room. If you can, go tour other peoples fish rooms and ask why they did things and what they would change. No need to reinvent the wheel. For the not so fun stuff, you have to consider your 4 walls constraining your fish room. "Your time, money, size of the room, and the sanity of your spouse" - Randy Carey. Fish rooms are always more expensive than you think, I have spent around 10k on just the equipment for my room. 10'x8' is the physical space limitation. Feeding 60 tanks takes me about 30 mins. 1. Stands - I'm looking at industrial racks, probably Galdiator, Husky, Kobalt, etc. Any of those will work. I have the 6' and 4' husky racks with 2' and 4' wire NSF shelves. on the 6' shelves, you can fit 6ea 10s edgewise and a 5, or 7 10s depending on the cross bracing location. you can also do 2 40s on a 6'. 4' racks will fit a 60B with the edges sticking out or 4ea 10s. I did not care about leveling the racks when I put them in. Might be worth getting some shims if your floor is super uneven. 2. Tanks - mostly 20 highs and 10s but I might bring some 40s with. Tanks will be positioned short side out to fit more. Final count around 40-60 tanks. Speaking from experience, changing water with that many tanks takes a lot of time. Feeding too. I have them each running individually so problems don't compound. 3. Lids - Probably polycarbonate +/- a hinge. I used the greenhouse panel, put a cheap handle from menards on it and drilled a 2" hole for feeding. I'm too lazy to open and close hinges 4. Water - EXTREMELY hard. Auto water change? Continue with manual water changes? First plan the drainage, then the filling - Dean. I have 2 pythons that I use simultaneously when I do a whole room water change that go into a toilet. Auto water changes add complexity to the fish room and increases the chances of water getting on the floor, but it saves a bunch of time. 5. Lighting - I currently run cheaper aquarium lights, one light over 3-4 tanks. I've been trying the Co-Op light and will probably replace the cheap lights as they die. I run cheap nicrew lights, but have made it so I can run 24 on one plug. I split them off one adjustable power supply and use DIN splitters to run wires to it. 6. Heating - I have been heating the current room and had partially settled on an oil radiator heater for the new room. If a do a central sump system, I could in theory heat the room less and put heaters into the sump. I get free heat in my current apartment, but don't underestimate the heat that gets put out of a dehumidifier. I can vary the temp in the summer mostly by the dehumidifier. 7. Drilling - I have never drilled tanks before but after many videos, we're pretty confident that we can accomplish it if needed. Please see next point on +/- for drilling. I have drilled a 75 and it wasn't that difficult. The only thing I would recommend is ear protection because it causes the entire tank to become a speaker. I have also heard that 5gal and smaller tanks are finicky to drill due to the thinner glass. 8. Filtration - A part of me is tempted to just continue with the sponge filters and just keep up with everything manually, it just takes so much time though. The other part of me is seriously tempted to create central sumps, say one for each rack. I do quarantine but having multiple tanks on one system would be new for me in my own fishroom. What makes sense with this many tanks? Matten filters and auto water changes for non-breeding tanks. I like to control the parameters of any tank that is used for breeding, but when I have to change water twice a week on a 10gal with 100 ancistrus fry in it I question my sanity. 9. Opinions - Manual water change vs auto water change vs central sump? What would you change? What would you add? What did you wish you knew when setting up a fishroom? My next fish room will have auto water change to individually filtered tanks, with the option of RO or hard water at each tank. Plan for around 30" of space for anywhere you plan to walk. You will thank yourself later. Buy a nice step stool. Put in more shutoff valves than you think you need for your auto water change. Cold water dissolves more gas than hot water. This is a problem when the gas comes out of solution inside a fish. Age the water in a storage tank if you live somewhere where it gets cold. For the size of your fish room, a simple air loop will work, but if you have larger ones, gridding the system gets you better air pressure. For every tank, have 2 air outlets. Have a backup power supply for your air pump. Do not have a garbage can in there that you only take out once in a while. I still have these annoying little flies. Heat the room. All this makes me realize I should just do a fish room build thread....

