questions for future fish room

[poiuy704]

I started off with a tank for Christmas last year, I'm now up to 9 in the house and the wife thinks that's enough.

Yesterday I picked up ten more with the intent of turning part ot the garage into a fish room to play around with breeding and now have a couple of questions for those with more experience.

For heating I was thinking of just heating the whole room with baseboard heaters to a suitable temperature rather than individual heaters in each tank. Any reason why this wouldn't work? I'll have a few tanks heated individually for hospital or fish that may need it a bit warmer than the room settings.

The tanks all have undergravel filters and I was thinking of finding a large volume pump or probably two in case of failure to run all the tanks. Is there such an air pump available and if so where can I find one?

I have a back up generator in case of power outage,

Plumbing is nearby so I'll be putting in a laundry room style sink

The tanks have glass tops and I'm going to light the room with one or two 400 watt HPS greenhouse lights, also an exhaust fan on a thermostat to remove extra heat in the summer months

I'm building the shelving with treated 2 by 4's and plywood, I'm thinking 2 levels of tanks a couple of feet apart to allow the light to reach the lower tanks.

How does this sound and any suggestions?

[The Guy]

Wow sounds like a neat plan you have there, I think you might want to consider a main sump filter system and heat your tanks that way. If you try and heat the room to heat the tanks it's going to be very humid and hot and uncomfortable place to be for you. Maybe some other guys with fish rooms will offer some help. I know I sure enjoy the small room I have. Cheers Laurie

[davefrombc]

Go with individual heaters, and heat the room to normal , comfy for you temperatures. The tank heaters will give you control over heating in each , according to species needs , and you will be able to enjoy the room more .. Heating the room to tropical temperatures for the fish will raise humidity severely and between the heat and humidity, you will be very uncomfortable in there in short order. Use normal lighting for the room and individual lighting on tanks you want to have planted . The HPS greenhouse lights won't be adequate because of distance from the tanks , and the light will be very harsh on your eyes.