Robs fish room tales.

Since I suggested this section I thought I should get the ball rolling.

In total I have 14 tanks, all but 2 in the fish room, these are....

5 x 2' x 1' x 15" Breeding tanks
4 x 40 gallon (180 litre) grow on tanks
1 x 35 litre "odds & ends" tank.
2 x Juwel rekord 700 effectively 2' x 12" x 15" tanks, but with integral power filters, these used to be my children's tanks, but I took them over when they lost interest.

I also have 2 display tanks,
A vision 260 & a 5' x 2' x 18"

All but one of these tanks is devoted to angels. The one which isn't, is home to my Bizarre Bristlenose I have two males & two females, and about 100 babies all in one of the rekord 700's. I think only the larger male gets to breed, but both females have contributed to the growing population. They get fed Hikari wafers, and also a regular supply of algae covered rocks from my garden pond! Despite the numbers they all seem to get on well, but recently I've moved some of the larger babies into tanks with moderate size baby angels. Probably by January I'll need to move some of them to the shop!

As many of you will know, I've been breeding angels for a good few years now, but I certainly don't have all the answers. Of my recent batches, two have had very high survival rates, one is a little early to say, but looks to be pretty reasonable, and several seem to have dwindled away over a period of a few weeks. So at present, the 35 litre holds 5 surviving babies from one batch, which I had hoped would give me veiltail blue marbles, of the 5, there is just 1 marble, as far as I can see, no veiltails, I can't even be sure if there are any blues, as only half the batch will be homozygous for pb. Their parents are still in the same breeding tank that these were born in, yet despite seemingly taking good care of their previous spawn, they've eaten their two most recent batches of eggs. Don't ask me why, I can't work it out; but I have just lowered the kH/pH of their tank, so we'll see if that makes a difference.

In the breeding tank next door to them are hundreds of babies from the second pair in this thread http://www.uk-angelfishforum.org.uk/t379-proud-parents, I removed the parents yesterday as the tank was getting too crowded, already at just over 2 weeks free swimming there is a huge variation in size, something I don't normally expect to see until they're at least a month old. Next to them, the first pair from that thread continue to look after a moderate shoal of young. The remaining two "breeding tanks" are also home to youngsters, in one I have 18 babies from a different blue marble pairing, again, numbers seemed to slowly dwindle, for no obvious reason, no veils in this batch, but at least I know all are blue ghosts, about half of them marbles.
The other "breeding" tank is home to some of the youngsters from my blue chocolate x pinoy batch (see this thread http://www.uk-angelfishforum.org.uk/t314-a-family-affair). This particular batch is spread around 3 tanks, 35 selected paraibas are in the rekord 700 not home to all the bristlenoses, whilst the bulk of the batch is in one of the 40 gallon grow on tanks. I'm really pleased with this whole batch, there are blue chocolates, smokeys, pinoy chocolates & pinoy smokeys plus paraiba version of all of them. In addition I'm pretty confident that some have the streaked gene, which can produce some quite interesting effects.
The final 3 grow on tanks are home to various young adults, including my Peruvians. Once again I'm coming to the point where I'm going to have to drastically thin out the adults, to make more room for youngsters, and hopefully free up some breeding tanks. I just find it so difficult to choose!

Fantastic stuff Rob & neat idea for this forum, I will get some news from my fish house up soon
Lisa

Great read rob & a good insight as to what your getting upto with all your great breeding.

Hi Rob
Very Good and interesting reading: well my first thoughts were that it sounds
like a busmans holiday for you with all the work that it takes to run a fish room
at home and then your shop as well.
I will try and fined the time to put a video and a little write up in the next few weeks
of my fish room. ( As soon as work allows )
Cheers Tony

it sounds like a busmans holiday for you with all the work that it takes to run a fish room at home and then your shop as well.

Strangely it's not.
Running a shop is a lot more about people, and much less about the fish than you might imagine. With eight staff plus myself, most of the day to day care of the fish is done by others, I personally, rarely get to the feed the fish, someone else usually does that. The Marine Manager orders the marine fish, the tropical manager the tropicals, likewise the pond fish and aquarium plants.
When things are running smoothly, I'm hardly needed, but when things go wrong I get called!
Even when things are running smoothly, I don't spend much time standing around admiring the stock. Take today as an example....

