petshop set ups.

[Carlos & Siran]

Being so far from cities certainly has it downfalls and being unable to pop into town for a quick squizz is one of them.

I was just wondering, in the pet shops with the large banks of tanks, do they have automatic water change set ups on them? I'd imagine that doing individual water changes would take up a lot of valuable time.

And do you think it's possible that there are people out there that would set up a bank like that for new shops as I would guess that it would be quite a tricky process.

We've tried ringing a few pet shops and they arn't very forth coming with their infomation for one reason or another.

Thanks in advance.

[phoenix44]

Weird.. they should have been happy to talk. Makes them look good at the end of the day.

Few shops are run off a common sump.

Many will have manual removal of water (syphon) but taps plumbed above the tanks to aid in refilling the water.

The Animates here has those taps with an option of cold, hot or 27 degree water.

They don't all always work, but that's pretty standard for a store.

[bronze-dragon]

I have 30 odd tanks at work that I care for, each is individually filtered and water changed by hand.

It takes me about two and a half to three hours to water change and clean the glass of every fish tank, with filters being changed on a roster. As long as you have people who are in the know about frames, tanks and plumbing if you go down that line, banks are fairly easy to set up.

I would rather do It by hand and keep an eye on my fish than have an auto change system and miss out on spotting illness etc by not paying attention.

[KiwiPetz]

Here at KiwiPetz we run Aqua One designed banks which consist of three large tanks with a sump underneath with a total of around 450L in each bank.

We (I :lol: ) clean these manually each week, siphoning up the poop, draining the sump (easiest way to remove water for us) and then topping back up again. Each bank takes me approximately 40 minutes to clean.

Aqua One banks are able to be supplied to the public, however must be ordered through a store (if they will sell you one), from memory they are a few thousand with all the componants needed. They are special ordered from overseas so usually take a few months to arrive. Setting them up is a matter of assembling the stand, fitting tanks in, putting the plumbing together and plugging it in.

Aqua One have changed their design recently however, and most are now coated silver with lift out and slide in fronts, as opposed to our system which is black with magnet fronts which click up to the underside of the tank above. Aqua One seems to update their design regularly.

Feel free to PM us your email address if you would like further information, or even just some pictures

[BigBossPants]

For stores with common sump systems, how do you control disease? Are fish quarantined after arrival?

[smidey]

our local runs all the freshwater tanks on each long side of the room off two sumps, one for each wall. The sumps themselves are plastic cattle troughs with the auto fill attached. The have a couple of pumps from each sump running into inch pvc piping & each tank has a pvc tap which controls the amount of water that each tank receives. each row of tanks then overflow into a common drain pipe which flows into a 65mm ish pipe which then flows into a single 120mm ish pipe back into the sump.

i am not exactly sure how they do it although with that many tanks there is a large amount of evaporation & I know they turn on the auto fill tap every morning. In the sump they have bread crates which hold the media in layers, they have the filter wool on the top then two bread crates with plastic bio balls. It seems to work very well, when i send fish away they are kind enough to allow me to place a breeding net in their sump to hold my fish until i return in the afternoon to bag & send the fish.

[Adrienne]

HFF MT Roskill does manual changes on each tank.