Steve Poland here.
Last week I did a tour of this fishroom.
And this week I want to talk a little bit about how I maintain it.
I've done videos about how I do water changes on the tanks upstairs,
And I've done build videos about a few of the systems down here
but I've never really shown them in action.
So let me show you around so you can see how this works.
The main fishroom has 14 tanks.
There are two 55s, six 40 breeders, and six 10s.
So right now it's sitting at about 410 gallons.
All of the tanks are tied into my continuous drip system which I mentioned in last week's
tour.
It starts with a valve attached to a cold water pipe
and travels through a carbon filter to remove the chlorine.
The filter is connected to 1/2" PVC that runs around the perimeter of my fishroom.
Each tank has its own tube that comes down from that PVC from an adjustable valve.
It's held onto the tank with a clamp and offers a steady drip of fresh water.
Then all of the tanks except the 55s are drilled for overflows to give the old water somewhere
to go.
The 55s are an exception because the sides are tempered and can't easily be drilled.
So those have overflow boxes instead.
Each tank's overflow is connected to a PVC drain system that runs around the room and
terminates at a floor drain.
The drain system works well for the drip system because the flow is really low.
But I do plan to overhaul it in the not too distant future
Because I made a few mistakes when I put this in that I can't wait to fix.
The first problem is that I used 3/4" PVC which is way too small.
I also didn't slope the drains enough so they're too slow.
This means that I can't really use it for big water changes like I had hoped.
Fortunately my current method is pretty fast on the drain side but it does require a bit
more work.
I use a 1300 gallon per hour pump attached to a garden hose and it drains the tanks really
quickly.
The other end then connects to some PVC with a 90 degree angle that I can insert into the
floor drain and not be worried that it will slip out.
It's annoying having to move it from tank to tank but it does a decent job as a workaround
until I fix the drains.
The bottleneck is actually the refilling of the tanks.
Since I don't have a sink down here I teed of my ground floor utility sink and ran a
hose down here.
It's stored on this reel attached to the wall and is really easy to use.
I just pull it out when I need it.
On the end is a PVC fitting that hangs on each tank which makes it easy to set it and
walk away to do something else.
For example, moving the pump to another tank.
The only bad thing about this is that the water doesn't fill as fast as the tanks drain,
hence the bottleneck.
But all told I can do a 50% water change on all 14 of these tanks in about an hour.
And with the drip system I don't even have to do it every week.
I can go two or even three weeks with no issue.
Another system down here that helps me do this is a siphon tube that I installed that
connects to my drain.
I have a couple of attachments for this but the one I use the most is just an open piece
of tubing.
I use the siphon starter to get it flowing and then go around to each tank and vacuum
out the waste.
The bare bottom tanks make this process very easy.
When I'm ready to move to another tank I just put my thumb over the end so that I don't
have to restart the siphon.
I do this at least once a week and I don't have to bother to top off the tanks because
the drip system takes care of that.
I use a very similar process to maintain the growout system that's in my crawlspace.
I usually start by draining the radial flow filter because it's designed to collect the
majority of the waste from the system.
As it's draining I move the pump around to stir up the waste and sometimes I'll even
use a net or something to help with this process.
Once it's empty I'll move the pump to one of the big tubs and start refilling the barrel
while the tub is draining.
This saves me a bit of time.
Once the barrel is full it's usually about the right time to stop the pump.
Then I just move the water hose over to the tub and let it fill up.
Doing all of this doesn't quite give me a 50% water change on the system but it's close
enough.
If I really want to do a big one I can just drain the other tub as well.
Once the water level is high enough I put everything away and start the pumps that are
plumbed into the system.
The water level in the tubs rise as the water level in the sump goes down until it reaches
its normal operating level.
This process also takes about an hour and I do it every couple of weeks, though now
that I have some plants added to the system I can start to back off from that a bit.
Of course this depends on how many fish I have in the system and how much I'm feeding.
Now obviously I would love to automate all of this, and I may do it at some point.
But certainly not until I've at least upgraded the drains.
I would then need to figure out a good way to refill all of the tanks at once without
much intervention and that will take some planning.
But knowing me I will do it because I can't leave well enough alone.
The only other regular maintenance I do down here, other than the 5 minutes or so each
day feeding the fish,
is cleaning sponges.
Every couple of months or so I'll clean out my sponge filters in a bucket of tank water.
And while I'm doing that I also clean out the sponges in the aquaclear filters that
I run on a few of these tanks.
It only takes me half an hour max.
So not too bad.
And that's about it.
Everything else is just random projects.
If you'd like more info about any of this, I have in depth videos about the drip system,
drain systems, fill system, etc and I'll put links to them down in the description.
And hopefully if you have a fishroom some of this has given you some ideas or things
to think about.
So let me know what you think down in the comments
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Have a good one!