Jim 's profile

Hi,
my name is actually Jim - keeps things simple. A Dub living in Kildare for nearly 20 years.

I have 10 tanks currently running:

1. 260l - setup for small CA cichlids but currently housing wild / f1 / f2 guppies.
2. 240l - ellioti & cutteri cichlids, hymenophysa loaches, odessa barbs
3. 300l + sump - running in - will probably use for malawis until I move house and then we're going over to the salty side!
4. 70l - guppies
5. 200l - Lake kutubu rainbows, large male cutter, few ancicstrus
6. 300l - amazon type setup + refugees - Bolivian Rams, Cardinals, gold tetras, L205s, loricarias, large SAEs, Clown loaches
7. 300l - tangs - ocellatus "blue", neolamprologus brichardi, Paracyprichromis nigripinnis
8. 200l - wild thorichthys aureus (Mexican blue firemouth), parkinsoni rainbows
9 200l - cutters cichlids, assorted refugees
10. 300l - setup & running in for small CA cichlids & maybe livebearers.

#1 is in the sitting room:




2 & 3 in the bedroom





the rest are in this mess (which never gets any tidier):





some of the parkinsoni rainbows:

nice setup,you have there

Nicely put together Jim.

10 nice sized tanks and a fine collection of fish.

2 questions for you.
Any photo's of the thorichthys aureus?
Where is the sunken ship and the deep sea diver with the bubbles coming out of the snorkel?

platty252 wrote:

Nicely put together Jim.

10 nice sized tanks and a fine collection of fish.

2 questions for you.
Any photo's of the thorichthys aureus?
Where is the sunken ship and the deep sea diver with the bubbles coming out of the snorkel?

thanks Darren & zx10r.

Here's a pic of the Aureus - his name is "grumpy" and he's an a$$#01€. His hobbies are killing and digging.




I gave away my galleon - have modernised and have a sunken helicopter instead!

Do i dare ask what the ESB bill is like ?

Love the aureus. I'm going to start keeping Thorichthys again soon. Where did you get him?

Lovely tanks Jim. Grumpy looks like a character alright

@darkslice - to be honest, I have no idea, but:

I've slowly been upgrading my filters so most are running between 16 & 43w. The room is the warmest in the house - only one external wall, in an extension that has a load of new insulation in the walls and roof - so tanks with no heater stay around 21c, so I reckon the heaters aren't on too much. Lights only on about 6 hrs per day.

@lemonjelly - got him in fins fur feathers, as it was. He was in a group of 6 wilds - he killed all the others - including the surviving females he bred with a few times . He now kills anything the same shape as him or that has any red colouring. Nuts compared to any thorichthys I ever had.id love to get a few more thorichthys species myself - been keeping an eye on jeff rapps and oddball express to see if some interesting stuff comes up,

Thanks Ski !

Jim wrote:

I have 10 tanks currently running:

1. 260l - setup for small CA cichlids but currently housing wild / f1 / f2 guppies.
2. 240l - ellioti & cutteri cichlids, hymenophysa loaches, odessa barbs
3. 300l + sump - running in - will probably use for malawis until I move house and then we're going over to the salty side!
4. 70l - guppies
5. 200l - Lake kutubu rainbows, large male cutter, few ancicstrus
6. 300l - amazon type setup + refugees - Bolivian Rams, Cardinals, gold tetras, L205s, loricarias, large SAEs, Clown loaches
7. 300l - tangs - ocellatus "blue", neolamprologus brichardi, Paracyprichromis nigripinnis
8. 200l - wild thorichthys aureus (Mexican blue firemouth), parkinsoni rainbows
9 200l - cutters cichlids, assorted refugees
10. 300l - setup & running in for small CA cichlids & maybe livebearers.

Can I ask how you manage the water changes on these?! Are you doing weekly or more/less often and what percentage?

I'd love to have this many tanks but I'd fear that I'd never be finished doing water changes!!

I'm thinking of getting a group of Thorichthys ellioti. Do they colour up as well as some of the photos online suggest? And how are they temperamentally compared to firemouths?

I've a 30l, 90l, 240l and dred water changes I do weekly 50% so I'd also like to no how you manage with these .

I split mine up. Tuesday is my 240 and Wednesday is my other two.

LemonJelly wrote:

I'm thinking of getting a group of Thorichthys ellioti. Do they colour up as well as some of the photos online suggest? And how are they temperamentally compared to firemouths?

Yep they colour up every bit as much as you see online. I found them less agressive than standard Firemouths, easy enough to breed and good parents (once theyd spawned a couple of times).

there's a pic of one of my own here :
www.irishfishkeepers.com/index.php?optio...id=133852&Itemid=200

@baan & Joe:


How to do 10 water changes:

First, my tanks are all understocked / lightly stocked. This gives me flexibility in moving things around, I feel it is better for the fish, but it also means that a 25% water change every 1-2 weeks keeps nitrates at zero and dilutes any fish hormones or other elements we don’t want in the tank.

