Basement Fish Room Build

[Goosedub]

Hey all,

I am building a fish room in my basement. I sort of hijacked another thread so figured I would document the work here. The room is a framed out empty room in the basement. So far I have run electrical conduit, placed insulation, and began putting up drywall. It isn’t going to be fancy. This room will mostly be for my breeding and grow outs. I have display tanks that are more easily accessible in the house. 
 

grow outs with have an auto water change on them. My breeding racks will be manual water changes unless I decide I want to put them on an AWC. I like the idea of manually changing water in my breeders. My AWC system will be designed so I can add any of the tanks in the room to it if needed.

[ScottieB]

Thank you for taking us on this build journey! I love a basement fishroom, currently renovating my own so keep the updates and the pictures coming please. 

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

@Goosedublooks like a great start! Looking forward to following and stealing ideas!

[lefty o]

looks like a good start.

[TheG2What]

Nice! I look forward to watching your progress.

[Goosedub]

Walls are up. Going to run the electrical next!  I’m not going to putty. The drywall is mostly for fire resistance as I don’t care a ton about the aesthetics of the room as it is a temporary fish room. It may be there for years but eventually when we finish the basement this room will turn in to a bathroom.

[Patrick_G]

On 2/6/2022 at 12:59 PM, Goosedub said:

room. It may be there for years but eventually when we finish the basement this room will turn in to a bathroom.

😉

[Goosedub]

Electrical is in. Time to slap on a stick on baseboard, mop up and start on plumbing.

[Bende13]

On 2/10/2022 at 7:04 PM, Goosedub said:

Electrical is in. Time to slap on a stick on baseboard, mop up and start on plumbing.

Awesome! I have a smal space in my basement too, it’s just plasticed off and built with 2x3s or so. Any ideas I could spruce mine up a bit with? 

[Guppiesgonewild]

Looks awesome. Keep up the good work. 

[GeorgeJ]

On 2/10/2022 at 7:04 PM, Goosedub said:

Electrical is in. Time to slap on a stick on baseboard, mop up and start on plumbing.

Nice - came together quick!

[Goosedub]

On 2/10/2022 at 9:22 PM, Bende13 said:

Awesome! I have a smal space in my basement too, it’s just plasticed off and built with 2x3s or so. Any ideas I could spruce mine up a bit with? 

You have any pictures?

[Bende13]

On 2/11/2022 at 9:57 AM, Goosedub said:

You have any pictures?

Don’t mind the muddy tank. Just switched to fluval stratum substrate and I guess I’ve dirsturbed it a bit! 
 

the room is roughly 5x5 I’d say. I’d like to put some luan or cheap plywood and paint it white. Just the slats aren’t spaced as you’d want to sheath things clean

[Goosedub]

On 2/11/2022 at 5:14 PM, Bende13 said:

Don’t mind the muddy tank. Just switched to fluval stratum substrate and I guess I’ve dirsturbed it a bit! 
 

the room is roughly 5x5 I’d say. I’d like to put some luan or cheap plywood and paint it white. Just the slats aren’t spaced as you’d want to sheath things clean

Is it just the 1 tank?

[Bende13]

Yea for now 

[Goosedub]

On 2/11/2022 at 8:15 PM, Bende13 said:

Yea for now 

You could try some soundproofing blankets. They look really nice and would provide another layer of insulation for the room. What do you want the room to be? You have pretty much a blank canvas right now.

They would also hide cords and airline tubing well. Zenzo did this in his fish room. Nothing wrong with plywood. I went with drywall because code requires gypsum over the kind of insulation I chose for fire resistance.

Also drywall is less expensive (if not a little heavier) than plywood

[Goosedub]

Main drain gutter put in with an opening for expansion if needed. 

[Bende13]

On 2/12/2022 at 8:32 AM, Goosedub said:

You could try some soundproofing blankets. They look really nice and would provide another layer of insulation for the room. What do you want the room to be? You have pretty much a blank canvas right now.

They would also hide cords and airline tubing well. Zenzo did this in his fish room. Nothing wrong with plywood. I went with drywall because code requires gypsum over the kind of insulation I chose for fire resistance.

Also drywall is less expensive (if not a little heavier) than plywood

I Iike the soundproof blanket idea. I might put that around outside of room, and put some type of plywood down on inside. Will you be using some type of latex paint to seal the drywall from moisture? Is it like the bathroom type? 

[Goosedub]

On 2/12/2022 at 11:23 AM, Bende13 said:

I Iike the soundproof blanket idea. I might put that around outside of room, and put some type of plywood down on inside. Will you be using some type of latex paint to seal the drywall from moisture? Is it like the bathroom type? 

I will likely look at what paint I have laying around and use that.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Goosedub

[Goosedub]

Painting (pink. It’s the paint we are least likely to use again 😉 and quite a bit of plumbing done. Placed drain line. Connected my thermostatic mixing valve,  fed through carbon block filter and to a garden hose Y. One side has a potable hose on it for manual filling. The other side will have an irrigation timer for auto water changes. 
 

I made a rookie mistake of turning on the water too soon. I was too excited to see if it worked like I wanted it to. Pretty sure I caused a leak and am going to have to redo one of the joints. 
 

finally, also plumbing in vinyl tubing for manual siphon. This is connected to my drain line.

[Goosedub]

Got a lot done today. Built one of the stands and plumbed the supply lines and drainage for the AWC. I also made a DIY python and plumbed a siphon for manual water changes.  Building a fish room is tons of work. I went to 3 hardware stores today and I still have some pvc fittings I need to get to plumb the sump pump.

[eatyourpeas]

Looking good! Those PVC fittings are what I call job security. I can't seem to ever get home with all the ones I need! 😵

[Goosedub]

On 2/16/2022 at 6:53 PM, eatyourpeas said:

Looking good! Those PVC fittings are what I call job security. I can't seem to ever get home with all the ones I need! 😵

The worst!!!!

[Goosedub]

Big Update;

Bren working hard and about 80% of where air want it to be Here is my setup:

it took me a bit to get the temperature figured out. My wall mounted 400W heater just want cutting it, so I ended up getting a 350W heater to supplement it 

I have 2 racks set up for breeding and grow out.

still looking to get some additional 20 gallons to fill out the racks the rest of the way. 
My Cinder block rack is on an AWC system. Hot and cold water enter a mechanical mixing valve and then go through a 5 micron carbon filter. After the carbon filter, I have a Garden hose Y, one side of which goes to my hose I use to manually fill tanks, the other goes through a WiFi connected garden hose timer and then reduces to 1/4 in RO tubing.

the RO tubing then splits and empties into the tanks and is on irrigation drip emitters. Each 10 gallon has a 1 gallon per hour drip emitter, 20s have 2 gph, and the 29 gallon has 2  2gph drip emitters feeding it.  I built pvc overflows for the AWC system, which drain into gutters. I have had some issues with air bubbles in the overflows and I can see why a lot of people just drill their tanks, but I think I have worked it out and everything is going smoothly.

The lighting is mostly done by 24 inch 6500k under cabinet lights. They are not the brightest thing in the world but I don’t have ultra demanding plants in this room anyway. I wish they were a little brighter, but they do the trick.

the water gutters drain to my sump pit where the ‘em water is then pumped out of the house. I plan on feeding this water to the garden this summer.

for air I have 2 7 W diaphragm pumps each hooked up to a custom pvc gang valve.

and Finally, my posters I printed from the coop club member benefit hanging on the wall. They turned out great!

[clovenpine]

I love this thread! It looks like youve done a lot of great planning here.