Bettarazzi

But but but ... That tank is looooooong gone! *lol*

Well done! Guppies are so hard to photograph. Where did you get your N Class endlers from? Which strain are they?

So if there's going to be an unbiased celebrity judge we can post work in-progress shots and even get design advice from the forum.

I just want to make sure everyone understands that FULL payment before shipping means that you must pay the Aquabid seller AND you must pay Fishchick Aquatics for the quarantine and local (Australian) shipping fees BEFORE your purchase will be cleared to leave Thailand. Previously we only paid the Aquabid seller upfront. We only paid Jodi once the fish were ready to be shipped from Brisbane to us. Now you must pay everything before they leave Thailand or they won't be included in the shipment. This change will ensure that Jodi doesn't incur quarantine and shipping costs for fish which are subsequently abandoned. Even if she managed to sell the abandoned fish she may not necessarily recoup the costs. Let's all do the right thing and so we can all continue to enjoy this service.

Welcome to the forum Brenton. Sorry for the delay in approving your post. You've come to the right place. Plenty of people here to help you out.

Why don't you make it a shrimp only tank but do a proper aquascape on it? Then it can be a nice display tank.

Love an intro with pics! Welcome!

This is the lighting calculator I was thinking of. http://www.tropicalfishcentre.co.uk/Calc.htm. There might be better ones out there.

A 6ft tank would need a lot more lighting than that. Somewhere there's a lighting calculator that works out how much wattage you need depending on the depth of the water and how high the lights are above the tank. I don't have the link handy, maybe someone else knows where it is. I can look for it later if no one else finds it first.

Before we give you full access could please expand a little on your fishkeeping experience, how long you've been in the hobby etc.

Woohoo! Wasn't expecting a taker! You're ON. Let's see... maybe this weekend?

No the 3D drawing was done in Google SketchUp which I found quite challenging. But that was probably because I was quite impatient when it came to watching the tutorials. When it came to drawing the actual racks I didn't do it 3D. Still used SketchUp but just made 2D drawings.

Thanks Les. I might just take you up on that.

No. We demolished and rebuilt our house. Not just so I could have a fishroom. It was cheaper than renovating and a lot cheaper than buying something else. To get the same result that is. Anyway, a fishroom was part of the plan. For just a little bit more the builder did the tiling and waterproofing. For a total woodworking noob it has been extremely challenging. Not only am I inexperienced, I'm learning everything off YouTube! Fortunately I had the good sense to do a few test cuts and I made a test joint. But it's far from perfect. I just hope my mistakes don't compromise the strength of the things. This first rack is going to hold 800kg. If it fell on me I won't be getting up again. The big rack I'm building next is going to hold 1.4 tonnes! BTW if anyone wants to 'share' the experience you're welcome to help me build the next one. BYO drill and protective gear and more clamps. :P

Yeah go on. Make it again.

Ok I haven't completely finished the rack. But here's a pic anyway of an almost completed first rack. Another thing I learnt is that you can't have enough big clamps. Or small clamps. Or in-between sized clamps. I couldn't get far enough away to get the whole rack in the shot. I could carry on putting it together. Still lots more pieces to screw in. Or I could go watch Game of Thrones... :P/>/> Oh another thing I learnt is if you make the counter sink hole too deep, it looks really stupid. And you can't fix it.

One of the things I've learnt in this project is that it's really hard to ask all the questions you need to ask. And when you're like me and you just don't know anything about carpentry or plumbing or RO filters... well let's just say there were a few surprises which I now have to work around. I wanted to automate the water changes by having tap water go through a filter to remove chlorine, chloramine and other nasties. I also wanted to have an RO filter in the room so I could keep soft water species like wild bettas. So I was delighted when I found this filter which could produce both pH 7 water for most of the fish AND produce RO water when I needed it. BUT I neglected to explain exactly how I wanted to do this to the filter seller (not that he really had anything that would do exactly what I wanted). Anyway, I won't be able to automate quite as much. PLUS the water output is sloooooooow. It would take a day to fill my storage containers. Also there is a huge amount of waste water. You can use the waste water on the garden but it's still too much if I was using it for all water changes. So the plan now is to just go back to using it as an ad hoc RO unit only for soft water species. I really didn't ask enough questions about how the plumbing would need to work. Although unless you actually have a friend who is a plumber who can explain everything to you, you just have to get a plumber in and go from there. So the plumbing sits a lot higher than I expected and I have had to modify my racks a bit so the lowest tanks will still be higher than the siphoning points. Here are a couple of pics of the plumbing.

