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600 gallon quarantine system


Hydro

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I'm setting up a system to quaratine fish and also to house breeding pairs of fire shrimp. The rack will hold a 90 gallon on bottom, 75 gallon in the middle rack, and a 55 gallon on top. There is also another stand that is being built that will sit beside the pictured rack on a 90 degree angle that will hold another 55 gallon tank. The 55 gallon on top of the rack would just be for medications and would not plumbed in to the main system. Both 75's and the other 55 would be plumbed together, the bottom 75 gallon acting as the sump and part of the 55 gallon will be a dedicated refugium. There will be a rack with kresiel tanks also for shrimp larvae. It will all make more sense as I put it together, just getting started.

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Thats really sweet. Are the fire shrimp hard to breed?

With a mated pair they are easy to breed, very hard to raise larvae though. This is where I started

http://nsgl.gso.uri.edu/tamu/tamug01003.pdf

Since then I've read a couple of books and reseach papers to learn more.....then I read books to learn how to raise larvae's food...then I read books on how to raise food for the larvae's food lol. I've probably spent 9 months now just researching this. The trick isn't raising them, that's been done before, the trick will be efficiently raising them so that it can actually be profitable. I have a plan, we will see if it works.

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Let me know if you want to borrow a stud.

I've got a nice fat healthy fire I've had for a couple months now, who I know could woo all your females. Unless it turns out he's a she, then, well, sorry.

wink.png

Well I wish that it was that simple. Fire fish are cannibls and are really mean to each other. I've already lost 2 fire shrimp trying to get them to pair up. I finally bought a mated pair from live aquaria but I still worry about them, they seem aggressive to each other too.

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Nothing like rough sex. In maintaining a Galveston Bay Biotheme, I observed brown shrimp cannabalistic behavior. I suspect, that it is the rule and not the exception.

I have two books, that could provide some info:

"Plankton Culture Manual" Fifth Edition by Frank Hoff. It is the bible on phytoplankton culture.

"How to Raise and Train Your Pepermint Shrimp" by April Kirkendoll. This is a hobbiest guidebook to raising saltwater aquarium shrimp from egg to adult.

You are welcome to use them.

Patrick

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Nothing like rough sex. In maintaining a Galveston Bay Biotheme, I observed brown shrimp cannabalistic behavior. I suspect, that it is the rule and not the exception.

I have two books, that could provide some info:

"Plankton Culture Manual" Fifth Edition by Frank Hoff. It is the bible on phytoplankton culture.

"How to Raise and Train Your Pepermint Shrimp" by April Kirkendoll. This is a hobbiest guidebook to raising saltwater aquarium shrimp from egg to adult.

You are welcome to use them.

Patrick

Thanks Patrick, that is nice of you to offer. I actually have both of those books, they were some of the first that I read when I was thinking about getting in to this.

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Stephen - I've got two fire shrimp that hang out with each other full time with no issues. Do you know if that is because they may be mates or is that just normal social behavior?

for sure a mated pair, I'm sure they are making fish food about every 10 days or so. Your lucky, so far this is pretty hard to do.

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  • 1 month later...

Ok so with many setbacks things are getting back on track. I bought used tanks for this project and literally had to work on eveyone of them. The 90 gallon had to be cut apart and resiliconed, the 75 had a crack in the bottom that I had to repair twice, I broke the back glass of the refugium drilling it and then broke the bottom trying to get the back off, got a free 40 gallon for a sump that had a broken panel, fiberglassed an arogonite bottom in 2 of the tanks and had to then put epoxy to cover the fiberglass, had to send the stand out twice to change dimensions, had a couple leaks, blah blah blah

So tomorrow I'm putting in the 90 gallon and filling it, I'm also filling the 75 gallon for the first time and connecting both to the sump. Currently there is a 55 gallon with a couple of fish in it that has been running for a couple weeks now. Its connected to the sump and everything is cycling. The refugium is built and there is some macro in it thanks to subsea. I built a sand filter that I will also be installing tomorrow. I'll get better pics of everything tomorrow, but this is how it sets now. There will be another 55 gallon mounted on top of the stand but a friend is borrowing it right now to QT his fish. The 90 goes in that big hole in the middle of the stand.

I'm also building a 250 gallon tank that will be a separate system setup on the other side of the room. I got some glass from a tank with a busted bottom and I'm rebuilding the tank with a plywood bottom. This would give me about 600+ gallons total.

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What are you using to waterproof the plywood bottom of the 250g?

I'm going to use pond armour pond shield. Its a non toxic epoxy that is made for just this type of thing.

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Thanks guys! Slowly but surely.

This is where I left off yesterday. I found out my 4" aqua-tunnels float lol. I'm sure they will sink once they soak up water, none of my older mag-rocks will float. Today I'm hooking up the second pump, a second manifold, the sand bed filter, and the 75 gallon tank.

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What are you using to waterproof the plywood bottom of the 250g?

I'm going to use pond armour pond shield. Its a non toxic epoxy that is made for just this type of thing.

This guy build built a 237g plywood tank using only ZavLar liquid rubber for waterproofing:

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I'm building my sump out of a 40 gallon long tank. Because of the tight space underneath the stand there is no room for the skimmer or filter socks. I'm going to put the skimmer in the 55 gallon that goes on top which fixes that problem. For filtration I'm building a custom return box with a flat filter inside. Water will flood the small perforated box and drip over a flat filter before flowing out the side of the box. The returns for both pumps are underneath the filter box. I made this with scraps leftover form other projects. I'm not done but should be tomorrow. I'll get some complteted pics of it before I leave for Califonia.

I will have the sand bed filter hooked up tomorrow too. Everything is really close to being ready at this point. I'm trying to get as much as I can before I leave so it can be cycling while I'm gone.

The valves on the bottom of the sump are just to hold the glass in place whille the silicone dries.

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  • 2 weeks later...

As I mentioned above I have a 250 gallon tank with a busted bottom. Actually it was just a stack of glass when I got it. I priced out doing a plywood bottom and considering the time it was going to take to epoxy it and the cost of everything it was just as cheap to buy a piece of 1/2" tempered glass instead of the original 3/4" non tempered glass that broke. I had a stand built by my neighbor, got it painted, cut the wood for the top, stained and polyed to wood, the bottom glass and the eurobrace strips arrived, I cleaned up the original pieces of glass and siliconed on my eurobraces. Next I will assememble the glass panels.

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Well it looks like I won't be assembling this until next weekend. The glass is scratched bad and I found a place that will polish out the front panel for $100. Well worth it for a tank that size, I have to take it to them next week.

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