NYC Fish Room Journal

[porcnick]

Hi All! I've been in the hobby about a year. I started by breeding shrimp, and have recently started breeding corys, mystery snails, and propagating plants. I've been building a fish room in the basement / boiler room of my building in New York. I love the problem solving and automation aspects of this build, so I'll be keeping track of things here. I'll also post about my breeding projects here 🙂

 

 

[nabokovfan87]

Very cool.  Can't wait to see some pictures!

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

A small piece of paradise in the boiler room of an NYC building! Super cool! 

Welcome to the forum @porcnick! Looking forward to seeing your journey!

[porcnick]

Some pictures as requested 🙂 

Being in the city makes some parts of the build-out kind of challenging. Noteably, PVC and ABS pipe are not legal for use in most typical plumbing applications in NYC. It's not that you can't get them, but stores generally don't stock plastic pipe and fittings.

Even getting any number of tanks is tougher because I generally don't drive. I have this rack of 10 gallon tanks that were all delivered by DoorDash from petco when they offer free deliver as a promotion. You haven't lived until a man pulls up on a Vespa with a 20 gallon long in his backpack and hands it to you.

[nabokovfan87]

Really nice setup so far. 

I had to giggle when I saw it. The light in the pond that inevitably always ends up as a shelf for everyone who ever has a light over a tank.

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

On 12/10/2022 at 12:05 AM, porcnick said:

You haven't lived until a man pulls up on a Vespa with a 20 gallon long in his backpack and hands it to you.

This is funny!!! When one drives around all the time and can pick things up it gives one a perspective and appreciation for things you take for granted. 

[TheSwissAquarist]

That’s such a cool fish room 😍!  What fish do you keep/breed ?

[porcnick]

On 12/12/2022 at 7:49 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

What fish do you keep/breed ?

I’ve mostly got endlers and guppies, but I’m starting to breed Medaka. I’ve also raised a few rounds of Cory fry who decided to breed in my community tank 🙂 not very focused. I’m enjoying learning about a load of different types of fish.

[porcnick]

As NY has gotten colder, the boiler room has gotten hotter. I’ve got to wrap the pipes down there tonight so my fishies don’t cook 😞 

 

[Patrick_G]

This is fascinating. I’m surprised you’re allowed to do this in the basement! You must be president of your condo board! 😆

We definitely need pics next time you doordash a tank!

[Guppysnail]

I’m so glad they don’t door dash tanks in my area. I can’t tell you how many times I was going to grab a tank I. The morning for an impulse project but thought better of it after a good nights sleep. 

[OnlyGenusCaps]

On 12/8/2022 at 3:46 PM, porcnick said:

boiler room

Hello fellow boiler room aquarist!  I suspect our circumstances are quite different, but with many common challenges.  I too need to cool my space when it gets colder out.  The majority of my tanks are in my boiler room in my basement, but I have a lot more control over it as it's in my house.  Do you have a floor drain available?  To me, the waste heat and the floor drain are the two big advantages.  Do you know hoe cool the room gets in the summer when the boiler is off?  This is part of my thermal paradox in my boiler room: I need to cool it in the winter and heat it in the summer (especially in the spring while the soil is still cool but the air has warmed).

[porcnick]

On 12/15/2022 at 8:21 AM, OnlyGenusCaps said:

Do you have a floor drain available?

I don’t. The floor level is actually below the drain line for the whole building. However, the boiler itself sits in a pit in the floor in case it breaks and drops its water. I put a container in that pit and put a sump pump in there. I ran a garden hose from the pump to the utility sink. So far its working.

 

My goal after the holidays is to get a drain line run along all my racks, and all my tanks plumbed into that. I’m going to have a drip system for auto water changes after that.

[OnlyGenusCaps]

On 12/20/2022 at 11:10 AM, porcnick said:

So far its working.

That seems like a really good work around!

On 12/20/2022 at 11:10 AM, porcnick said:

I’m going to have a drip system for auto water changes after that.