It's actually not empty. It's FULL of rubbish. LOL. No, not rubbish. The old shelving is in there and a half built rack which hopefully will be finished tonight or tomorrow depending on whether I can make it to Bunnings before they close tonight.

I'm planning on being able to hold at least 40 bettas in beanie boxes and there will be another 16 in slightly larger tanks (20x20x20cm). I would have liked to have a lot more but I want to be able to breed other fish. In addition to the betta barracks the tanks I already listed in the first post, there will be 18 x 2ft tanks, 8 x 18in tanks and a 4ft x 16in x 16in which I inherited from a friend. I'll be able to control my guppy lines a bit better. And be able to get back into killies. And I'd like to dabble a little bit with cories and dwarf cichlids.

OK so I’m finally starting a thread about my new fishroom. Work on it actually started a few weeks ago but it’s been going really slow. The great master plan went out the window almost instantly. The intention was to have the fishroom almost completely set up before moving the tanks and fish but I had problems getting ready made racks. And right at the last minute I had to simply move everything as is and just work around the current tanks. Anyway here is a pic of what was done as part of the new house build. Bedroom converted to ‘wet’ room ie tiled and waterproofing applied. They put in the laundry tub and a gas heater which you can’t see. This is a rough plan I did in SketchUp. I didn’t draw in the racks. Just where I wanted the tanks. The next step was to get some plumbing done. This was much, much more expensive than I expected and there were quite a few hassles getting a plumber to actually turn up. I won’t bore you with the details and spare myself from reliving it. But the plumbing is done now. I had an extra tap put in which is in addition to the tap over the laundry. I wanted a dedicated tap which I could have permanently setup to go into a couple of large water storage tanks it’s also connected to an RO filter. I’ll get photos of the plumbing and the filter at some stage. Where I’m at now is building the aquarium racks. After weeks of researching ready-made racks I actually ended up deciding to build them myself out of wood. Probably not that sensible an idea considering I have zero woodworking experience. But the price of building the racks myself was hugely lower than getting someone else to do the same thing and mind-bogglingly lower than getting something custom built in metal. And the good thing is that I don’t have to rely on anyone else. No disrespect to tradies but some of you can be really tiresome to deal with. Had to buy a power saw and a few other bits and pieces. The power saw really scared me and I proscratinate quite a while before I finally plucked up the courage to get started. So this is the result of all that cutting. This pile of wood is just a single rack which will hold 2 x standard 3 footers, 2 x custom shorter 3 footers, 1 x 2ft tall, 1 x standard 4 foot. This rack has 6 upgrights, 8 horizontals and 14 width spacers. On the bottom you can see the joints I made in the uprights. Reasonably pleased with those. They’re not as tight as I would like but they’ll work. And I’ll be able to get them better I think on the next rack. Unfortunately because the old shelving and tanks are already in the room assembling the racks is quite challenging. Can’t assemble outside because they’re to big to move into the room. So I’ve had to assemble them in the room and just work with the tiny amount of space available. Just putting together 3 uprights and 4 horizontals took a good hour on the Sunday and I needed help to hold things up because there wasn’t space to lay anything on the floor. Well actually, I did the holding because the person helping was an alpha male type who despite knowing nothing about how the rack goes together and having not much more wookworking experience than I, still had to be in control of the drill. There was a fair bit of swearing during that hour. And then I had to go to Mother’s Day celebrations and didn’t end up doing any more on Sunday. Yesterday however I managed to do more work on it and I did it all by myself. Hah! I didn’t listen to any of the advice from all the aquarium rack “experts” who have suddenly materialised out of nowhere. Didn’t finish but I reckon the first rack should be done tonight.

Hi cotts41. Before we give you full access could please expand a little on your fishkeeping experience, how long you've been in the hobby etc. Once you've done that you can post in the Classifieds about the whiteworms.

Hmm... That's a new one. Have you tried a different browser or machine?

Well done! I think we might need some close up pics. What plants did you use? You could probably stabilise it with the little silicone or felt pads you can buy in supermarkets. If the bottom is curved or uneven then use three of those pads and it should work. Failing that maybe a coil of rope for it to sit on?

Supposed to be getting the keys this Friday, the day after tomorrow! Maybe... hopefully... fingers crossed... possibly just jinxed it. Sigh. Yes it's been forever. And I'm struggling to muster any kind of excitement. We made the decision to build in November 2011 and had the first draft of the plan a month later. Sigh. Don't make me relive it. But you can understand my lack of enthusiasm. I'm currently working on all the bits that I need to do in the fishroom. Will start a thread when I have the energy and something to show.