My wife and I are going to start finishing our basement in a couple of months. She wants an exercise room and an entertainment room and I want- well, an aquarium room, of course. I currently have a 46 gallon tank with African cichlids and a 20 gallon tank with more guppies than you can shake a stick at, and and twice as many snails. My wife has said that I can't get more aquariums until the basement is finished, because she doesn't want an aquarium in every room of the house. Huh. Go figure.
The good news is, basement finishing time is almost here, and I'm trying to plan what I should do with my basement in order to make it a better place to keep fish. I guess what I'm mostly thinking about is plumbing.
My household water comes from a well, and it is not chlorinated. It is rather hard.
I probably want at least one saltwater tank- I want to try my hand at coral- and at least one cichlid tank, because I love the cichlids and they're so much fun. Oh, and one for the guppies. Um, and my wife wants goldfish.
There are a lot of things that I have to learn about keeping a larger aquarium. I see people talking about overflows and drilling, but I really don't know what that stuff is. Does that involve plumbing?
So I'm looking for advice on a couple of levels. The first thing I want to know is: what should I do with my basement? What kind of plumbing should I get put in? What would make it easiest to do water changes and keep the tanks clean? If you were doing renovations and had a chance to make things different, how would you do it? Keeping in mind that I'm going to have a number of tanks with different kinds of water (salt, fresh, hard/soft, alkaline/acidic) and my home's water system, what should I do?
And yes, you can try to sell me stuff (Ned) or services (FishGuy). When the basement's done I'll want to buy things, and I'll be looking for good suggestions.