Essential Fishroom Questions

Posted by Shari Horowitz in Tropical Fish Hobbyist Blog on August 3, 2012 at 6:09 am

Building a fishroom is a great way to expand your hobby. Photograph by Ted Judy.

By Mike Hellweg

If you need a place to put more fish and more tanks, a fishroom may be the answer you’ve been looking for. Experienced fishroom builder, Mike Hellweg, offers a two-part article on constructing and maintaining a fishroom. He notes that there are some essential questions to ask yourself before beginning any work.

Questions to Ask Yourself

•             Do you want a number of smaller tanks or a few larger ones?

•             Do you want to keep warm-water fish or cool-water fish, or a mixture of both?

•             Do you want to keep larger fish, smaller fish, or a mixture of both?

•             Will you be utilizing natural light?

•             How will you heat and/or cool the room?

•             How will you control humidity?

•             Are you going to be breeding fish or just keeping display tanks?

•             If you’re planning on breeding fish, will you need both breeding tanks and grow-out tanks?

•             Do you want to have planted tanks or reef tanks that will need extra electrical service?

•             Will the tanks be plumbed together with a central filtration system, or set up individually?

•             Will you need space to condition water before use?

Finally, it’s a good idea to make as few changes as possible to your home if you only plan to be there for a few years. While it may be a benefit to sell the house with a well constructed hobby room in the basement, having a humid, dank, moldy, and unappealing jury-rigged room in the house will definitely not be a selling point. The man cave is not supposed to be an actual cave! It may seem strange to us as hobbyists, but some people actually see a room full of fish tanks as a negative.