Aquarium Rooms and Breeding Batteries

Sooner or later the keen aquarist decides that he must have a room or separate house set apart for his fishes. By this time he will usually have a dozen tanks or more in odd corners all over the house, or perhaps concentrated in one section where they tend to spread out in an alarming manner. He will be getting tired of makeshift arrangements, water on the carpets, and perhaps a mounting electricity bill which could be much reduced by heating and lighting all the tanks in a confined space by a really efficient system.

When this stage is reached it is best to find or provide the space to be devoted to fishes, and then to plan very carefully how to utilize it to best advantage. It is best not to decide that the room shall house say, 40 tanks and then go out and place an order for the lot, plus shelving or stands and all the rest of the paraphernalia. It may be very depressing when it arrives, and so will be the bill. It is much better, instead, to build the room up slowly, although with a set plan (which may well undergo many improvements as experience is gained). By this method, the tanks, the plants, and the fishes keep pace, so that as new types are acquired and bred, they can be accommodated and shown to good advantage. Plants can be taken from existing tanks and set into the new ones, and in the course of perhaps a year the room will be a fully going concern.

Heating and Heat Conservation

The tropical aquarium room is usually heated as a unit, the commonest type of heater being a coke stove and hot water pipes. The pipes run under the racks of tanks and are the source of heat. It is exceptional to include radiators, but the general principle is the same as ordinary central heating for the home, which  may, in fact, be extended to include the fishes' quarters. Other heating methods are by oil stoves, steam pipes, or anthracite-type stoves built in the fish room, but the most useful alternative to hot water pipes is electricity. This has the advantage that thermostatting of the whole room is simpler; and the electric heating may be by tubular attachments, radiators, or even radiation panels.

If electricity is used for heating the fish room, it is the author's opinion that the most sensible place to put it is into the tanks, by immersion heaters. Less current is thereby wasted heating the air of the room, and greater comfort is achieved for the operator, who does not have to work in the hothouse atmosphere that develops when the room heats the tanks, instead of the tanks heating the room. With such an arrangement and with 30 or 40 fair-sized tanks receiving a total of perhaps 2 or 3 kilowatts much of the time, the room is pleasantly heated and additional tanks for all but the tenderest species can be used without separate heating elements. A room in the author's home measuring 12 X 1+ feet approximately in floor area and containing some 400 gallons of water heated to about 75°F. is rarely below 65°F., even when the outside temperature is 45°F., and if the room were properly insulated the temperature would be even higher, for it has two singlethickness glass walls from waist-height to ceiling.

In temperate regions, where the temperature is likely to be freezing outside or even to drop much more severely, it is almost essential to insulate the tropical fish room by any of the common methods used for home insulation. Much heat is lost from the top of such rooms, and it will pay to give particular attention to this factor, double-glassing skylights, for instance, even if lower windows are left single. As we saw when discussing heat loss from a single aquarium, the rate at which heat is lost mounts as the difference between inside and outside temperature increases, more rapidly than the difference itself, so that rooms with a very large drop from inside to outside must be insulated as efficiently as possible. This is just as important when the source of heat is fed into the aquaria, for the ultimate loss is to the exterior of the tank room.

It is common practice to make floor pools, and even some tanks, from concrete or bricks covered by cement. These can be more efficiently made from aerated concrete, which can be bought in blocks and is a very efficient insulator.  

Covering such pools or large tanks, particularly at night, is also important. Removable night covers may be of wood or wood substitute, but any permanent covers must admit light. Floor tanks or pools present peculiar difficulties, as they do not receive so much heat from the surroundings in a thermostatted or circulator-heated room and are not often heated by immersion elements.

They have therefore a particular tendency to become or even to remain too cool and should be carefully watched as they may be a source of outbreaks of disease in tropicals.

Lighting Arrangements

If possible, overhead light should be admitted in excess of side (window) light and may even be the only source of light. In temperate regions, half to all of the roof of a fish room should be of glass, which can be suitably shaded when necessary in summer, preferably by adjustable louver-type shades. In winter, all the light available will be welcome. In warmer climates, a surprisingly small amount of light needs to be admitted, and if top light alone is to be used it will be sufficient in latitudes of 25 to 40 degrees to have about one-fifth to one-fourth glass and three-fourths to four-fifths solid roof; in the tropics even less glass is sufficient.