In my experience, these guys are really good at hiding when they are breeding. I would guess the male has holed up in your decoration somewhere. I actually have a pair of these in a display tank on my desk and the male dug his own cave under a rock and hangs out there most of the time. I barely noticed the cave and I am still surprised he can fit in there.

Since I have found Cherry Barbs (Rohanella titteya formerly Puntius titteya) easy to breed in large numbers and pretty enough to offload easily, I want to do an experiment regarding when is the optimal time to move the eggs/fry from soft to hard water. I spawned them yesterday and gathered the eggs. I then split them into two groups, where group 1 is put in hard water before they hatch and group 2 is kept in soft water until they hatch. I will probably run this multiple times with cherry barbs as well as other species I have, but I am also curious if anyone has observed any difference in hatch rates with other egg scattering fish?

I have had males fight but I haven't found any lasting damage on the fish. I threw some susswassertang in a tank a fry a couple days ago and haven't seen any go missing. The only plant I have heard plecos eat is sword plants.

I've bred lots of bristlenose plecos and it's a fairly hands off breeding project. I keep anywhere from a pair to 6 adults in a 20 long and throw in ceramic water spikes so there is one more "cave" than the number of adults. I will also put tiles (3" x 12" ones) over the caves to create more space for them to hang out. The things that I have found to increase the chances of a spawn is to give them meaty foods for the females to make the eggs, lots of water changes(50% 1-2 times/week), and patience(they take about a year and some to go from fry to breeding size). I have used Hikary Vibra Bites but switched to Purina Aquamax 300 because they don't seem to care and supplement green beans to mix things up every 3-4 days. The only thing that I have noticed that's different with my snow white plecos that is different is that their eggs are less resilient than other bristlenose varieties. Out of the 4 spawns that they have laid, only two have been successful, where every other variety of bristlenose I have done has had close to 100% success spawn to fry stage. The only thing I will caution is that they can spawn every month with 50-200 eggs per spawn(from my experience: Lemon blue eyed ~ 50 eggs/spawn, Super red & Snow white ~ 100eggs/spawn and albino & common color ~ 200 eggs/spawn) and have overrun my fish room when I was breeding them full tilt. Feeding the fry once you get them is easy, as they eat the same foods as the parents. Vibra Bites, and Aquamax 300 with some green beans mixed in works for me. The only change I make for the fry is that they don't like the skin of the green beans as much so I will split them before I put them in. Also they are the most hassle of fry that I keep because they eat so much I will change 50% water twice a week, though part of that may be because I keep ~100 fry in a 10 gallon tank... TLDR Caves+Food+Water Changes+Time=Bristlenose Fry

@Theplatymaster yeah the shelves are listed as 48” wide but the tanks are 48.5” wide

I should clarify, the weight I’m not worried about, it’s the physical fitting of the tank on the shelf that I am curious about. The shelves that I’m looking at are rated for 1000lbs per shelf

I am trying to figure out if the 60 Breeder tank from Aqueon/Petco will fit on a 4 foot rack from a big box hardware store and my google-fu is failing me. Wanted to see if anyone has done this before or if I will be stuck making a custom rack. Thanks

Thanks for the thorough response. I should have clarified, the patterning on the dorsal fin is what I as looking at culling for. I have also noticed the variable growth rates in the fish. Since you seem to know what you’re doing, is there a certain density of A. caca that will cause aggression to be spread out similar to overstocking African cichlid tanks? I ask because I have another spawn of 130 three month old fry that are in a twenty long and want to know when I start selling them off, at what point should I start watching more carefully. Also what is your preferred ratio of males to females when trying to pair them off?

Hello, I have some apistogramma cacatuoides that I have that I plan on picking my next breeders from. Currently they are 6 months of age and the females are starting to stake out turf. I am wondering if anyone has any rules of thumb for when to start culling fish, as there are a few with very little patterning on them. Thanks