[Rack Filtration]

On 4/7/2023 at 7:24 PM, Tihshho said:

Hope this was some food for thought 🙂

Again, excellent info/write up! It's funny you mention engineering. While I'm not a mechanical/electrical eng, I am a data engineer/IT nerd by day, very DIY friendly and very Type-A (I'm a big time planner), so I've been working on and considering your suggestions from the beginning of this project (power, water/sewer, etc). I lucked out and got an already pre-built 6 zone manifold (which I was planning on building) from a LFS that was going out of business, including an Alita AL-80, which is why air driven filtration is so appealing in this situation. All the tanks are drilled. I have a hot and cold line in the unfinished section of the basement that I'll sweat two new coppers tees on and run the pex to the manifold. 

Currently I only have one 60g setup (which will be the 120G sump when this is all finished), but with the LFS going out of business I got killer deals on tanks. 1 120G, 3 40G Breeders, 1 50G Low boy, and 8 20g Highs. 

Doing the math, my basement office is fully insulated and is typically the most consistent temp room in the house. It would be cheaper to run individual heaters than using a 1500W room heater to keep temps. 

I don't need all 6 zones, so I'm planning on just using three for now. 1 for the 120, 1 for the rack of 20s, and 1 for the 40 breeders. 

After reading through your notes and looking at my variations, my goal is to have a few showcase tanks (the 120, 40 breeders and 50 low boy) and then the 20s for grow out/breeding tanks (bare bottom with lots of floating plants). This would also drop my cost significantly on scaping every tank as well.

The issue that had me stalled for a bit was drainage. I don't have an easily fed gravity drain anywhere close to my basement office, so the plan is to have a sink sump pump at the lowest point with the tanks to be plumbed into the existing PVC shower drain that I'll put a Y pipe on for drainage.

For safety/failsafes, I'm planning on doing small drip irrigation water changes of 2-4 gallons for the smaller tanks every few days so the water volume wouldn't be too much to overwhelm the sink utility pump if I felt like running all the zones at once for an extended period of time. For the 120 I'm planning on doing 10-20 gallons every 3 days, and having a secondary pump (not tied into the return) that will have a float valve to eject any water past a certain point in the sump into the sink utility sump.

The changes won't be automatic on a timer, but rather the push of a button from my phone for each individual zone for when I'm home so I can monitor the changes (I work from home in the same room). I'm also exploring some automation around water sensors that if they were triggered the manifolds would close to stop new water from coming in on all the tanks and would shut off the return pump as an additional precaution. 

If you've got 40 gallon breeder/20G High rack designs (I'd prefer to build than buy) I'd love to see the measurements and cutlists!

 

[Rack Filtration]

On 5/2/2022 at 10:01 AM, Tihshho said:

Neat concept, but you're reinventing the wheel with this. Putting tanks on a solo filtration system limit what you can keep as well as introduce risk of crosscontamination of diseases and pathogens if something happens in a single tank. Not only that, the plumbing setup for this will be complicated and you'll need to set it up so that you're not going to overflow any specific tank, this is why sump systems are used for applications like this. 

If you're OK with keeping species that use similar water and not deviating from that then a one stop filter could be done. Ideally, you'd just have a sump which the outlets feed from the sump to the tanks and everything overflows into a sump. You just need to balance the flow as to not overflow anything, and ideally have a secondary overflow incase something gets clogged. Be prepared to find babies in the sump depending on your overflow design. One thing I would greatly recommend is to add a UV filter or a few to handle the return water back to the tanks to prevent pathogens & other nasties from getting into the stocked tanks.

As someone who likes complicated things, engineering, and using tech I have to say keeping rack setups simple has been my goto method for years. My first fishroom everything was run off of a hybrid of air or powered filters. When I redid it in the same space I went with a plumbed auto water change system years ago to which I had a sump that was used for collective drainage and then a feed setup that was tapped to a custom manifold where water temps were set with a shower valve, a set of solenoids to each row, a primary one for on/off and another for purge water to get temps up, and then the feeds went into the tank. This was neat, easy at the time to trigger with a DIY controller I made to my home network, but at the end of the day it didn't pay off. If I were to go with larger scale system (such as pushing 50 or more tanks) then I would consider it again. Anything less for me I found easier to deal with manually. Plus, it meant that I was less reliant on the system which meant spending time with the tanks meant I knew more about what was going on in them. 

Since then, my new fishroom in a new home has back peddled design wise and is based off a central air system where all filtration is handled by sponges. This allows me to bulk order stuff when setting up a new set of racks and everything is plug and play. I don't need to make a run to my local hardware store or keep the copious amounts of spare niche parts to keep the system running. Also, it means that I can pull tanks, play fish rack tetris (of moving tanks or racks around) without killing a primary system for the rest of the room. I also don't have to figure out plumbing behind the tank or contort myself to get fittings loose or attached. Being able to unplug a heater, turn off an air valve or two per tank and drain a tank to just slide it to move, sanitze or replace has been awesome. 

 

This is a great write up. I’m currently designing a AWC system with 2 40 breeders, and 8 20 highs. I’ve been debating on individual heating/filtration elements or running 1 sump per stack (1 for 40s, 1 for 20s). My biggest drawback is I have 0 interest in running heaters in each, and I’m hesitant to fill each with sponge filters since I was planning on scaping the tanks. 

My options I’m considering:

* get a whole room heater (oil filled) to keep the room 74-76F, use sponges in the 8 20s, and do HOB that I already have for the 2 40s. 

* get heaters for each individual tank and use sponges/HOBs 

My biggest concern with individual heaters is the pure amount of wattage I’d be pushing vs doing a single 1500W whole room heater. 

 

[Overlooked fish?]

On 4/5/2023 at 4:36 PM, SugarBassJoe said:

Would absolutely love a Bluegill, but I'm not sure on the legality of keeping one where I'm at, I know your not allowed to catch one and take it home, but I'm unsure if your able to purchase one for that purpose, or if you could even find one for sale (if anyone knows the rules about this in California, let me know), not sure if orange spots would fall in that category. 

Underrated? Rainbow Shiners, holy cow those are amazing.

As someone that's working on a NAN tank plan for my newly acquired 120. Best bet is to message/contact your local DEC/Environmental folks. I live in NYS and was able to get a reply with actual answers within a few days. Pumpkinseeds/bluegills are definitely something I'm considering as they're legal to keep in NYS. Rainbow shiners look incredible, but I can't seem to find them anywhere.