Malta Aquarist Society

 I'm going to use aluminium stands too,  so you'll be of great help if you post some pictures and from where you purchased your racks.

hi Gan,

I found a great idea for your new fish room while surfing on the net, its about a continuos automatic water change system, this will eliminate your water changes. Check this website  http://www.fmueller.com/home/aquaristic/240g/technology/cawc-system  and figure out if this fits for you.

 It looks great Saviour but too complicated for my 20 aquariums in my fish room !!!!!  Thanks for sharing.

martin

 There are some nice ideas... thanks for the link Saviour. I will watch it in detail.

 Giann, I am going to use aluminium 5cm x 5cm but this size will surely be too big for you. I know that you have several small aquaria so you will not be needing these width of aluminium.

martin

 I have made some alterations this summer in my fish room. Due to the fact that the ceiling of my fish room was very low, the water during summer was getting very hot and I lost some fush as well because of these temperatures. So I decided to make some adjustments and make the ceiling in my fish room as high as possible. I also made a couple of 2 big windows on the front of the room in order to let hot air out during the summer months. There are still some work to be done on the inside of the room as regards plumbing and electricity and some plastering , but this has to wait now !!!!.

martin

Nice job Martin, that will defenitely do the difference for next summer's temperature because as everyone knows most of the heat is normally found by the roof. Good job man.

 Thanks Ivan.... and I surely hope so. On the 3rd picture on the far right you can see were the ceiling use to be , where the aluminium is. Therefore I have shifted the ceiling upwards with an extra 1.2mtrs.

martin

Very good Martin. It seems that you're going to solve the "heat" problem. This summer the temperature reached 29 Deg.Cel. in my semi-basement garage & most of my fish, didn't like it at all.

In winter, you need more "heat", as this will fill up the upper part of your fish room first....... at least that's what I think.

Yes Jason has a good point, if you're used to heat the space of the whole fishroom you have to upgrade the heating system because the space inside is much bigger now, otherwise you can put another temporary "roof" under the main one just for winter time to keep the heat near the aquariums as much as possible.

Yes you are all right. This is a knife that cuts from both edges. I do space heating of the fish room and therefore this year i have to upgrade my heating management. I do a small fan so that the heat is distributed equally and not pushing itself upwards and i end up with alot of heat loss. Well I have to wait and see how this goes when temperatures starts falling.

martin

 That's great Martin and you'll find it good for hot days. In Winter you'll have to insulate the windows and make a false ceiling as Ivan told you to prevent heat escaping the room. You can ask Ivan about it because in his fishroom he had a false ceiling which was filled with  jablo.

 Yesterday I used the gas heater for the first time this winter as the temp in the lower aquaria dropped to 22 deg. I switched it on at around 9.00pm and off at around 7.00am. The temperature was around 26 deg in the morning. I have to do some studies yet though to see the correct hours to leave the heater on. Now that the price of gas cylinders have gone up, and there are rumors that it will go up again, I have to be more careful on the consumption.

martin

How are you doing with the new roof Martin, Have you found any difference to keep the right temperature yet? 

 Regards the garage I have put up a raff to store the things I had on the floor to make some space. This coming week I will call the person who's going to do the tiles of the the garage to see how much its gonna cost me.

 Regards heating I'm considering a gas heater instead of an electric one, I think its more economical. Martin also told me about a gas heater with a thermostat but I never saw one. They're still expensive he told me but will give them a look.