COBettaCouple

and we were just going to use the hurricane lamp method on the splendens breeding... that's an impressive design and i look forward to seeing it constructed. you really need to move to Denver and start operations!! (no ulterior motive like wanting to buy custom tanks from you ) .. it's within a day's drive of Vegas and you'd find plenty of casinos willing to launder their mob money through your tank designs.

timg

Thank you for the complement dave. It should be a very effective breeding system if the column is any indication!

Amnagrla

timg... what do you do for a living??

COBettaCouple

yea, i'd say that's turned out to be a 'mild' success.

timg

I am a Guest House manager in my spare time

armadillo

You should be an architect, or a design engineer!

Gwenz

Realy? cool! Whats it called? my mums most probably stayed ther. she'ss tayed in nearly every hotel/guest house up there! lol

Gwenz

timg

check my profile gwenz! the info is all there.

Gwenz

hmm.. doesn't ring a bell. never mind! lol

Gwenz

COBettaCouple

it's a quiet little place where all the guests are served is marmite on toast.

armadillo

You laugh, but Marmite is served in small portion servings in a lot of British hotels!

timg

It's only a small concern, with 19 bedrooms, so she's probably missed it. You'll have to remind her to ring and book in next time she's up this way! (then she can see what your hobby can do to people!)

Gwenz

ye! lol! I'll let her know about it next time she needs a place to stay up there!

Gwenz

COBettaCouple

lol, isn't it UK law to notify patrons of that?

armadillo

Not patrons, environmental health!

timg

you don't know what you're missing!... it's marmite that keeps me sane!

timg

and keeps the ideas flowing

timg

and helps me to cope with the workload, hours and walking the dog!

armadillo

Hey dont' get me wrong, I am the biggest Marmite advocate!

darkwolf29a

My first thought is that your flow will always be a bit strange with the pipe method.

My LFS uses a single piece and adjusts the size from there. Hard to explain, so see if the picture makes any sense to you.





Both Petco and Petsmart use something similar to this. The water flows through a cut made in the divider that keeps the "tanks" apart.
IMO...that would work better. My gf is starting down the betta spawning path. I think we'll end up with something similar to this.

timg

I have had thoughts about this.

The system you are describing is something that I had in mind early on, using 8' lengths of glass and making one big tank with dividers on each shelf.

I am planning this arrangement when we setup the shop for the display tanks, saving a lot of money having glass drilled! The tanks will be glass fronted with my favorite DIY material, polycarbonate, as the bottom, back and sides. The cost saving will be huge! The dividers will be either polycarb or plastic screens, the former being the better choice since it would reinforce the front and back.

I am wondering if it wouldn't be better to use a single level gutter system with a feed to each tank from the sump, rather than running the water from one end to the other. I could still use the plastic containers for cost effectiveness this way. This would not be any more complicated than the system I have first outlined, just involve connecting the pump to solid piping, with valves to control the supply to each tank. the overflow sytem could then run straight into a gutter or large bore pipe to return to the sump. This system would also lend to using a much larger sump to run the entire rack, rateher than one sump per shelf. My main concern there would be disease control. One sump per shelf is easier to control than a large single sump in that respect.

This does, on the face of it, look like a better option and will also mean that each tank recieved clean water all the time, rather than the polutants running from one to another. That's why I put the idea here, to see if there is a better way! thanks darkwolfe!

timg

Right, as things are moving much faster than I expected in other areas, the project has been put on hold for a while, awaiting the alternative, running our own shop!

I have made up some temporary tanks to cater for the numbers for the time being, and will talk to the fish and ask them to slow down a bit for a while, I'm sure they will understand! lol

I am shipping out around 200 fry this week anyway, which will help reduce the load a lot.

Keep the ideas coming thought folks, because whichever way the decision goes, I have a load of building to do!

darkwolf29a

WOW!!!!!!!!!! Now, there's a good reason to put stuff on hold.



Congrats.

COBettaCouple

yea, congats Tim! I think you're really doing your homework to come up with a great plan - just wish it was in Colorado instead of Wales.

darkwolf29a

Yeah, I'll ditto the whole US versus UK sentiment. But...couldn't you bring it to Green Bay, WI instead of Colorado.


I like the hard pump idea with the single gutter. The only thing that worries me is getting all the water out at the same time. You are going to end up with a large volume of water moving from the tanks to the sump and back again. I'd be worried about the mess that a power outage would make. Plus getting all that flowing might be difficult.

Trpimp147

hmms sounds great. ill see if i can help ya out.... just give me some time to think i was reading this and i couldnt see any pics so i just loged in let me take a look at them see if i can come up with any thing!

timg

power outages wouldn't affect the levels, since the return is through an overflow rather than a siphon, so once the water levels down, it's stable. As long as there is spare capacity in the sump, it won't be a problem.

Trpimp147

you should have a reserve tank with extra bio matrial to support mass amounts of bacteria for your system. when i go to this place called "that fish place" they have them in like large containers where the water flows to out of the tanks and in to there vary vary vary large filter... haha its just a suggestion. don't use bio balls mostly plastic they don't hold as much as the coarse soda can like stuff. this should help your nitrate and nitrite and ammonia problems and keep them away. i was talking to them and they never have a problem with that since they used so many of those things haha.

atmmachine816

Could you just add a store onto the place you own to help satisfy your passion?

timg

Thanks for that ATM, we're working towards those ideas now