Cheeky Request

[JamesFish]

Hi All,

I know some people have setup fish rooms and home made / central systems. So here's the cheeky part how did you do it and what worked well. I'm not expecting everyone to say here's the aquatic secret keys I would be happy to just look at the tanks and layout / fish you keep. I realise people invested a great deal of time / effort into these things along with money. I'm sad I enjoy looking at what other keepers do / what combinations work well. I don't claim to be the best but I do admit I pinch idea's from various places and attempt to join them up.

I'm wondering how to get away from I need to clean / maintain kit to enjoying it again rather than seeing hmm that could use a clean.

I couldn't find a photo of Jool's fish room but could find articles about the company who he was thinking of having do the racking. I've seen some posts from Victor on how he's done setups.

What I'm interested in is home made or scalable filtration, lighting, how to cut back on time spent cleaning / water changing without hurting the fish.

If you have links or articles you believe are useful am happy to do leg work and read them.

I keep 4 tanks with a total of about 250L of water in them and it takes me about 2-5 hours a week to look after them in cleaning. That includes gravel cleans, filters, glass scrubbing and with live plant removing dead bits.

The level I've gotten to so far is pretty basic.
100L water butt & air pump indoors to heat to room temp / DE chlorinate water.
Drain to the garden near the biggest tank with a sponge filter on end to be fish safe on the siphon kit.
Hose lock tap fixing and hose pipe to make water butt refilling quicker.

I'd like some better plumbing in my room for drainage etc to save on bucket carrying but am wondering if my approach is just off and actually I'd be better off linking up my 2 normal tank's in the same room and sharing a filter between them and a huge water reserve in some way.

Any advice or places to read up would be appreciated.

[lilu]

A tank controller like the Neptune Systems Apex would allow you to automate water changes (both draining and filling) as well as turn equipment on/off depending how certain parameters in your tank change or alert you via email or text message if your tank parameters are outside a specific range you set or if there is a leak.