Rogue Aquarium Fish Room Tour

[RogueAquarium]

Spent most of today making updates to my office/fish room and wanted to share it with people who might appreciate. 

lets start with the completely new rack (or rather, cleaned off of junk and repurposed.) Every tank on this rack is new! I was aiming for a Yin/Yang thing with the layout of the top display shelves, where as the bottom are pure utility tanks for my guppy breeding program, and a hospital tank I keep empty till needed. (I keep several extra cycled sponge filters around, just in case)



The 5 gal has a pour spout for easy water changes (thank Dean!) and the 3 gal plastic containers are light enough I can pick them up for water changes.  

Now to the top tanks individually. The two smaller 2.5 gal are for neo's (I love and breed them. A local shop is opening and asked me to breed a steady supply of my Blue Diamonds for him, so I got the 2.5's to separate particularly high quality shrimp for closer monitored breeding, and I REALLY like the look of them together like this) (Please pardon the NTS in the white tank, just got done planting so there are a lot of fine sand particles still floating around.)



Then on the top right we have our new 10g Pea Puffer tank! Some of you may remember the saga of my ailing pea puffer that brought me here in the first place! We got them re-homed to a new 10g (only planned on 1 originally, long story you can find in the "disease" section. Was my first post)

We also added what we HOPE is a 2nd female today, but only time will tell because this one is TINY. IF it turns out to be a boy he can take the 5 gal on my desk and we will re-shuffle around tanks and look to adopt another female.


Finally we have my "Mutt" guppy tank. I have 2 guppy breeding programs up and running, and this is where the COOL looking mutant male from both projects go. I may be trying to make my own line soon with the green guppies from this tank. Like a "Santa-Clause" but green and maybe with black swirls.

TBH though, I have another empty 10 waiting in the wings, I think I may it with black sand, move the Mutt tank to my wife's desk in the living room, and use that space to breed pygmy Cory. We will see what my wife wants to do with that 10 though. (The one fake plant is because I can't currently afford real plants to fill that space, and I still wanted to give the little guys cover... I hate them and will be getting probably something like pogo ASAP.)


So, that's it for the new rack. Now for my desk! Here I have the 5.5 Rimless that was my first, a rinky dink tiny .75 gal thing that they advertised as a "beta habitat" which I have repurposed as a GREAT black worm farm, as well as a good snail gut loading chamber. The worms and snails don't bother each other, and I feed them both spirulina, which is GREAT for fish, but but most fish wont eat it. Also happens to be great for the worms and snails as well. Lastly I have a little 1.5 gal I got for free (also probably meant to be a beta torture device) that I use for a tiny shrimp breeding project (Some of my blue diamonds throw off PAINTED FIRE RED offspring. The under shell is still SUPER dark blue, but the over shell has patches of "painted" fire red... I want to see what comes of breeding them together for a few gen.)  Everything has a sponge filter, even the worm farm. The 1.5 gal also has some kind of xs mechanical filter I've never seen before, so extra filt for those shrimp I guess?

Close up on my 5.5, currently my most recent grow out set of baby gupps. 



Lastly, the 2nd to bottom shelf of the shelf my computer tower, fish room fridge, and little storage cabinmate I use for fish supplies goes. Also what I now know is called "deck pond" but I called  "micro pond" when I was thinking up the idea while standing in the gardening section at Costco.. 



Each tank individually, this is my MAIN neo breeding tank. It also has some Pygmy Cory who are just chillin here till I get the new 10 setup and shuffle the guppy's out to the main room, and a loan female rainbow fish who is waiting for her new friends to come in the mail.... (seriously un-named online fish retailer... I ordered Tuesday of last week, and you cant blame the weather I have been checking every day and picked "next day" shipping at checkout and payed more than the fish to get it.............) who will go to my 5.5 as a species only tank once they get here. The baby guppies are just there because I wanted to watch them instead of an empty tank)



Next over to the right is the main guppy breeding colony. I'm trying for "Santa Claus" and I'm getting closer every gen. 

I also use this to collect my cull shrimp before I send them off. Need to bag some up soon, getting to be WAY too many of them now. 

