[Marty]

I posted a little bit back about the tadpole organizer that I made. Here is the thread for those that don't know what it looked like

http://www.dendroboard.com/phpBB2/viewt ... +organizer

Now, few issues that I have... My frog room temp is about 21'C (69F) and drops a little at night. That's OK for my tanks, as they're all with CF lights and during the day I end up with 24'-25C (75'F) which is great. At night the temp drop is also fine. It drops to about 60-62. Trouble is that my tadpole organizer is also in my frog room and the temp of the water is few degrees colder then in my frog room. At that temp ...ie.. 64'F my tads take forever to develop. I'm thinking of making another tadpole setup.... this one would be something like this:

reservoir at the bottom, with heated water. Tower of drawers 3 wide and 15 high (for total of 45 drawers) on top of the reservoir. Now with an external canister filter I would pipe up the water to the top drawers and it would then cascade down the column heating up the water in all the drawers. I have it all figured out, construction would not be an issue.

Big question is:

With one common source for all the tads, should I worry about diseases cross contamination, etc? Tads seem quite resistant and will live in the junkiest water, so with heated, filtered and conditioned water I'm thinking I should be OK. Of course the water quality for the whole setup would be closely monitored and with wet/dry filtration (which would be very easy to do in this case) and with the external canister filter I’m thinking I can get it done and it will function properly, reducing maintenance and providing optimal conditions for my tads.

I don't really have that much time in the day to be changing water and doing all the maintenance so my aim is to have the best setup with minimal maintenance.

Also, seems easier to control 1 larger water source then 45 smaller ones.

Please let me know what you guys think… experienced guys, do chime in.

PS. An added improvement to my drawers, other then drain setup, will be compartments, that way I can separate larger tads from the rest.

 

[Guest]

Couldn't you also have the heating water seperated. Just run the water threw pipes but not actually touching the tads water. Kinda like a boiler system for a house (of course the water couldn't be that hot). like having a warmer pipe enter the different water systems and heat the water that way. Just a thought though.

 

[Marty]

Don't forget that I want to be able to remove the drawers. It will be hard to run a pipe through the drawer and be able to take it out.

This way if the water just comes down from the tray above I can pull out the tray under it and it will simply drop via gravity down to the drawer below...sort of like dropping 2 stories instead of 1. Kind of hard to explain without drawing a picture. I hope you know what I mean.

Thanks for the idea, I might use it elsewhere :wink:

Couldn't you also have the heating water seperated. Just run the water threw pipes but not actually touching the tads water. Kinda like a boiler system for a house (of course the water couldn't be that hot). like having a warmer pipe enter the different water systems and heat the water that way. Just a thought though.

 

[Guest]

You know I don't think there would be a problem if the res was enclosed with the drawers sitting on top. The only problem I would see is if the res were open to the air. I'd like to see it after its finished.

 

[Marty]

Why do you think it should be enclosed?

btw, it will be inside a cabinet, with the 3 banks of drawers sitting on top of the cabinet and dripping through a wet/dry filter into the reservoir via gravity.

You know I don't think there would be a problem if the res was enclosed with the drawers sitting on top. The only problem I would see is if the res were open to the air. I'd like to see it after its finished.

 

[Guest]

Now I get what you mean it would be kinda hard to run the pipe through a moveable drawer. Your idea definatly sounds like it should work good luck with it.

 

[Guest]

Marty if you keep coming up with these great ideas your gonna have to quit the day job and open up a store My frog room is also in the basement and with the recent -20 C weather its been cooling down a bit more then normal. So ive moved my tads into smaller plastic containers with lids and then putting those containers into larger containers with lids also. The lids are just resting on the top , not snapped shut. Since doing this the temp stays between 71-74 F day and 67-70 F at night , my E.tricolor tads started eating and growing at a faster rate again. This was the quickest solution to my problem , but yours sounds much nicer in the long run , please keep us posted , good luck :wink:

 

[Guest]

Well I had a tadpole pond that I used a 10 gallon that housed the tads and a 2.5 that I used as a filter the filter I left open topped and inside of a week it began to delvope carrion flys. Why I dont know but when I saw what was going on I went back to individual containers.

 

[Dunner97074]

Why not have the drawers in a temp controlled bath? The bath water trickles downoutside of the tad drawers. Just an idea but I think that is what you were looking for. The water would hold the heat and transfer it to the tad containers.
Mike

 

[Marty]

Outside would be OK, but the idea is to have this one source of water that I'd maintain. I'm aiming to reduce or virtually elliminate maintenance and control the water temp and quality in all the drawers at once.

Why not have the drawers in a temp controlled bath? The bath water trickles downoutside of the tad drawers. Just an idea but I think that is what you were looking for. The water would hold the heat and transfer it to the tad containers.
Mike