I spent about 10 minutes helping check round in the morning, I went to the bank to pay money in and collect the night safe purses. I dealt with three reps in the shop, and spoke to a couple more on the phone, unloaded an incoming delivery of drygoods, helped check it off and put it away. Dispensed advice on sick fish, filters, algae, compatability and how to mature tanks. Carried out numerous water tests, explained the nitrogen cycle several times. discussed rotas, made arrangements for our forthcoming stock check, prepared quotes and phoned customers with details of these & checked my emails. I served a number of customers, some of them with fish, but catching a fish and selling it, isn't quite the same as sitting and watching it.

Finally, when I got home, I went to the fish room fed the fish, and just sat and watched them for a while, I marveled at how much some of the babies had grown, seemingly in a matter of hours. This evening the male pearlscale koi was covered in a swarm of little babies, pecking like baby discus at his mucus, and he just sat there with his fins stretched wide and proud, letting them feed. That's what I so enjoy about this hobby, and that's why having a fish room is a relaxation after a hard day's work!

I will bet that you probably had to work a lot of hours when you first started in
your aquarium buisiness, and now you can have your rewards cheers tony

Not much happening at the moment in my fishroom.
Almost all my tanks are filled with youngsters, I have just two with "pairs" although neither has shown any sign of laying yet.
The first "pair" are two of my Rio Nanay fish, they've been together for a couple of weeks now and haven't tried to kill each other, so I'm hoping they're a pair, but they are still very nervous and shy. The rest have been moved into one of my display tanks, and seem much more confident and outgoing. Still patience is a virtue.

The other pair are my sole surviving albino, paired with a paraiba koi, but she is still young (about 7 months) and has not showed any signs of laying yet, I'll give them a while as they seem very devoted and happy together.

Hopefully I'll be taking a lot of the babies to the shop in the next few days, and that will free up a few more tanks, as I have a lot of other fish waiting their chance.

One final bit of news, a customer brought in some very nice, home bred, golden bristlenose, so I nabbed a few, hopefully I can get some of these breeding in the not too distant future....

a customer brought in some very nice, home bred, golden bristlenose.

Hi rob and happy new year to you and every one on here.
You said golden bristlenose are they albino or the L144 as a lot of people get them mixed up
I have six strains of bristle nose at the moment and think they are brilliant little things.
Cheers Tony

Hi Tony,
They're not true albinos as they have blue/black eyes, I believe they're what many refer to as L144's but from what I've read, there maybe some confusion between the true 144's and these. I have to confess I'm not the world's greatest expert on plec's, what I do know is that the orange colouration of these is far deeper than most of the one's I've seen before!

I think these fishroom posts are worthy of a few snaps.

As i'm in the dizzy planning stages it would be nice to see how other's have there space laid out.

I'll see what I can do

First off - just noticed that I haven't done anything about my previous comment, I'll continue to see what I can do!

Just returned from a week away, in the run up to going away I did several water changes on all the tanks, and made sure those filters that are prone to clogging were suitably cleaned.
I don't have any very young youngsters at the moment, the youngest are between 3 & 4 months old. I thinned the growing on tanks, taking as many as possible to the shop, and fed normally up until the morning of departure.
Returned this afternoon, 8 days later, and am pleased to report that all are fit & healthy, despite not having been fed for the week.
Normally when going away, I ask my parents to look in every couple of days, drop a bit of flake around & to generally check that all is well. But on this occasion they were also away. It goes to show that, as long as there are no mechanical or electrical failures, fish can survive happily for a good while without attention.

The other good news is that before going away I placed an order for 3 140 litre tanks to replace 1 70 litre one! I'm not expecting that I will be able to breed any more than I do presently, but it should enable me to grow more on to a good size before I have to select which ones to keep!

I'll try to takes some photos once the new tanks are installed!

Pterophyllum wrote:

I'll try to takes some photos once the new tanks are installed!

Looking forward to it.