An excess of light is not particularly harmful as such, but it is a nuisance if it causes overgrowth of algae, green water, and excessive plant growth in general. The biggest trouble, however, is the overheating which occurs in warmer climates when too much glass is used. Glass has the valuable property, when used in moderation, of admitting the heat rays of the sun but retaining the lower-temperature radiation from warm objects inside the room. It therefore acts as a heat trap, well-known to gardeners, and can cook fish in a greenhouse with great efficiency. Otherwise, glass is not a very good insulator and  conducts heat fairly well, although it does not readily transmit the longer heat waves, to which it is opaque. Quite thick glass—1 inch or so—is needed for good insulation, or much cheaper, double glass, with an insulating air space of an inch or even less. If the room has no separate roof, best use must be made of the windows. It will be found that the tanks nearest the windows get too much light, whereas those farthest off probably get too little and also get it too obliquely. Much can be done by shading those tanks which need it, and by  painting and keeping the upper part of the room white. Next best to overhead light is diffuse light, which doesn't come from any particular direction, and this is attained by adequate ceiling and upper-wall reflection. So far, we have considered the use of daylight. This may need to be supplemented with artificial light in the darker parts of the room which does not have skylights, or, if cost is no object, electric light may be used almost exclusively. If it is, there is much to be said in favor of fluorescent lighting, for there will need to be plenty of light.

It will probably not be desirable to illuminate each tank separately, if only because of the cost and awkwardness when tanks are in tiers or banks. Instead, really powerful overhead lighting is needed, and in order not to be a source of unwanted heat in already hot weather fluorescent tubes are almost mandatory. Fitted with good reflectors and placed above the tanks at a distance of 1 to 3 feet from the tank surface,  something in the neighborhood of 20 watts of warm white fluorescent lighting is needed per foot run of tanks, to be used 10 hours a day. The lower tanks in a fish room will be a bit bleak and may need supplementary light unless there is plenty of cross-illumination from several lights in different parts of the room.

In addition to the general overhead lighting it will be necessary to provide for one or two additional movable lamps which can be placed over or behind tanks for special observation, or for the encouragement of plants or for spawning the fishes. A generous allowance of electric points should therefore be planned, although these can all stem from a single power plug.

The Tanks

Tanks may be arranged in strictly vertical tiers, or they may be staggered in such fashion that they receive adequate top light and may easily be serviced. The only reason for a vertical arrangement with each row directly above the one below it would seem to be the conservation of space, as there is otherwise little in its favor. Not only do the tanks receive less natural light, and that in part from the wrong angle, but also the rows must be spaced fairly wide apart, so that there is room above each tank to get at it, to insert a light or a net and the arm when needed. This means at least 6 and preferably 8 inches between the top of one tank and the bottom of the next.

With a staggered arrangement, there need be little space between successive  rows, or even none at all if the base of one tank clears or nearly clears the top of the tank below. When there is complete clearance, it looks very neat to overlap the tanks slightly so that the top of one hides the lower edge of the next above it. If the tanks are large, or rather wide from back to front, this arrangement makes the topmost tank difficult to service, and the best general arrangement is a moderate horizontal overlap which leaves at least two-thirds of  each tank top exposed. Such a plan allows four rows of small to average-sized tanks, with the lowest 2 feet clear of the floor and the top of the highest still
within arm's reach. If the stands or shelves holding the tanks are against the wall, there is room to squeeze behind and attend to any trouble; if they are in the center of the room, there is ample room to get below the double set of tiers that will normally be set up.

It is preferable to use skeleton shelving for aquaria, as the whole of the aquarium is visible and may be inspected at any time. With even the largest tanks it is sufficient to support only the long sides of the base. For the same  eason, it is best to leave spaces between tanks on the same self; a few inches is enough. They may then be trans-illuminated easily for spotting fry, and the arm can be inserted between them when fixing the various auxiliary gadgets with which one is always experimenting. The most satisfactory type of shelving, which can be rapidly erected and dismantled for storage, is one of the giant "Meccano"-like slotted angles. These are supplied in 6-, 8-, or 10-foot lengths  with supplies of nuts and bolts, and they are readily cut with a hacksaw to any desired length. Their strength is usually sufficient to support up to 18 inches of water per shelf, with supports at 4-foot intervals; more water can be supported if there are more upright members.

If a room inside the house is adapted as a fish room, do not neglect to obtain advice on the load-bearing capacity of the floor. Water is extremely weighty in the masses likely to be housed in a fair-sized room, which may not be designed to support a constant dead weight of perhaps 3 to 4 tons. An outside or  ground-level room with concrete floor pools may carry up to 10 or 12 tons of water, but this is easily taken care of when laying the floor in the first place.

Aeration

A fish room is best fitted with a central aeration system, with a reliable pump of adequate capacity for all needs—which does not necessarily mean aeration to all tanks. If the room is purely for exhibition purposes and not for breeding or other more experimental work, the aeration lines may be cunningly concealed behind stands and run under the sand of the tanks to stones. If, as is more often the case, the purpose of the room is more mutable, with aeration needed now here and now there and with some tanks likely to be emptied and shifted at frequent intervals, then a more workmanlike arrangement is best, with loose aeration lines which can be placed elsewhere in a few minutes.

