My Fish Room Build

[Ryo Watanabe]

I’ve been working on getting my fish room set up here in Japan. I’ve got this garage-like room to work with. My grandfather used to work in this room fixing heavy machinery and equipment as a living. Since his passing about 10 years ago, this room hasn’t been touched except from the occasional entrance of my uncle who keeps some of his VW spare parts in there. 

I should mention that I’ve lived abroad in Singapore previous to this and in 2019, I moved back to my home country of Japan. So that is when I decided to try my best to convert this beat up garage room into a fish room.

Here, you can see how it looked like before I started working on it.

My first racking system arrived before I even started painting 😅 I really wanted to set tanks up asap but I had to be patient and clean the room up a little.

I have been posting videos on my YouTube channel too. Still need to make a playlist for this fish room.

Lots of painting 😰 It’s not that easy as I’m a little OCD and I like having things as close to perfect. Also notice there are windows by the tanks. We do get a little sunlight coming in but it’s really no problem at all. Some people commented in my videos that it’s a bad idea putting tanks by the window because I will get lots of algae issues. To me, it’s about balancing everything. If you have lots of sunlight, then maybe lessen the hours of artificial lighting. But I plan to put curtains up in the future so that I can control the amount of light that comes in.

Cryptocoryne Wendtii Green Gecko, some Rotala sp. bangladesh, and Cryptocoryne Wendtii Brown towards the back.

Cryptocoryne Wendtii Tropica and Cryptocoryne Wendtii Green towards the back.

Cryptocoryne Lucens and Cryptocoryne Undulatus Red towards the back. My favorite species of Anubias on the driftwood. Anubias Coffeefolia! All these plants are still relatively new so I’ll be enjoying watching them grow and develop 😃

So this is currently where I’m at. Still a long ways to go and I’m kind of hoping that this build never ends because it’s the process that I enjoy the most. I’ve planted a variety of crypts in the tanks above and I’m planning to add more in the future. 
Cryptocorynes have become one of my favorite plants because of how easy they are to care for. They don’t need strong lighting, don’t require Co2, and they’ll look beautiful in a couple of months. I’m also hoping to add another rack system on the right side of the room. Not sure of what fish/plants to keep yet, but I’m sure I will find something that will excite me. Breeding small fish is something I’d also love to try. 
Also, some people have asked me why I didn’t fix up (renovate) the entire room first before setting the aquariums and that’s because it would be nearly impossible. As I mentioned earlier, this room is also a storage room for my uncles car parts as well as storage for some of my grandmothers stuff so I’ve just got to work with the space that I’ve been given 😅 

Oh yeah! I forgot to mention that I’m also working on a smaller fish room inside the house that I call the mini studio. That room will only have 2 display aquascaped aquariums. I’m very passionate about planted/aquascaped aquariums. Maybe I can make another post talking about that room sometime.

Thank you if you’ve made it this far. I hope this was interesting to some of you and I hope to learn more from this forum 🙂

 

Edited August 11, 2020 by Ryo Watanabe

[MickS77]

Ryo! Love the channel. It's so cool to see what the aquarium hobby is like in Japan. Your videos are very well done and inspirational. 

[pedrofisk]

How fun. I actually discovered your channel a couple of weeks ago and have enjoyed the videos. Those Rice Fish in bowls are something else. Great to see you on the forum and keep up the good work!

[Ryo Watanabe]

14 minutes ago, MickS77 said:

Ryo! Love the channel. It's so cool to see what the aquarium hobby is like in Japan. Your videos are very well done and inspirational. 

Thank you very much 😊

3 minutes ago, pedrofisk said:

How fun. I actually discovered your channel a couple of weeks ago and have enjoyed the videos. Those Rice Fish in bowls are something else. Great to see you on the forum and keep up the good work!

Thank you 😊 Yes, many people in japan keep ricefish in bowls and I’d thought it would be interesting to share that. 

[Streetwise]

Ryo, the tanks look great and your channel is terrific. Your enthusiasm for the hobby is contagious!

[Alexa]

I love your videos. Your tanks are so inspiring 🙂