Expanding rob that always sounds good to me.Will be good to see the pics.

As promised some photos.....

First off my original breeding tanks :-


Top row are 5x 2' x 1' x 15" all placed end on, these are my breeding tanks, each currently holds a pair, if I was setting up again, I'd go with something slightly larger 2 x 15" x 18" deep for example.
Under these are two rows of grow on tanks, these are 32" x 2' x 16.5" deep, as you can see from the fish in the bottom left tank, some of the "grow ons" have reached adulthood, hence the need for some extra space.
most of the adult fish are currently housed in two display tanks else where in the house, a vision 260 and a 5' x 18" x 2' high.
The observant will also notice two more tanks on the floor, on the left is a 35 litre used for very small batches, or as a hospital tank, it's currently home to a blushing black lace veil who despite almost certainly being a male, goes by the name of Heidi! Originally housed in the vision 260, I couldn't find him for days, hence the name! When I did manage to track him down he'd been beaten to a pulp and was close to death. He has now made a good recovery, but I'm wary of trying to introduce him back to the others. As an aside, black blushing do seem rather prone to being attacked.

All the tanks are drilled and this is where the other tank on the floor comes in, just out of shot on the right is this tank....



This tank used to be in my living room, but one of the bracing bars is badly cracked, and I'd probably end up lacerating myself if I used it in ernest, instead it acts as a resevoir. My original plan was to do water changes simply by turning on the pond pump it contains, and moving the attached hose from tank to tank, the overflowing water would run down to the tank under the breeding tanks, from where a second pump could pump the water to waste. In practice I rarely use this facilitiy and so haven't bothered with drilled tanks for the new ones. Instead I prefer to syphon using a gravel cleaner directly into a bucket, but the resevoir & pump are a great boon when it comes to refilling, with the added benefit that the water is well aged & heated before it is added to the tanks.

To the right of the resevoir used to be a rekord 700, but this has now gone, to be replaced with 3 new 30" x 17" x 18" high tanks....



If you look closely you can just see the 700 languishing on it's side under the new tanks.
I was going to take photos of the build, but frankly the room was so cluttered it wasn't possible to tak any meaningful shots.

Frame construction uses 2" x 2" timbers,
4 x 60" uprights, with the three that are touching the walls screwed securely to them!
The tanks are supported at front and rear by timbers that are screwed to the uprights, and in turn are supported by other timbers that run front to rear underneath them, hopefully this photo shows what I mean....



This is a construction method which we have used for decades, and has proved very strong and durable.
Sadly despite trying to follow the old adage, "measure twice, cut once", I had managed to overlook a couple of factors, the most critical being the position of the plug sockets. This necessitated raising the position of the bottom tank by about 4" higher than I had originally planned. This now means that the access into the bottom and middle tanks is rather more restricted than I had intended.

Again the observant will notice that there are already fish in the bottom tank, this was achieved by transfering water and a mature filter from their original tank (the now empty 700).

The original tanks are lit using T8 lighting, for the new ones I've used a T5 for the bottom & middle, whilst the top one currently lacks a light. I'm thinking of experimenting with some LED spots.

The current plan is to house my Peruvian Rio Nanays in the top tank, and my Manacapuru's in the middle, I'm hoping that given space & a tank to themselves that I might be able to work on getting them to breed. Just in case they do I have two black acrylic dividers cut & ready, they're just the right size that they can be wedged into place without the need for support!

Finally there's one remaining rekord 700 in the room



This is home to my very bristly Bristlenose, a female & a large number of their young, it's due for a good clean!

Absolutely fascinating!! Thanks Rob

Your making me jealous with envy, what with that new fish house set up and tanks. It,s been well over 18 months since I said bye for the third time to keeping and breeding Angels. But I have actually found myself yet again yearning to be back. I remember some saying I would. So I find myself up and running again. But only in a small way (say's he) with three breeding pairs on the go. I'm saying this now, but, I don't think I will be getting as big as last time, don't really have the capital or more to the point, outlets. Wish I had.
Keep up the good work Rob and I look forward to meeting you again when I get down that part of the woods.
Phil

I love this simple 2x2 rack building way. It sure simplifies what I have been looking at.

