Malta Aquarist Society

 Hi friends...

I was a bit away from the forum lately because i need to settle some things like find a job and get on earning some money !! 

But i was thinking in moving my "fishroom" to an actual closed room with a door where i can keep heat in and heat the room instead of heating each tank...

...Hopefully i will be able to increase the number of tanks without having a lot of arguments about heaters and their running costs heh...

The idea came because my dad had a coldroom and he's moving from a place to another so now i've got an empty "coldroom" which i can use as a fishroom and which will help me even more to keep heat inside... Obviously it won't be a coldroom anymore it becomes a "warmroom"

Still got a lot of things to settle like the wiring etc before i begin moving... but one of the main things that i'm not settled about is the door.

This room has a door that completely seals the room and only a small hole is left open (which was originally used for condensation to drop through)

It is a good idea to leave such a door ? Or it's better to make a sort of curtain that will be kept firmly with velklor which has double sided tape...

I will post some photos when i have some chance so that you will have a better idea on what i'm talking about...

Any suggestions are more than welcome friends... and if you see any wrong thinking please warn me about it, thanks

If you post some pictures, it will be much better, but I can tell you that there are quite a few species of fish that live in low temperatures & the heating wouldn't cost that much.

 So these are the first two photos of the door and the room from inside. Obviously there are still fruit/veg inside it because it will be emptied next tuesday hopefully. So i'm still in the phase of thinking what do to, planing and looking forward to have it soon

 

Anyway below is the door i was talking about...    And below is the room from the inside...

       

 

Regards the heating, i assume that the heating costs should be minimum because this room is especially designed to keep temperatures so i assume that if I should have a lot of heat loss... I should make some tests next week to see what are the room temperatures when its closed empty and with a 200ltr tank heated to 25 degrees because i think that it will raise the room temperature a bit since it will be closed...

 Good to have you back Kurt. Good luck with the job hunt btw. The size of the coldroom looks fantastic. Is the room on the out side or inside the house. ??

 

martin

 It is on the inside... Its actually side by side, by where i have my current "room"... the difference is that the current one is an open room and the new one is a coldroom which could be closed and which looses much less heat.

Apart from that they're both in our basement so the biggest advantage is that temperature variations are minimal...

But the biggest disadvantage is that there is NO artificial light !!

I think that you have to start by doing the electricity in the "cold room", but are you willing to drill holes in it?.

 

 That was my first problem acually... But i figured it out because it has a hole for the evaporator so that is one entrance for electricity and also there is a bulb inside which obviously uses electricity. So since i've got at least a single entrance for electricity that's not a problem because i'm thinking of doing 3 sort of main plug sockets in the 3 walls (probably i won't be doing one on the side of the door) and i'll cover all the wiring with plastic cases... Then i'll fix that with double sided tape so i avoid drilling holes in the wall.

Hopefully i'll be planing the electricity and buying the necessary stuff this week and next weekend i will try to get it ready...

 Sounds great Kurt. If I were you I would remove the steel door and make an aluminium door with glass so that at least you will have some light in the room.

 

martin

 Yes that was another issue martin which i was discussing with dad yesterday. We came to a conclusion that the best thing would probably be to make a sort of curtain with soft plastic, like the once they use in coldrooms so that light will go in and i will have some air in and out without loosing heat.

What do you think guys ? I think you know what sort of curtain i'm talking about... If not, I will try to explain better maybe with some images included heh...

Btw if anyone has some better i do i would really appreciate it, thanks 

 I m simply without comments.

You are very lucky

Your posts amaze me Thunder .. they are so profound, that not everyone can read/understand them

 In fact it took me a bit to understand it

Jokes apart... I got a small update and a BIG one. 

So, i was between leaving the room silver as it is, or painting it white. I thought that it isn't going to matter that much, so I'm going to leave it as it is for various reasons.

The BIG update is, that i'm NOT using hallow sections as i was going to do. I'm going to do shelves on "knaten" or bricks, i'm still not definate about that yet.

The reasons are various such as, better support for tanks, i won't be restricted to tank sizes because i'm going to make it as a whole shelve all around the room and all probably 2 ft deep. And also the material is cheaper so that is another plus apart from the other reasons.

As always any comments will be highly appreciated, tomorrow i'll begin the work by cleaning the room because i want it to be spick and span before i begin working in it. I'm really looking forward to this whole project of my new fishroom

 Kurt, using bricks or knaten has the advantages and disadvantages like everything else in this world. These will surely not rust but will take more space then the hollow section shelving you mentioned. If space permits, the bricks/knaten would be ideal. About the curtain, I think I know which one you are referring to. Yes they are great as they are sort of transparent. But they are not air tight and therefore heat will be lost. Am I right ???

 

martin

Yes definately i will loose a bit of space but since i'll be having whole shelving all around the room i think that it will be enough for me.

Also i will eventually loose some heat but these "curtains" are used in coldrooms so they will prevent a lot of loss for sure and if for example with heating only 2 main tanks i'll have a room temperature of 25degrees and with the loss it will drop to 23degrees (i'm just assuming, i should try it out before i commit myself) it will stil be enough as a room temperature.

Apart from that, i don't have any rules about doing the door, so if i find that i'm loosing too much heat i will just make an aluminium door with glas heh

Remember that this was a coldroom, originally built to keep temperatures with 10cm of gablo all around the room so i shouldn't have a lot of loss.

A small note is that the room is currently empty and open and it is still a bit warmer than on the outside...

Will make some tests and then i'll be able to plan much better about the heating...

hi kurt,

 

i have made my own fish room some 3 years ago and these are some lessons you can take:

 1- the temperature in the fishroom will be around 2 degrees different from the ground to the ceiling - i fitted in a fan to circulate the air from the celing to the floor - i reccomend heating the aquariums on the floor and the heat will go up naturally.

 2- you need some ventilation in the room - so the plastic door would be good also for that - i sometimes leave the door open for some hours to get some more fresh air.

 3- the most efficient fish rooms i have seen are actually heating the water in one container and then circulating it in all the aquariums - so you get heat transfer within the water and not through the air - that is complaicated of course - unless you are starting from scratch... in that case i really reccomend it.

keep us posted. i would so my fish house in a completely different manner now - after learning so much from my mistakes - for starters i would probably buy a compressor and filter everything through air !! you can get a small but very powerful 'fish house compressor' for aroung 400 euro - but it is definitely worth the hassle - i have around 25 powerheads and 6 airpumps in my room with a wattage (and price) of who knows how much - while the compressor would be almost self-sufficient for a wattage of around 200w.