Building My 50,000 Gallon Monster Mega Tank

arapaimag

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markus;4982707; said:
i apologize..mate..
i didn't read about your condition..
i was so amazed by your project and the images ..that i left the part to read it out and posted in excitement...foolishness from my side..sorry..
but really!!..what an amazing tank!!..i didn't even heard of the names of most of the fishes which you have!!..
Truly hats off to your fish keeping passion...
Markus please don't apologize. I have been paralyzed for many years from the armpits down. Broke my back twice on motorcycles once in a race on a track. I have functioned no problem for many years after and travelled a lot in sports playing wheelchair basketball, track and competitive swimming. My problems have come more recently when I tore both rotators off the bones in my shoulders and suffered two broken wrists and surgery over the past 24 months that left me without the use of my hands and arms much of the time.

MFK members like Fever, Noel N, Jeff MJ and Richard C have all helped me out the past 2 years taking me out to some functions. All have also helped out at times with the fish including SimonL, Ethan and Anthony Mc. My daughter has been incredible helping me out at first 7 days a week and still two days a week cleaning out canister filters, carpentry, looking after birds, dogs and anything else needed.

Things are getting a lot better now and I hope to be able to soon have enough strength in my wrists and hands to lift my body to do transfers which will allow me to drive my van again. Already I am able to do a lot around the fish and bird rooms again.

So I really have no problems anymore.
 

Dav

Gambusia
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Jun 11, 2010
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Your tank is amazing, i cant belive ive just only found this thread !
Do you have any large catfish in there ??
Dav.
 

arapaimag

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Csababá;4982758; said:
I didn't notice you keep discus as well. What are the conditions in their tank?
(By the way, is there a species or genus, etc, that you are not interested in?)
One more thing. What do you do with the guppies that born in the ponds in summer. I guess there are thousands of them...
My discus are really tough and take the hard water conditions I have. I am not a breeder so they can if they want to breed in a community tank. They are in a 810 gallon glass tank John Petersen built in one of my fish rooms.

They have the normal driftwood, bogwood, rockery and plastic plants.

They have several tank mates at present including:

6 Puntius dennisoni
10 Otocinclus affinis
13 Corydoras sterbai
5 Corydoras weismani
1 Creagrutus brevipinnis
11 Trigonostigma heteromorpha
3 Chromobotia macracanthus
3 Trichogaster pectoralis
1 L190 Panaque nigrolineatus
1 L191 Panaque nigrolineatus
1 Hypostomus plecostomus long fin
9 Pangio semicincta (sold to me as P. kuhlii)
1 Colomesus asellus
4 Hyphessobrycon rosaceus sp. HY511
14 Paracheirodon axelrodi
9 Paracheirodon innesi
4 Hemigrammus rhodostomus


There are so many genus of fish I of course do not keep. Killifish would be one that I can think of where I have not owned any for several years.

I actually breed Carassius auratus, Pimephales promelas and Danio rerio mainly outside. I try not to feed live fish and get them trained to eat pellets and frozen fish instead. But when I buy young fish it sometimes takes a while to switch them over so having a few tanks of these around really helps. I do breed Poecillia reticulata but mainly in tanks in the house and always have several hundred to over a thousand available.

Interesting is that I have a small self sustaining colony of Poecillia reticulata in the 52,000.

Here a few pics James Martin, Nikki Coffron (very shaky) and Rusty Wessel took of the 810.

100_6894.JPG

DSC_9814.JPG

DSC_9818.JPG

DSCF0551.JPG

DSCF0557.JPG

DSCF0558.JPG

DSCF0559.jpg
 

arapaimag

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Dav;4983359; said:
Your tank is amazing, i cant belive ive just only found this thread !
Do you have any large catfish in there ??
Dav.
Thanks very much.

I see you live on Mars......Great place to visit and go there often....in my dreams

I'm not sure what you consider large i.e. MONSTER.

Since I have a lot of catfish under 3 feet lets use 3 feet or bigger as Monster.

5 Oxydoras niger ranging in age from 12 years to 19 in my tanks and 36" to 44"

acquired from:
Aquarium Centre, Randellstown Maryland (Dennis Hare)
The Fish Place N. Tonawanda New York (Jake Mang)
Pets Plus Lockport New York (John & Fred Kick)
Randy & Dorothy English Woodstock area Ontario

3 Phractocephalus hemioliopterus ranging in age from 7 to 5 years in my tanks and 36" to 46"

acquired from:

The Tropical Fish Room Brantford Ontario (Jerry Draper)
Sheldon Brantford Ontario

1 Sorubimichthys planiceps 5 years in my tanks and 44"

acquired from:

The Tropical Fish Room Brantford Ontario (Jerry Draper) and Sheldon Brantford Ontario

2 Wallago leerii the male 12 years the female 20 years in my tanks and M 46-48" F 58-60" estimated by my friends who have been in the tank with them.

acquired from:

Female: Aquarium Services Mississauga Ontario (original Dundas St location) (Monty)
Male: The Fish Place N. Tonawanda New York (Jake Mang)

I also have owned a few other catfish over the years that have been 36" or bigger.

Here is a 26" black shark that killed three of my previous Phractocephalus hemioliopterus including my biggest at 90 lbs and 52".

The shark is in a 225g for the picture.

DSC_9800.JPG
 

Ocean Railroader

Jack Dempsey
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Jul 31, 2010
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What was the biggest tank you had before you built the 50,000 or the 15,000.

Also do you know of anyone who is trying to really build a tank bigger then yours at the moment?
 

arapaimag

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Ocean Railroader;4984377; said:
What was the biggest tank you had before you built the 50,000 or the 15,000.

Also do you know of anyone who is trying to really build a tank bigger then yours at the moment?
I had built an indoor pond with waterfalls etc that held over 2,000 gallons. The largest tank was a 600.

I am sure that there are people with bigger tanks. Somebody was on Discovery channel that claims to have the biggest home aquarium in the world. I don't know who it is because I did not see the show but friends told me he apparently he lives on the west coast of the USA.
 

Ocean Railroader

Jack Dempsey
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I remeber reading in a book on home pools that most common US home pools hold over 20,000 gallons of water and a fully inground also costs $10,000 to $30,000

As for fish tank sizes I kind of wounder would a outdoor swimming pool with a viewing window count as the world's biggest home fish tank or are there rules that say it has to be indoors in a building to be counted as a fish tank.
 

Csababá

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Aug 24, 2009
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Later I noticed that I should have asked only about common aquarium fish and mainly freshwater (then I saw your morena).
Nice discus, do they breed?
Killifish on the wishlist? What else? (pls don't think monster) /is it allowed to talk about non-monsters, anyway?/
Guppies in the 52k? Amazing! Do you sell the offspring from other tanks or are they for the piscivores as well?
Thanks for your answers.
Would you let a tv-crew to make a programme (sorry for my poor Endlish) on your fish-galaxy?
 
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