Big Tanks

[cane76]

i am entertaining the idea of getting a 200+gallon tank now i know this will be expensive and time consuming but im still very keen.i wanna hear from someone who has such a size tank who can answer a few questions
Cane

 

[CFC]

What do you want to know?

 

[cane76]

CFC your just the man what i wanna know is after making the initial purchase of the tank,stand,heaters,filters and whatever else(i know this will be thousands)how much time will have to be spent maintaining a tank this size?

its gonna be a oddball tank if the dream comes true

 

[CFC]

That depends on what you stock it with and how heavily you stock it.

I keep big messy predators and the tank is currently overstocked so i probably spend 4 hours a week doing water changes and vacuming the substrate, with less or smaller fish i could cut this down to around 2 hours. Every couple of months or so i spend an extra couple of hours stripping down the filters and giving all the media a rinse.

The key thing is getting the right equipment to do the job, a long hose or python to take and return water to the tank is a must and having several large buckets for washing media helps no end

 

[cane76]

i would stock it with large predators too(love the leiarius pictus)are your big tanks in the house coz i could only put a tank that big in the garage(the car can go outside)is that ok?

 

[CFC]

They are in the house now (upstairs flat with concrete floor) but we are in the process of buying a house now and when we move in a few weeks they will all be going into a purpose built fish house at the end of the garden. As long as you insulate the walls and roof so it doesnt get too cold in there then its fine.

 

[Paul_MTS]

Here's my 210g

I only spend about 1hour water changing it once a week at the moment as compared to CFC's most of my fish are still very young. Like CFC I'll spend extra time now and then giving my sump a good clean out, cleangin the front glass everynow and then takes a good 15minutes.

I think you would be plesantly surprised with the costs involved though. I lucky found my tank in the local paper which was £150 with sump filtration althought then cost....£150 new pumps, £100 lighting, £70 wooden stand, and another £50 or so here and there.

and running costs are nothing to get excited about!

The way I do my water changing is with some 1" pond hose with some 25mm rigid piping jammed on the end, I syphon water form the tank with this into a large bucket and then with a additional pump I pump this water out the window and into the soak away drain.

 

[cane76]

nice tank paul
thx for tips

 

[Matty]

just out of curiousity, isnt that tank a little small for arowanas? I heard they need at least 300 gallon setups

 

[CFC]

That depends on the arowana species, these tanks would be too small for adult silver arowana's (Osteoglossum bicirrhosum) which would eventually need a tank closer to 1000 gallons, but Paul has an Asian arowana (Scleropages formosus) and i have a Australian arowana (Scleropages jardini) both of which dont grow larger than 24" (20 is more likely) in captivity and can easily be kept in tanks of 180 gallons or more.

 

[cane76]

would it be expensive to insulate a garage?

 

[CFC]

How much it costs depends on the size of the garage but in short yes it will be quite expensive to insulate the garage properly. The best material to use is 2" thick sheets of Kingspan which cost around £40 for a 8x4' sheet (less if bought in bulk), to cover a room of say 8x8x8' you are looking at needing 10 sheets for the walls and ceiling plus 2 sheets of polystyrene to put under a sub floor to stop cold from rising up. There are other cheaper materials but these will not be as efficient at storing heat as the Kingspan.

 

[cane76]

thats cheaper than i thought is it easy to do or will i have to pay someone to come and do it?

 

[CFC]

If you are half handy it poses no problems, simply stick the sheets to the walls using an adhesive such as "no more nails" or a similar product. If the shiny tinfoil surface is too bright for you you can cover it in the same way by sticking sheets of 3mm ply over the insulation which can then be painted a colour you preffer.

 

[cane76]

i would definalty cover it with ply coz i would semi-decorate the garage before setting up the tank(its gotta look nice if im gonna be spending all my time there)