If I may make a suggestion...  I've done a few AWC systems at this point on my tanks.  It's been my experience that a constant flow exchange ends up being less efficient than a pulsed system, for the sole reason that with greater mixing time you end up change out less "old" water, because it has been diluted by "new" water.  If that makes sense.  The optimal scenario for efficiency is the standard drain the tank x% and then refill, which ensures 100% of the water going out has the higher pollutants in it.  The longer time the new water has a chance to mix with the old water, the higher percentage of new water goes out, which doesn't as efficiently reduce pollutants like nitrates, etc.  I put my inlet for my AWC behind mattens and on the opposite side of the tank as my overflow as well as keep the flow fairly high so the incoming water is of short duration in an effort to reduce this problem.  Just my 2𝇍

[porcnick]

Room is going well. I have several strains of guppies multiplying. Medaka fry from ebay eggs that are hatched and growing up. My air loop is up and running rock steady.

 

tonight I built a nice rack for DIY Brine shrimp hatcheries. Very excited to get this going.

 

[porcnick]

Lots of progess in the past week. Kids are with grandma 🙂

I drilled and painted 8 20 longs and 4 10g. If I knew at the beginning what a crapshoot drilling 10g aquariums was, I probably would have dome something different. I have like 7 cracked ones I need to deal with.

I made a mistake when I initially set up my tank racks and set the bottom row too low. I did a LOT of shuffling tanks around so that I could raise shelves up. what a huge job that was...

I got a load of Nicrew lights and have them controlled with Kasa power strips. The power adapters are perfectly sized to fit side by side in the 6 outlet kasa strips. Each tank can be individually controlled now.

I moved 30 ricefish and 40 or so cory fry over to growout. Very happy to see progress with these guys. The ricefish I keep in my doning room mini-pond are laying eggs in their spawning mop, so we'll have some Platinum fry soon 🙂

 

 

[porcnick]

Last Week

• Lost a few cory fry in a frytray that I failed to clean diligently. Very sad. Moved the remaining dozen or so to growout
• Red cherry shrimp population is booming. Tons of juveniles now reaching the size where it's obvious we've got a ton of shrimp in there
• Set up a breeding tank for the Rummynose Tetras in my community tank. Moved them there last night with two new floating spawning mops. Last time I did this I missed that there were even fry in the tank until way later... so tiny!
• Fighting cloudy/green water in 55g tank with Tiger Endler colony + Mystery Snails
• Ich seen on some juvenile livebearers seems to be nearly cleared up after about 2 weeks of ich-x and salt
• Male guppy with bloated chest is in isolation. Not much improvement with salt. Unsure of what to do next

This Week

• Plumb the rack of 10 gallon tanks
• Pull Rummynose out after a few days

Open Questions

• Why am I getting no Mystery Snail eggs? snails should be sexually mature, I've got a dozen in the tank so we should have males and females.

[JJenna]

On 1/23/2023 at 10:21 AM, porcnick said:

• Why am I getting no Mystery Snail eggs? 

Could be several factors:

• The parameters are not to the Snails' liking. Took 3 months with 7 snails before I had a clutch laid. 
• Just because you 'see' them mating doesn't mean anything, they may be immature or it's two males, etc.
• The snail that has been bred is storing the sperm and is waiting to lay sometime down the road. 
• The snail doesn't have a surface to lay the eggs on, it must be out of water. eg. mine laid theirs on the lid of my tank

The only sure thing I know is, be patient, stop paying attention to the fact that they are not and one day you'll see clutches. In the meantime get your incubator ready. 

[porcnick]

Last Week

* Got in an order of long-fin white clouds and CPDs. Have them in quarantine. They look really great, looking forward to breeding them both

* Made medaka spawning mops. Trying to hatch out some Miyuki eggs that I've collected. I'm not sure that any eggs survived transferring from my mini-pond to the 10g hatchery tank. Seems like they may have all fungused.

* Had a huge spawn of venezuelan cory eggs while all the Rummynose tetras were pulled out into the breeding tank (lucky), but they do not seem to be hatching (unlucky)

* cracked a few MORE 10g tanks while trying to plumb them. Changed my technique a bit and now I have 6 of 12 tanks on the rack plumbed properly. Not too bad... Have to figure out how to dispose of SO many cracked tanks... disassembling them to throw them out in cardboard boxes to protect from cut risks is super labor intensive... would be nice to be able to pitch them in a dumpster, but no such thing is accessible to me now.

* 55 gallon tank with Tiger Endlers had a HUGE dieoff... no amonia detected. Not sure what happened, but I lost like 95% of the tank. Very sad, but fortunately I selected out breeding stock from this population a month or more ago... We will rebuild.

