Project : Garage Discus

[grillermichael]

Greetings all. Am new to the box, and wanted to get some input on what I want to do.

After the wife and I cleaned out our garage, I realized that we had a ton of space in there . The only time we used it for cars in the last 5 years is for Hurricane threats, and since it's a 3 car garage and we only have 2 cars, there would still be room. SO, as any good fish head would do, when I saw all that space, I immediately thought "tanks .........BIG tanks !!!!" So, after asking around ( 2 folks actually --- former HAS pres and Mike at ADG) I was told that yes, you COULD sucessfully have tanks in a non climate controlled garage.

So the plan is to get into anywhere from 125 - 200+gallon tanks, and with a combination of big heaters and insulation around the tanks, try to raise some discus (and probably angels) to full size and see if we can get some breeders out of the bunch. Making an enclosed fish room out of all or part of the garage is not an option (at least, if I want to stay married), so I am curious if any of you have done this before, or if you had any thoughts.

Thx,

grillermichael

[nacra99]

I'm in the process of setting up my garage for discus and south americans.
However, first thing i did was to build a wall to divide up the garage to create a real fish "room". Then insulated the heck out of the walls and door in order to keep the conditioned portion of the garaged to a minimum to reduce heating / cooling.
I guess you should still be able to keep it open and insulate all the tanks with styrofoam and/or reflectix.
Depending on how many tanks you are going to heat, you might need a dedicated breaker just for the heaters.
Remember to GFCI all the outlets.

For me the greatest heat loss in winter was through the garage doors. I tried to minimize this by using weatherstripping all around the door and to stick foam boards directly on the door panels. I'll be able to tell you how well this works when i get my first bill next month.

[wesleydnunder]

Good luck with a very ambitious project.

Mark

[grillermichael]

Will let you know how this goes ........still trying to land my first tank set up at the moment, so I'll give you the step by step as we get into it. Nice idea about the breaker dedicated to the heater Nacra ---- will look into that. Are your tanks set up, or are you still building out the fish room ??

[nacra99]

still building.
here's the progress....
http://www.houstonfishbox.com/vforum...ld-(with-pics)
Work has progressed a little since the last post, i'll update with some pics when i get back from singapore.

[BeefyG]

I've got a 75 gallon discus tank in the garage. I have a 300W and a 200W heater in it with thick glass tops. It still wasn't quite enough so I have blankets on top of it and that helps keep the temp stable. I would suggest insulating the bottom and top of the inside of the stand. What kind of filtration are you planning to use? If you use a sump, keep it insulated/off the floor to help keep your temp up. In the summetime I lost almost all of the discus tankmates but none of the discus I had at the time (different batch than what I have now). I also just had a heater malfunction on a tank inside and it got up to 96 degrees. Only the angels and clown loaches survived so I think you'll be fine if you stick to discus and angels. Just my two cents.