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Denny's Fish Room is now located in northwest Arkansas, transplanted from northwest Indiana in the fall of 2006. My fish room is now almost complete, at least as far as fish rooms are ever get completed. I'm currently running over 50 tanks with around 1800 total gallons of water. Sizes range from 10 gallons to 90 gallons. When it became obvious we were going to be moving to Arkansas, I decided to set up my fish room to be as self sufficient as possible. As a result, I've got a total of 6 different piping systems incorporated in my setup. Virtually all of my tanks are drilled, and split up between 6 separate recirculating systems. Each system has a sump and filter. The water is pumped into the tanks from the sump. As the water level rises in the tanks, it overflows into the drain pipes and is returned to the sump through the filter . I also have water level float controllers in each of the sumps to add water lost through evaporation or siphoning, and a system of pipes that go directly to the floor drains for when I siphon my tanks. This system of pipes going to the floor drain is also connected to an overflow built into each sump. In addition, I did put an in-line valve in the water supply line to my tanks which constantly dumps system water into the floor drain using drip emitters. Finally, I also have a single air blower to supply air to all of my tanks which supply air to sponge filters in each tank
The water supply system, water return system, and the air system are probably self-explanatory. The other systems may require a little more explanation. The water level control system consists of a float valve located in each sump. This float valve opens as the water level in the sump falls thereby maintaining a constant water level in the sumps. When water levels fall, it's always in the sump and therefore that's the place where you have to control the amount of total water in your system. The floating valves are piped directly into the house water lines using a self-tapping valve commonly used to install the water supply to ice makers. As an aside, when you have a power failure, the water level in the sump rises to a high level which can overflow the sump if an overflow discharge is not provided (depending on the size of your sump).
I decided to install a system of pipes that would discharge directly into the floor drain. My incentive to do this was based on being lazy and not wanting to have to siphon into buckets or other containers which would have to be manually emptied after filling. This then lent itself to the installation of valves to constantly discharge water from the system into the pipes going to the floor drain. In effect, what I've done is converted my system into a modified flow-through system that has filtration. I control the discharge rate by using drip emitters after these valves. I happen to use 1 gallon per hour emitters and my systems have approximately 300 to 500 gallons total. This means I'm automatically doing a 5-10% water change everyday.
It appears that my system is working out quite well, although there is some maintenance required and small problems that do crop up that need to be corrected. I hope this description is clear and has given you ideas you can incorporate into your own systems. Let me know if you need more detailed explanations.
Denny
Contact me at: fishystuff42@yahoo.com