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We have been working on our new fish room for the past several months and thought we would share a little of the build with everyone. I'll update this thread as we go along and include individual tanks and the other walls as well. Rack System: 1-5/8" Pre-Galvanized Unistrut, 1/2" Hardware and 1/2" Plywood for the aquariums to sit on. Air: Central air system that loops through out each row of aquariums and throughout the room. Filtration: HMF Lighting: Fluval 3.0 Top Row Aquariums: (10) 10G & (1) 20L . Middle Row: (5) 20H & (2) 40B. Bottom Row: (2) 120G & (1) 60 Cube. Electrical: Each row is protected by (1) GFCI, has multiple quad outlets above the aquariums and is in PVC conduit & bell boxes. Substrate: Black Diamond Blasting Sand except for the snail breeding aquariums, they have crushed coral. All bottoms and sides of the aquariums are painted black. All aquariums but the dedicated snail breeding aquariums have plants. Several years ago when our kids started moving out we had begun a different fish room. We had it going for about a year and Michelle's mom moved in with us so out it went but the below photos are what it looked like. It was no where near the size of what we are building now. A couple of more kids moved out and fast forward to last year and we started out with a rack and a hand full of 10G aquariums. Well that didn't last long and we went full on into building a fish room. Below is the bottom row rack portion being built for the aquariums to sit on. We had planned on doing 30XH but we couldn't get them so we opted for 60G cubed in the middle of the 120G. Here is my wife painting the 1/2" plywood that all of the aquariums sit on. The following photos are of the progress made (when I remembered to take photos.) Our grandson had to make sure that Pawpaw's measurements were correct :). Here we are putting in the air valves, we installed (2) valves for each 10G & 20H. The 20L and 40B got (4) valves each. We are planning on a fry system on this short wall above the return vent. We are planning to run double air pumps and we have each wall & air pump to where a valve can shut off the air flow so that we can keep air going while working on different sections / pumps. We are finally installing aquariums! We had the bottom row aquariums delivered today and a 180G for the center piece on the other wall. If you have any questions please ask and we will do our best to answer them and we will keep updating this thread as we go.

Let's kick off my fish room journal with an entry/update on my Blue Gularis breeding project for the Coop. What I enjoy most about operating a fish room focused on breeding is that there will be people in the store that see my fish, get excited, and want to take them home. Call it silly, but it's just something that really drives me, knowing that someone is going to enjoy my fish and bring them happiness. So, that being said, I asked @Cory what fish I should work with to make available in our retail store. His response was the Blue Gularis. I have kept Gardneri in the past and had great success breeding them, but the Blue Gularis is known to be more difficult. Well, I am up for the challenge. I started off by sourcing 30 eggs from Aquabid for the Blue Gularis "Loe" variety. The eggs arrived with instructions to sit on them for 7-8 weeks from the date of collection, which was about 1 week prior if I recall collectly. True to my self, I let my impatience win out and tried to hatch 10 eggs about 3 weeks in. Let's just say you should follow the seller's advice. 😆 From that botched attempt I wanted the remaining 4 weeks to hatch the rest. After putting the eggs in a shallow tupperware it took about 48 hours for the first fry to hatch. I think I got maybe 2 more natural hatches. I then used the vial pressurization method to force hatch the remaining eggs - picked this up from Gary Lange. The remaining eggs went in a vial with a little bit of water. Put the vial in the bottom of a 40 gallon breeder and loosened the lid to allow water pressure to enter the vial. From that, I had one more egg hatch. With several more eggs unhatched I decided to try the other method Gary talked about and that is to leave thee vial in your pocket and simply walk around. Sure enough this did the trick and all remaining eggs hatched. I raised the fry on BBS (via Ziss Brine Shrimp Hatcher) for the next several months. Currently the Blue Gularis are spread across several tanks in the fish room with only one tank having multiple occupants, 1 male and 3 females. I will probably spread these out too. The attached image is a shot from today (7/22/2020) of one of my males. Even if I don't have success breeding on my own I feel accomplished getting them to this point. Their looks certainly are worth it alone.

I didn't see anything against putting this one in here in the guidelines but if it is I do apologize; Its pretty much a COOP fishroom all the plants and planters, easy green, dry foods and the towel on the TV as an easter egg. I figured I would share my link with the fish family it was a really fun time up here on the mountain and you can see what my current set ups are. I had no idea anyone would want to visit my room and was humbled to be asked. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to best collect the floating African Butterfly Fish eggs once we get to breeding sizes in the colony? I have recently found a few articles that the Hairy puffers cave spawn and exhibit parental care normally so am less concerned about getting from egg to free swimming with them. v/r Matt

I stumbled on this fella while searching for ideas on building a fish “gallery” ... holy cow this is incredible! Like an underground laboratory. The plumbing and cable management is a work of art, and applicable to fresh water.

Hey everyone, this might sound like a rookie question, but is it OK to use a little bit of galvanized pipe in my fishroom? I'm building my manifold for my mixing valve, carbon block, and auto-water change lines. I'm using a little bit galvanized nipples before the pvc. I know Galvanized rusts over time, but I think my sediment filter and 2 carbon blocks should help with that right? A lot of people's homes are fully plumbed using galvanized, so I think I'm good, but like I said.. I'm still kinda new at this.. Thanks!

Can someone point me in the direction of how to diffuse the flow to not cause issues with a piston pump that functions with higher output then currently needed? Cory and group say the pump on coop is good for about 45 air lines. currently have about 10 and just going to do a loop and move forward, instead of changing later. thanks.