Pictures of your breeding setup?
- Thread starter LiquidShaneo
- Start date
Dman
New member
damer,
The flow into the tanks is regulated by a simple and very cheap drum spigot
The flow out of the tank is another story and has taken some ingeniuety. I'll take some pictures of them tomorrow, lights are offf now.
jparadias, who are ya talkin to?
Dman
The flow into the tanks is regulated by a simple and very cheap drum spigot
The flow out of the tank is another story and has taken some ingeniuety. I'll take some pictures of them tomorrow, lights are offf now.
jparadias, who are ya talkin to?
Dman
Fishboy42
Premium Member
Well, my setup is at my home, but I work on it about 1hr/day and about 6-8 hours on the weekend. Not to bad considering how rewarding a hobby it can be. I would probably spend more time, but school, (real) work, life, etc, get in the way. Of course it depends on how big you want to go and how much you want to do, but if you have a system that is well-designed, it doesn't take too much time.
Dman
New member
Several projects on the go
Several projects on the go
Damer,
Sorry I hadn't gotten back to you until now, busy, busy, busy.
I needed a screen to keep the fishies from becoming sump bound (via a large bio-tower) had to be cheap, use parts I could easily attain and be flexible as well.
My pops actually came up with it, the black things are the plastic ends from rolls of bags he uses at work. (they go in each end of the cardboard core) So they're free
Next is the bulkhead fittings, cheap Home Depot electrical fittings on the inside quickly machined so the plastic thingys will fit on snug and usually plumbing fittings on the outside.
Finally I hot glue (after sanding the face) various size screens to the plastic thingys depending on the size of the fry. For the most part it's Nylon door screening from the local hardware store.
I keep a couple around to quickly swap out ones that get all gunky.
Here's the dry pic:
and the wet one:
mgregson,
I spend on average 3 hours per day on my systems. Tack on 45 minutes per on hatch days. Tomorrow I have three hatches to pull, it'll be a long day, close to 6 hours, that'll be after a day of digging a pond for a buddy.
David M,
They fit 3/4 inch thread perfectly and they are quite adjustable and dirt cheap, when they start to get sticky or give me a hard time I toss 'em.
Dman
Several projects on the go
Damer,
Sorry I hadn't gotten back to you until now, busy, busy, busy.
I needed a screen to keep the fishies from becoming sump bound (via a large bio-tower) had to be cheap, use parts I could easily attain and be flexible as well.
My pops actually came up with it, the black things are the plastic ends from rolls of bags he uses at work. (they go in each end of the cardboard core) So they're free
Next is the bulkhead fittings, cheap Home Depot electrical fittings on the inside quickly machined so the plastic thingys will fit on snug and usually plumbing fittings on the outside.
Finally I hot glue (after sanding the face) various size screens to the plastic thingys depending on the size of the fry. For the most part it's Nylon door screening from the local hardware store.
I keep a couple around to quickly swap out ones that get all gunky.
Here's the dry pic:
and the wet one:
mgregson,
I spend on average 3 hours per day on my systems. Tack on 45 minutes per on hatch days. Tomorrow I have three hatches to pull, it'll be a long day, close to 6 hours, that'll be after a day of digging a pond for a buddy.
David M,
They fit 3/4 inch thread perfectly and they are quite adjustable and dirt cheap, when they start to get sticky or give me a hard time I toss 'em.
Dman
David M
New member
I am expanding the system, the room is too narrow to get a full shot but here is the beginning of the rack, currently 8' but will be 14' when finished. Will hold a total of 30 tanks, 10, 15 and 20 gallons. The RK-2 bin and 70 gallon Kormex tub will the "heart" and filtration, I also have a large bio-ball tower to work in there somewhere. The wall behind is framed with metal studs and sheeted with 1-1/2" solid foam panels. The idea is to temp control the room, not the individual tanks. The small area of window still exposed will get framed in, insulated and hold a heat pump (heat/ cool unit).
David M
New member
Neat??? You gotta be kiddin', it's a mess. Actually Edward Ramirez was here a few years ago when I was getting started with seahorses, I had a hodge-podge rig of a dozen tanks or so, mostly connected with "U" tubes. I thouth it was a joke. Ed looked at it and said it was very impressive, "You should see some of the rinky-dink systems people use" he said. Made me wonder what kind of mousetrap configurations are really out there 
The blue stuff is bio-balls, tank is divided with a 55um screen. Heater and p-head in back, airline, rots & larvae in front. Passive flow through the screen. Seems to work quite well, no detectable ammonia for a month until I move them out & clean the tank for the next batch. Have not had any really large numbers though, mostly in the 80-120 range.