I change 2 tanks at a time – 25% of 300l is 75l - so a 300l and one slightly smaller tank is done with a 120l water change.
For this, I have a 120l waterbutt in the fish room:





This is filled from a well, no treatment necessary. It comes in between 12 and 15c. I run air through it overnight, which brings it up to about 21c. If I need more than one refill in a single day, I have 2 x 300watt heaters in there – turning them on gets me 24c in a couple of hours.
The water is about ph 7.5 and fairly hard. I only have one tank for which I’d soften the water slightly. For this I add rainwater from a waterbutt just outside the fishroom window. (took me ages to get a square fitting for the drainpipe !)




For the water change, I use a wheelie bin to syphon the water in to. I use a couple of different sizes gravel cleaners as well as a garden hose wrapped with coathanger wire, which I can bend to any shape, fit into any gaps & reaches as far as I like. This latter one also allows me to better syphon from the surface of sand.






Once the first tank is drained, I use a submersible pump in the water butt to refill the tank.



I have to watch it, but I can do other stuff while this is going on, including starting the second tank. I can use a remote control on the power supply to turn off the refill, if I’m in the middle of draining another tank.



Once the two tanks are done, I refill the waterbutt using a hose in through the window.
When that’s done, I put the end of the hose into the wheelie bin (which is full of wastewater). I then disconnect the other end of the hose from the tap at the well and because the hose is full of water from refilling the waterbutt, it syphons everything straight out to wherever I want in the garden or down a drain.

A little over an hour on Saturday & same on Sunday gets me 4 tanks done. Until recently, only 7 of the tanks were up and running, so getting to the other 3 during the week was easy enough.

JohnH wrote:

Jim, on seeing this picture I thought it was my fishroom:
But after a second look I realised it couldn't be - it's far too tidy!
John

One day, I'm gonna have it so clean, you can walk in without falling over anything!

Is that the day you move house and empty the room

Jim wrote:

I change 2 tanks at a time – 25% of 300l is 75l - so a 300l and one slightly smaller tank is done with a 120l water change.
For this, I have a 120l waterbutt in the fish room:

Nice. This is part of my issue. I dont have space for an internal water storage. Therefore it's outside (water butt from downpipe with almost exact setup as yours - got my square drainpipe connection in B&Q!). During the summer, it's not too bad on a sunny day, but during winter I end up boiling pots to heat up each bucket I pour into the tank. I find 1-2 pots of water boiling into a large bucket brings it up to a usable temperature. This really slows down the process.

Jim wrote:

For the water change, I use a wheelie bin to syphon the water in to. I use a couple of different sizes gravel cleaners as well as a garden hose wrapped with coathanger wire, which I can bend to any shape, fit into any gaps & reaches as far as I like. This latter one also allows me to better syphon from the surface of sand.

That solves another problem. Will get hose integrate with hanger at the weekend. I have been using clear hosing, but it's not great and kinks way too easily. I'm loving the wheelie bin. I might just get one too!!

Jim wrote:

Once the first tank is drained, I use a submersible pump in the water butt to refill the tank.

Excellent. I was looking at getting one of these. However, I still have the issue with having my water outside. It would not be worth heating it all once a week just to use a pump??!

Jim wrote:

A little over an hour on Saturday & same on Sunday gets me 4 tanks done. Until recently, only 7 of the tanks were up and running, so getting to the other 3 during the week was easy enough.

So... what you're saying is that 25% of 300L water change in my one tank should take me a little more than half an hour. Right. OK.

thank you for all this info. It's great to see how others do it! Final question: for the tanks in the other rooms... do you use the pump with a longer hose and same situation? I'd like to get rid of my buckets if I could. It would also facilitate more regular / bigger changes, which I'd like to do.

Does anyone else have an innovative solution to outdoor water storage?

I suppose if I had 2 wheelie bins, I could fill one the night before and wheel it into the house overnight to warm up. the use the other one to empty the tank and then fill from the first one. Not sure I'll get away with that though!!

Jim wrote:

LemonJelly wrote:

I'm thinking of getting a group of Thorichthys ellioti. Do they colour up as well as some of the photos online suggest? And how are they temperamentally compared to firemouths?

Yep they colour up every bit as much as you see online. I found them less agressive than standard Firemouths, easy enough to breed and good parents (once theyd spawned a couple of times).

there's a pic of one of my own here :
www.irishfishkeepers.com/index.php?optio...id=133852&Itemid=200

That settles it for me then. I think I'll be getting myself ag group of ellioti juvies in a few weeks then