Setting up a system for breeding

[Mardayin Betta's]

I'm looking for the best way to run a system of 10 tanks

The tanks I will be using 4x 24x18x16 / 6x 24x12x12

My question is it best to run sponge filters and heaters per tank

OR set up a sump with filteration with heaters in the sump.

Cichlids and Angles

Any advise would be great. I look forward to your suggestions.

[Bettarazzi]

You need to balance out ease of maintenance with the ease of spreading diseases from tank to tank. On the one hand having all 10 tanks connected to a sump will mean that water changes can simply be done in the sump rather than each individual tank. But for all intents and purposes the whole system is really one big tank. Mild diseases which only affect one or two fish and act slowly won't be a big problem but if one of those tanks caught something stronger then the whole system is in danger of being wiped out. However there is an argument that if something truly virulent got into your fishroom then it can spread through nets, drops of water, dirty hands etc so separate tanks doesn't guarantee protection anyway. So you really need to balance out what's more important for you. Convenience or disease protection?

In terms of heating, a single heater isn't going to be able to heat all 10 tanks. You're going to have to get enough heaters for the entire body of water. You may find that the cost is not all that smaller than getting a heater for each tank.

[Ghengis]

Simply because I can't resist throwing in my 2c...if you're using these tanks for breeding, I'd have to guess running a separated

system would be the safest bet. All those delicate little fry would be susceptible to even the barest hint of disease or illness.

Alternatively, if you really wanted a sump system (which, as B'azzi mentioned, would be a lot less labour intensive), why not consider

UV sterilization?

[jusdeb]

Im running ten tanks and have found that its best to keep them heated and filtered individually....This way if a problem occurs ie disease or a heater breaking the problem id confined to one tank.

I start fry of in the smallest tanks and move them up to bigger tanks as they grow.

1 good air pump will drive 6 of my smaller tanks and the bigger tanks have there own pumps but you could get away easily with running the rest from 1 pump also.

This method means that cleaning can be broken down to a couple of tanks per day on a rotation or as needed to be done.

Of course the bigger tanks need less maintenance.

[Callatya]

I agree with the separate tank setup for breeding.

If you were just holding fish in the system then I'd plumb them together (probably in 2 or 3 separate sets) and run a UV sterliser to reduce the free-floating pathogens, but with breeding you don't really want to run any sterilisation, and you might want to cut entire tanks out of the system for some reason or other (sickness, different temperature/pH/water additives etc)

I'd tend to go with either separate tanks altogether or a mixture of separate tanks and several banks of connected tanks, just so you have a balance between control and convenience :lol:

[Bettarazzi]

I missed the part about it being a breeding setup. Yeah... I agree for breeding, separate tanks are better. I like my breeding setups to be completely flexible so that I can change anything about it quickly and easily. Harder if you've got plumbing to contend with.