What Would You Do

[Miss Wiggle]

We need to re-arrange things so we have 1 less tank in the living room to give us more space nad make the house look most spacious for when we try to sell. If we do have to have big amounts of the space in the living room used up we at least need to make sure they look very impressive so they become a feature of the house almost, rather than just another bit of clutter. The other considerations as ever are time and money taken for upgrading and maintenance.

So what we have now is

Trigon 350, 92 us gallon corner tank
Semi Planted pics in my sig, current inhabitants and current sizes
1 Oscar (10")
1 Chocolate Albino Common Plec (6")
1 Common Syno (6")

This tank we probably have the most sentimental attachment to, Oscar's my baby, Al's the first fish Ian ever bought, and Spots the first fish Ian ever bought me. However as Oscar's come to maturity he's developed a nasty bullying streak, we've just had to re-home Polly cos he was picking on her, so we've now got a massive tank and it pretty much looks like it's just got 1 fish in as we rarely ever see Al or Spot.

Ian's high tech planted tank - aprox 60g
Inhabitants
1 Angel
1 Female Fighter
about 20 cardinal tetra's
Some otto's
Amano shrimp

Ian's spent a fortune on this tank, he was having massive algae issues but just the last week or so everything starting to get sorted, the tank is starting to look gorgeous again and it is really impressive. However it does eat up quite a lot of time and money

Marine tank - 30g
Inhabitants
Purple Firefish
2 Pyjama Cardinals
Flame Tail Blenny
Tail Spot Blenny
Assorted corals and inverts

This is our favourite and most rewarding tank, it does take the most time and money but we're both agreed it's the one we'd want to keep the most. We'd also like to upgrade this tank at some point.

Option 1 - Close down Oscars tank and move the marine tank into the bigger tank.
Benefits - Would look very impressive and we'd really enjoy it
Drawbacks - Very hard to re-home the fish to places we'd be happy with. It's going to cost a fair bit to get everything we need to upgrade. We have to part with our favourite fish

Option 2 - Close down the planted tank and move the marine tank into that tank
Benefits as above
Drawbacks - The shape of the tank isn't ideal for marine, it's too tall and not deep enough really. Also would leave us with 1 impressive and 1 not so impressive tank in the living room rather than the 2 we'd have with option 1. The planted tank is Ian's main hobby and I know he'd be very sad to see it go.

Option 3 - Close down the planted tank, sell the tank and equipment and buy a more suitable upgrade for the marine tank with the proceeds, put this where the planted tank was
Benefits - Could get a more suitable marine aquarium, Could hopefully cut the cost of the upgrade a little
Drawbacks - Would still cost us money to upgrade and as above we'd have less impressive tanks in the living room

Option 4 - Close down the marine tank
Benefits - No money needed to upgrade, could even make some money on selling the tank, corals, fish etc, this money could then go into upgrading one of the other tanks and getting them to look better
Drawbacks - We'd loose a lot of money and we've just started to get the marine tank to work and run well, we'd be gutted to have to stop now, although we could always start up again when we move.

So we think we have a few options, they all have they're benefits and drawbacks..... just out of interest, what would you do?

 

[Castellop123]

Tough one... Why not keep all the tanks and make them all look good! ... Use the aquarium as a possible selling point... you never no, it might just work!

 

[smmetz]

Wow, that's a tough choice.

I would try to hold off on major tank rennovations, since you will be moving when you sell the house anyway. Although moving time is busy, it might be a good opportunity to re-arrange things.

However, I do understand your need to de-clutter the place when showing your house. Is it possible to move the corner tank with the oscar into a garage or other room? My guess is probably not

Perhaps you can move the oscar corner tank into a friends place until after the move? Do you know anyone who would want such a tank for a couple months though?

When I wanted another tank but no room to put it, I got a 20 gallon and set it up in my office at work. Your tanks are all a bigger, but is that in the realm of possibility, to move a tank to work?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Option 5 keep them all!!

Ian's come home from work with a wonderful suggestion tonight.

We spend a bit of money putting a refugium onto the marine tank, spend a little money in the summer upgrading the filtration on oscars tank, and sod it we leave them all be.

But that's a good idea about work, I may well ask them if I can do that.

 

[jayjay]

I'd go with option one personally.