Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- articles for AC / Bottle tanks
From: Todd D. Crail (tcrail-in-UTNet.UToledo.Edu)
Date: Wed Nov 17 2004 - 13:35:35 CST
I've used 30 and 40 gallon Sterilite storage containers as tanks and or
sumps and they work fabulously. The trick is to not get too tall with it.
The more squatty, the better they are. I ran one for a year and a half and
it never bowed a bit. I'm sure the killi guys have these all over their
yards in the summer :)
A "multi-system" gets a lot of things down... Like now you have 1 system to
test, rather than 200. You have the stability of a 400 gallon system,
instead of 200 2 gallon systems. Waterchanges and redelivery of the water
are central and nice n easy. And you reduce a lot of heat and energy use by
having one central pump that is efficient moving a larger head of water.
Aeration is taken care of by gravity, so you loose all those air pumps too.
Downside is... You get a leak or a clogged return "bulkhead"-in-any point,
and you just drained however much water was in your sump on the floor :)
...and there's a fair amount of engineering that goes into these things,
especially if you have multiple levels on the display rack.
Of course, you can always just supply the top row of tanks from the sump and
then put in stand pipes to drain to the next level below, and in a repeating
fashion. That could be pretty slick. A lot of pvc work though... Pretty
easy to do though if you're comfortable working with pvc. Male and female
adapters with washers and a light bead of silicone to interface through the
bottom of the "tank". Some glue here and there on the piece going into the
tank below... An ell to give it direction... Man. I like this idea. :)
Maybe I'll do it with 10 and 5 gallon tanks here in the lab. They need to
fix the heat first tho... It's 82 degrees in here. Not real spiffy for
natives!
And on a side note... I had big multisystems-in-my shop (1000's of gallons).
In my freshwater system, I found that convict cichlids seemed to breed
whenever the pH dropped under 6.3. So I always kept them in one tank of the
system. When the carbonate buffer was eaten up by all the reduction in
nitrification... They'd spawn. Time to change the water! It was a
beautiful thing. Dates written on the glass are one thing... But a little
wiggler reminder is tops. :)
Todd
The Muddy Maumee Madness, Toledo, OH
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Smith" <jbosmith-in-gmail.com>
To: <nanfa-l-in-nanfa.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 1:55 PM
Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- articles for AC / Bottle tanks
> Talk to some killifish people and you will find that the 2.5 gallon
> plastic shoe or sweater boxes that you can get-in-any major retailer
> are also very popular small tanks. I once met a guy who said he had
> 200 fish tanks and I was like "Holy crap!" then I found out they were
> all sweater boxes with about 2 gallons of water in each and a central
> filtration/water change area and I wasn't quite as impressed. I'm sure
> it was still pretty amazing though. I have several of these containers
> myself made by sterlite .. they cost about $3 each.
>
> Jim
>
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: Fri Dec 31 2004 - 12:42:51 CST