I have thought about the air compressor too but the noise would drive me nuts. I think if you had a larger auxilliary pressure tank and prevented any leakage it might work out, but the little portable units are probably not the answer. Plus I'd want to filter the output pretty well. Personally I have not bit the bullet and spent $ on a decent blower, I get by just fine on a few Lufts and a Schego M2K3. The Schego now costs less than the Luft and kicks it's butt so it is my pump of choice for small/med systems.
You gotta be kiddin', it's a mess. Actually Edward Ramirez was here a few years ago when I was getting started with seahorses, I had a hodge-podge rig of a dozen tanks or so, mostly connected with "U" tubes. I thouth it was a joke. Ed looked at it and said it was very impressive, "You should see some of the rinky-dink systems people use" he said. Made me wonder what kind of mousetrap configurations are really out there The blue stuff is bio-balls, tank is divided with a 55um screen. Heater and p-head in back, airline, rots & larvae in front. Passive flow through the screen. Seems to work quite well, no detectable ammonia for a month until I move them out & clean the tank for the next batch. Have not had any really large numbers though, mostly in the 80-120 range.
I have thought about the air compressor too but the noise would drive me nuts. I think if you had a larger auxilliary pressure tank and prevented any leakage it might work out, but the little portable units are probably not the answer. Plus I'd want to filter the output pretty well. Personally I have not bit the bullet and spent $ on a decent blower, I get by just fine on a few Lufts and a Schego M2K3. The Schego now costs less than the Luft and kicks it's butt so it is my pump of choice for small/med systems.
David M
New member
Just a quick thought on the compressor idea, I happen to have one so I may try it anyway. The only reason I would do this is that I also have an O2 tank for shipping, have been thinking it would be smart to have the system "plumbed" and ready in case of power failure, the O2 tank could probably run the whole system for several hours, maybe even a day or more. Actually with a big enough pressure tank you could probably get through a brief outage without any disruption at all just on the stored air.
Rsman is the "go to" design guy around here, I'll run it by him If you really wanted to get fancy you could have a solenoid valve to cotrol the source so if power failed it would automatically swith to the O2. Or better yet a pnuematic switch that would change over when the pressure from the compressed air tank ran out. Cool, eh? Now you got me all fired up - gotta do it 
Rsman is the "go to" design guy around here, I'll run it by him
If you really wanted to get fancy you could have a solenoid valve to cotrol the source so if power failed it would automatically swith to the O2. Or better yet a pnuematic switch that would change over when the pressure from the compressed air tank ran out. Cool, eh? Now you got me all fired up - gotta do it 
ediaz
Active member
The one I saw has the tank, plus wheels to move it around.I think it is used for painting, why filter the output? It sold for around 150, a blower goes for around 400, and it sounds like a plane landing. I was just guessing, at work, the machinists use them ans it has a lot of pressure, even more than a blower.
JMHO, but have you though of making the bio filters smaller? Like a corner of the tank a 2"x2" area and have more free space. You basically have half your gallonage in bio media.
Edgar
JMHO, but have you though of making the bio filters smaller? Like a corner of the tank a 2"x2" area and have more free space. You basically have half your gallonage in bio media.
Edgar
David M
New member
True, but I still have 7-8 gallons of bulk water no matter how you divide it up. This way the larvae and rots are concentrated into a smaller area and bottom siphoning is half the work of a bare ten gallon tank. I will certainly be experimenting but so far this is working very well. After 30 days or so I move them to a bare ten connected to the central system for grow out. Remember I am new at this and the design is constantly changing, I plan to drill those divided tens and hook them to the system soon. At first I tried to raise clownfish like seahorses - NOT. So this is "shoot from the hip" design.
The portablel compressors like you are talking about ( I have one for air driven tools) are VERY loud and the tank is so small they run constantly. I think you should listen to one for a while before blowing $150 :eek1: Also when they kick on there will probably be a surge(drain) on your electrical system, lights will dim and pumps will suffer. Not saying I don't like the idea, just that it will need some fine tuning. I will play around and let you know how it goes. Maybe start a thread in a DIY forum to get thoughts from some of the engineering types.
Morgman
New member
That would probably be fine. I know that at dive shops with electric compressors they have a series of at least 3 filters that help eliminate any contaiments moisture etc. If you smell your compressor when it is running its not the greatest smell. So some fumes may get pumped into a system if they are't filtered.
It would be a bad day if some fumes got sucked up into a compressor and killed your babies
It always safe to use murphy's law.
I am not arguing just bringing up the point.
It would be a bad day if some fumes got sucked up into a compressor and killed your babies
It always safe to use murphy's law.
I am not arguing just bringing up the point.
