Tacit Blues
Aquarium Advice FINatic
I've been thinking recently about setting up some sort of small RCS shrimp breeding project because they are so hard to come by in my area. I have some old equipment from a decommissioned tank (a nice stand and a sump filter), some space in the house, and even permission from my wife, so now I just need to figure out what I really want to do.
Given the dimensions of the stand (it was for an old tall 55 gallon tank) I've been thinking I could either set up a 40 gallon breeder and drill it to use the sump, or I could set up three 10 gallon tanks, possibly with matten sponge filters. Both ways have pros and cons with them, namely the lower cost and greater modularity of the three small separate tanks, but the bigger/more stable setup of a 40 gallon.
If I was going to breed for grade/different colors, the three tanks would be handy, but I'm worried about being able to keep up with the water parameters on three little tanks. If I did the matten filter thing it would be easy enough to drill a small overflow behind it and plumb them all to drain below, which would make it easier to do maintenance, but at the point you're buying 3x the hardware it starts to make the 40 gallon more cost effective, especially since I could mostly just use stuff I already have. But it wouldn't be as flexible.
So I keep going around in circles, not able to decide one way or another. If they made tanks that were 18" cubes that weren't $300 custom jobbies it would maybe simplify things because I could set 2 up side by side and I think they'd be about 25 gallons apiece, but $600 kinda blows the budget right out of the water!
So, I'm curious to hear your aquarium advice
Given the dimensions of the stand (it was for an old tall 55 gallon tank) I've been thinking I could either set up a 40 gallon breeder and drill it to use the sump, or I could set up three 10 gallon tanks, possibly with matten sponge filters. Both ways have pros and cons with them, namely the lower cost and greater modularity of the three small separate tanks, but the bigger/more stable setup of a 40 gallon.
If I was going to breed for grade/different colors, the three tanks would be handy, but I'm worried about being able to keep up with the water parameters on three little tanks. If I did the matten filter thing it would be easy enough to drill a small overflow behind it and plumb them all to drain below, which would make it easier to do maintenance, but at the point you're buying 3x the hardware it starts to make the 40 gallon more cost effective, especially since I could mostly just use stuff I already have. But it wouldn't be as flexible.
So I keep going around in circles, not able to decide one way or another. If they made tanks that were 18" cubes that weren't $300 custom jobbies it would maybe simplify things because I could set 2 up side by side and I think they'd be about 25 gallons apiece, but $600 kinda blows the budget right out of the water!
So, I'm curious to hear your aquarium advice