* Finally have the last leg of my drain in place for the 10g tanks. Did my first water changes on 10g rack with properly plumbed overflow... So much less labor.

This Week

* Hook all 10g tanks up to drain.

* Continue quarantine for new stock.

[nabokovfan87]

On 1/23/2023 at 7:21 AM, porcnick said:

Male guppy with bloated chest is in isolation. Not much improvement with salt. Unsure of what to do next

Toss a thread in disease section with everything needed as well as what you've tried and hopefully we can help out.

[OnlyGenusCaps]

On 1/31/2023 at 9:59 AM, porcnick said:

Changed my technique a bit and now I have 6 of 12 tanks on the rack plumbed properly.

As someone who drills all their tanks, but still struggles with small tanks, may I ask what specifically you changed to achieve your success?

[porcnick]

On 2/1/2023 at 8:22 AM, OnlyGenusCaps said:

As someone who drills all their tanks, but still struggles with small tanks, may I ask what specifically you changed to achieve your success?

I would not say I've had success. I've cracked more than I've left in tact... i've not found anything that indicate that you can expect to have better than maybe 50% success rate with drilling. I then had some cracks occur later when I was handling the plumbing (e.g. aligning and tightening bulkheads). What a mess. I just keep buying more tanks when they're on sale...

On the plus side, i've never cracked anything larger than a 10 gallon 🙂

[OnlyGenusCaps]

On 2/1/2023 at 1:10 PM, porcnick said:

i've not found anything that indicate that you can expect to have better than maybe 50% success rate with drilling. I then had some cracks occur later when I was handling the plumbing (e.g. aligning and tightening bulkheads). What a mess.

Glad I'm not the only one!  It's a big reason I don't have tanks smaller than 20gal.

On 2/1/2023 at 1:10 PM, porcnick said:

On the plus side, i've never cracked anything larger than a 10 gallon

I can see I am in good company. 

[porcnick]

Last night I went down at midnight to check on things and feed before bed. I noticed that my utility sink was full of dirty water. I plunged it, it didn't budge.... I noticed that an indirect drain line downstream was also backed up... to the level of water in the sink... My MAIN drain line was blocked up... and some sewage had started getting on the floor.

I'm so glad that all my tank drains are indirect and nothing contaminated my tanks. Plumber found a SODA CAN in the house trap. No idea how the hell that happened. Could have been backflow from the city sewer. There should not be any drains in the house that could possibly accomodate a soda can...

A longer note on a lesson I learned. A few months ago I ordered a fancy pair of guppies from Indonesia. I got them, and the male died 4 days into quarantine. I was so devastated. My kids had actually named them :p. I kept the female in a tank by herself until now and just this week she gave birth to a big batch of fry! What a save!!! Guppies are amazing. From that I learned... it's probably best to order more than one pair if you can when you're investing in new brood stock...

Last Week

• Quarantine tank is doing great. So pleased with my new livestock. Can't wait to start breeding them. 
  • I'll admit that when I ordered Japan Blue-Gold Double Swords from Dan's Fish I thought I was getting swordtails, but I'm pretty sure they're guppies? Yes?
• Not much progress on plumbing, lots of family stuff
• Miyuki Medaka from my mini pond are hatching out successfully
• A few cory fry in the fry system... I THINK these are actually pygmy corys, not the venezuelans. That would be good, I need more of them.

This Week

• Try breeding the rummynose again
• MOP UP THE DAMN SEWAGE
• Trim the plants in the shrimp tank, set up a tank for blue dreams

[nabokovfan87]

On 2/6/2023 at 1:15 PM, porcnick said:

I was so devastated. My kids had actually named them

Yeah... this is why I have such a hard time naming anything in the tank.

I have had some good and bad omens with names.

Congratulations on your new fry. 

As a bit of catharsis....  YOU AREN'T the only one to go through this... and thankfully you didn't have it this bad.  What a story. 😞

Part 1 of his story: Poo-nami

Part 2 of his story:

On 2/6/2023 at 1:15 PM, porcnick said:

Quarantine tank is doing great. So pleased with my new livestock. Can't wait to start breeding them. 

• I'll admit that when I ordered Japan Blue-Gold Double Swords from Dan's Fish I thought I was getting swordtails, but I'm pretty sure they're guppies? Yes?

 

Looks like a form of lyretail