DIY in progress perhaps?

I'm building out a new animal/fish/plant room. I have a 12'x12' room that was up until this week being used for storage. Well, it's still being used for storage some, since I haven't emptied it completely yet.

I know someone at a cactus farm who sent us a metric ton of cacti for the torts to eat. I decided to build shelves for them and then decided to empty the rest of the room for more tanks/tubs.

The room is currently unfinished. Concrete floor, and two walls. The other two are stud walls from where I built out other things.

There will be pluming, and there's a sump hole the next room over just in case. I also currently planning on building "stadium seating" for the plants, that would also fit 10g tanks. I have some PT wood step blanks, and I could make up to a 3'x8' stepped shelf for them. I mean not that I have a hell of alot of 10g tanks.

Anyway, I know some of you have very different setups/areas of expertise, and I was looking for some opinions on what you would do with the rest of the space.

Shelves with drilled tanks and a sump system? Individual tanks? The pond liner place said they could hook me up with a few hard shell liners, but they are all oddball shapes, so I would need to build some sort of rectangular frames for any of those. With enough support, I could use them in a stacked frame for Torts/Box Turtles. Filled with water I think may be too much weight tho.

Holy crap I'm jelous!

Suggestions Since you rescue fish you could do a wall of 20 - 30 gallon tanks sort of like an LFS would do. You could go 3 high and for the other wall you could do the turule thing. When I was buliding my tank I used 4"X4" post to create the legs for my stand. If you bulit the frame out of 4"X4" you then could cover the frame with plywood or subflooring to pull the frame together.

You could also seal the room off and fill it with water and creat one super tank

Cool, good luck!

I have pretty easy (and free) access to pressure treated wood, but yea, I was thinking about a fish store style set up but wasn't sure about the best plan for filtration. Separate filters for each tank would give the most flexibility, but be a pain in the butt to wire and keep track of. I don't want to limit myself to what sort of fishies I can take in so a sump system may not be the best answer either.

Maybe a cold water sump and heaters as necessary? Mark may have a good idea on that since he ran a fish store. It just seems like that's too easy a solution.

Some 30s would be nice, but I'm not sure what to do with the guaranteed homeless when they get big. The larger the fish gets the more and more it's odds of ever leaving here go down. I've been pretty lucky so far, and have been planning to an extent with the ones I know I'll be keeping, but for example right now I have one gigantic (10"ish) and extremely mean albino Oscar in. He's had everything you can imagine, and some wicked battle scarring besides. (One side has no scales and you could see what looked like it's bones.) There's a 12" channel cat in there with it that it likes for some reason, but it has made to kill (promptly and violently too) anything else I've tried putting even near the tank it's in. I'm not going to kill a healthy (tho fugly) fish, but who in their right mind would take that?

Maybe as far as tanks go, I need to wait until Petco does it's $1 a gallon sale again and get a few 55s. Maybe next year they'll do the 75s too.

Petcos $1 a gallon sale was a joke this year!

If you do a sump look into a UV sterilizer that way it can kill any bad bacteria that might be in the tanks.

Have you thought about selling the fish that have been in your care along time (the ones that arn't fugly)? It might help in funding your new room. There might be people on that mega forum that is dedicated to keeping mammoth fish who would want the channel cat.

If you can get PT wood you could bulid a rack for all of the tanks.

Really? I heard so long as you showed up the first day of the sale there was good stuff.

My kid would cry if I sold any of "his" catfish. So that ain't happening.

I never thought much about trying to sell anything. I've been toying around with the idea of adoption fees, I know some people won't mind, but I don't want to get into a his adoption fee is more than an animal at the store sort of situation that I've seen my friend go through a number of times.

Thanks to Lowes I've managed to add even more potential options. I stopped to get some dirt and the outside garden manager donated 2 flexible pond liners (the rolled up tarp type) one a 9x13' the other a 20x24' for the room. Your make a giant tank in the room may not be a bad idea after all.

Old post I know so not sure how relevant this is now,

But could always try craigslist/clubs/forums just advertise what your doing might be able to get a few "donations" of items to the cause but offer up say 50 cents- 1 dollar a gallon cant hurt

recently I have seen a few on my local C/L list for sale and only asking around 80 cents a gallon and some even came with stands.

Anything that you had that was unsable by you or otherwise became extra you could sell off.

As for overages of livestock could be handled the same way if you dont want to sell it then ask a rehome/adoption fee of a few dollars to help cover the cost of care alot of people dont mind paying if they know what it is going to be used for and not just because someone is trying to make a profit.

Maybe contact local schools or something about setting up a tank for them