I'm still well stuck into the planning stages, what I can fit into the available space planning stages. I was originally going 8x8 in the garage but as it almost takes up the whole width of the garage decided to pull back to 8x6. This feels a bit narrow if I put anything wider than 12" tanks down the sides so maybe 8x7 is the way forward.

Shame I only got 2 out of 6 numbers last night otherwise I would of taken most of the garage space up!

Hey Phil,
Glad to hear you're up and running again!
Better to have 3 or 4 tanks that you enjoy, than have 30 that become a chore! I can't see me increasing any more at home in the foreseeable future.

I love this simple 2x2 rack building way. It sure simplifies what I have been looking at.

It sure does,
picked the tanks up on Thursday, started building the frames Thursday night, did a bit more on Friday night, finished the job Saturday. Fitted the lighting for the top tank & moved the Manacapurus and the Nanays over this evening. No photos yet, but the Nanay's in particular are swimming around like they're back in the river!

Hi Rob
As always an excellent read and as they say (A picture is worth a thousand Words) very nice
set up rob' But there is always a but my first thought was tanks on the floor they are hard
work as to syphoning water and replacing.
Sorry late reply been a very busy weekend with punters comeing around the fish house oh
and been called out to a leaking pipe. As i have said befor i will have to find the time to
put some pics of my second home on here.
Cheers Tony

It looks & sounds like you have it all sorted Rob,& its nice to see you use a differant net for each tank, as im sure at some stage most find out the hard way that its just so easy to pass something from 1 tank to another & causeing all sorts of problems that could of easily been avoided.
Oh & a great read yet again Rob.

my first thought was tanks on the floor they are hard
work as to syphoning water and replacing.

Indeed, although the only one that ever needs a clean is the 35 litre, and strangely I don't find that too onerous.

its nice to see you use a differant net for each tank, as im sure at some stage most find out the hard way that its just so easy to pass something from 1 tank to another & causeing all sorts of problems that could of easily been avoided.

It's certainly a good policy, although I'd be lying if I claimed that I maintain 100% separation between tanks. I'm most wary when I've introduced new stock, but my biggest protection is being able to keep newly imported fish at the shop until I'm confident that they're not carrying anything too nasty!

I dont think you can ever be 100% that you wont cross contaminate,thats why i try to keep my QT tank in another room away from my main tanks so i dont dip my hands in any after any maintenance on the QT tank plus i dont like anyone doing anything with my QT tank if i can help it & the use of seperate nets & even syphone tubes sure help but like yourself i cant say that i remember every time.

Ok a couple more photos, not the best as they were taken without flash to demonstrate the difference in the lighting....

First this is the middle tank which is now home to the manacapuru plus 4 domestic silvers/ghosts.



I'm hoping that any domestic hormones will get the manacapurus excited, but before we get there I want to worm them, feed them up & drop the pH & hardness to about 6.5 pH 0.5-1kH.

This on the other hand is the top tank

I've used a four lamp domestic ceiling fitting, but replaced the halogens with 1.5w LED lamps, these have a colour temperature of about 3500K. The effect I was aiming for was dappled sunlight filtering through the trees, and by and large I'm happy with the result.
The observant will notice a few paraiba as well as the Nanays, there are two pinoy paraiba and two smokey paraiba, these are there for two reasons,
1. to give the Nanays confidence &
2. To test out how their colours show up under this type of lighting (answer pretty well, but I think high colour temp bulbs would show them up better still)

Well it's been a few months since I had new a spawn get to free swimming, partly because most of my tanks were occupied by youngsters growing on, and partly because those adults who were in breeding tanks weren't co-operating. Since puting the new tanks up I've been able to put 5 pairs into breeding tanks and one of those pairs have a new batch of free swimmers. I'm particularily pleased about this pair as the male was victim of a particularily vicious assault by his previous tank mates, and has taken several months in isolation to heal, this is he...



and his partner



meanwhile some of the pinoys, pinoy paraibas and blue chocolates & smokeys I've been growing on are just starting to bloom....