A good plan is to run as many of the electricity and air lines as possible above the tanks, on the ceiling or high up on the walls. This keeps them out of the way, easy to get at, and safer than they otherwise would be.

Water and Drainage

It pays in trouble saved to lay water from the mains to the fish room and to put in drainage. Some even prefer to have a waste pipe running below each rack of tanks with small holes so that a siphon tube can be inserted at any point and water run off to the outside, or into a receptacle for storage. It is quite satisfactory, however, to have a tap over a waste line in a corner of the room, and a hose running to any part of the room with a corresponding siphon hose which is run into the drain. As an alternative, incoming water may run into a cistern placed high on the wall, so that a head of water exists to any tank.
If the cistern is of good size, say 20 gallons at least, it will contain sufficient conditioned water at the right temperature to meet any normal requirement and will automatically top up as water is drawn off. If this plan is not used, and if the local water supply is dangerous with- out maturation, than a storage tank of some kind, perhaps one of the aquaria themselves, must be pressed into service. It will be recalled that up to 10% of winter or 25% of summer tap water is safe without any maturation, even in the most highly chlorinated localities.

Quarantine Tanks

The wise aquarist will maintain strict quarantine rules in his fish room. The quarantine tanks need not always be the same tanks, though it is perhaps best if they are, so that you don't forget which tank is in quarantine. If different tanks are used at different times it is a good plan to stick a readily noticed label on the glass or even to color the water with a little methylene blue or brilliant green, which will do no harm and may do good.

A quarantine tank must be tightly covered, and it should be separately serviced from the rest. No nets or instruments of any kind including fingers, thermometers, and siphons—must be used in the tank without immediate and thorough washing, or, better still, sterilization in the case of instruments and nets. The best medium for sterilization is boiling water for half a minute or hot water (160°F.) for 5 to 10 minutes, which will kill most things that are undesirable.

Fishes newly received should remain in quarantine for at least 2 weeks, preferably 3 weeks if the temperature is not above 70°F. They should be carefully watched and any signs of disease treated immediately. Do not, on the other hand, treat without cause, as many treatments weaken the fishes and are harmful, although necessary for disease eradication. At the end of the quarantine period it is not advisable to put the new fishes into a community of others even then, for they are still likely to be carrying disease which they do not show but which others will contract. The best way to test for this is to place a spare fish in with them—this can be done straight away while they are in quarantine—and see if it also remains healthy. This extra measure of precaution has saved the author from probable disaster several times. The common guppy is not a good subject, as it is tough and resistant to some ills and does not show white spot very noticeably, even though it is very susceptible and often dies of it. A spare platy or characin is much better, and since white spot is the disease most to be guarded against it pays to recall that Hemigrammus ocellifer and Hy-
phessobrycon flammeus seem particularly susceptible to it and are therefore excellent test subjects. Another good test fish is Barbus nigrofasciatus.

Isolation tanks for fishes removed from communities because of disease or injury should be similarly run, with the exception that the inmates will usually be  receiving treatment. Both quarantine and isolation tanks are best left unplanted and bare, save for a handful of loose plants—any will do, but those naturally without roots such as Cerato-phyllum or Nitella look best. Then, if treatment is needed, there will be less chance of the drugs being destroyed by mulm or other tank contents, and the job of cleaning and sterilizing afterwards will be much easier. These tanks should also be small ones, which have thinner glass and so can be sterilized with hot water, which take a small water volume so that the amount of drug needed is less, and which can more readily be shifted and filled and emptied without much danger of developing a leak. Tanks of 3 to 5 gallons' capacity are about right; even 1- or 2-gallon tanks may be used for individuals or pairs receiving treatment.

Breeding Batteries

A battery of smallish unplanted tanks is also best for breeding most species. These tanks can also be sterilized easily and moved about, and if they are kept in a battery under a common thermostat the rather higher temperature  appropriate to breeding in most tropicals and for raising fry is provided to all tanks. The various methods for preparing and using these tanks are described in the chapters concerned with breeding. To some, the sterilized, almost bare and ugly-looking breeding tank advocated here may seem rather a shame, and it also may be something of a surprise to those who have been used to providing the
first food by means of natural infusurial growth in the breeding tank itself. However, the results achieved by more rigorous and scientific methods are also a surprise to the older school of breeders, many of whom were content with growing perhaps 20 or 30 young anabantids from a spawning instead of several hundred to a thousand or so. Such results should be fairly regularly achieved when desired, with fully adult fishes as parents.

Mention of breeding tanks also reminds us that, where any appreciable amount of breeding is in progress, one or more tanks of infusoria will probaby be needed. Unheated tanks of 5 to 10 gallons are about right for this, with a good stream of air through them.

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