This next ten is just kind of an "over flow" tank at the moment. I have maybe the worlds friendliest betta in there who GENUINELY seems to like to hang out with other fish. Found this out by accident when I had to float a bag in his tank for a bit while dealing with other stuff and he didn't flare at them at all,  I sometime swims with the guppy's we have in there (male breeding stock for my next gen in the pond, ill explain when we get there)
oh, also this is kind of the main bladder snail farm of the puffers now as well. Jet (the Betta) does occasionally eat a small one, but I dont begrudge him a few and I think they are good for him. He used to live alone in the 5.5, he seems to have more energy and be happier in the 10 with other fish, the main guppy colony next door in visual range. He flairs at the males in the OTHER tank occasionally, so I may have to consider moving HIM back to the 5.5 and putting the rainbow fish alone in the 10. Time will tell.



And last my "deck pond", which I am using for my main Koi Guppy breeding program. I may have said this before, but I don't like what are generally called "Koi Guppy" because, to me, they don't look anything like the koi I like. I like the Calico spotted ones the best, So, I am 3 Generations deep in this project, and ALREADY I have orange spots on white bodies!!! Next I will try for black and spots as well, then to stabilize the colors and the spots and let the patterns to WILD!!! 

I'm breeding them to be viewed from above like koi, so this format works out best I think. Not sure why, but we seem to be hung up at gen 3. I haven't lost any fish, and everything SEEMs fine, but I haven't got any new babies in about 2 months now.




Well, i guess that's it now... My office has been transformed into a REAL fish room and I'm tickled pink about it. It's been slowly been gaining this "Ghetto Gallery" feel about it, and it's one hell of a place to drink coffee in the morning or work on my "mindfulness meditation"

Thanks for joining me on this little photo tour. Ill probably try to update it from time to time like a photo journal I suppose. Would love to hear what anybody else thinks or has to say about it.

[Taco Playz]

Those tanks look absolutely amazing!

[Colu]

Nice tanks

[RogueAquarium]

Thanks guys!

[Patrick_G]

It looks like you’re having tons of fun. How about some pics of the spotted koi guppies? 

[RogueAquarium]

On 7/13/2021 at 2:36 PM, Patrick_G said:

It looks like you’re having tons of fun. How about some pics of the spotted koi guppies? 

You got it! Here ya go!

[Patrick_G]

 looking good!  I love the goal of making them look more like koi like when viewed from above. 

[RogueAquarium]

Had so much fun doing this post I decided to do a video tour as well. here ya go!
 

 

[Patrick_G]

I can tell how much fun you and Bjorne are having! Great vid 😀

[RogueAquarium]

Video of the Pseudomugil schooling around their tank about an hour after I got them acclimated with some chill music.
 

 

Edited July 17, 2021 by RogueAquarium

[Patrick_G]

Beautiful! Which variety are they? 

[Griznatch]

Nice setup an tanks, thanks for sharing! 

I like the idea of breeding for viewing from above. I have some male tuxedos that look fantastic from above. Never really noticed it until I put them in a lower tank. I have some out on the back porch in a tub, so far they are doing good in spite of about 3 weeks of high 90s to 100+ temps. I have them in the shade and it does drop down to the 70s at night. It's a testament to how resilient guppies are.

[RogueAquarium]

On 7/17/2021 at 3:13 PM, Patrick_G said:

Beautiful! Which variety are they? 

Pretty sure I've got all Luminatus, but I am not sure though. First pair I got was labeled as "Paski's red" but the male passed, and I ordered a school of others to replace him. Doing research nearly everywhere I read said that "Paski's red" and "Neon Red" are all Luminatus, so that's what I ordered. (Wasn't even able to find anybody selling Paski's red by that name, so makes sense)

HOWEVER, as you can see from the video, the on female I still have left from that pair is MUCH darker than the others that came in. IDK if that's just that I feed a lot of red foods, or if maybe they are a different species. Also the old male had white "pom-poms" on his fins, but the new boys have Orange.

[Guppy Guy]

What kind of shelf is that? I am trying to find one that can hold a few 2.5/5/10/20 gallon tanks. Would build one, but wood prices are ridiculously expensive nowadays.

[RogueAquarium]

On 7/19/2021 at 9:21 AM, Guppy Guy said:

What kind of shelf is that? I am trying to find one that can hold a few 2.5/5/10/20 gallon tanks. Would build one, but wood prices are ridiculously expensive nowadays.

Hey, sorry, would have answered faster but was on vacation. That is just a plane ole wire rack shelf from a big box store. I used some precut shelving wood to spread out the weight of the tank evenly across the whole shelf, but apart from that it's stock.

If I was to do it again, I would probably go with another of the much larger/black one I got from Costco a number of years ago. The selves are rated for MUCH more weight, and are a solid plank already so weight distribution is much less of a thing to worry about.