Like a lot of fish rooms mine started a little here and a little there, this tank and then that tank, then a few more tanks until it reached the point of no return.

I have my fish room setup in a 25 X 26 foot triple car garage or at least when we had this house built it was intended to be a car garage. As it has worked out it has never been used for that purpose.

Within this space I have over 250 tanks of assorted sizes and placement. The fish room has been remodeled so many times I have lost count, each time to make better use of the available space for more tanks or equipment.

Until recently I only had twenty five spawning pairs of discus, all maintained in individual twenty gallon tanks and each had it's own separate filtering system. About six years ago the space was once again remodeled and additional breeder tanks were added until I reached a total of 56 spawning pairs of discus.

Then in 1995 I suffered a heart attack and the fish room was slowly closed down and all the breeding pairs sold. However, I retained the equipment in place with the hopes of being able to start up again when I had recovered from the problem.

Well, it was not until the Spring of this year, 1999, that I felt strong enough to start the hatchery once again. I now have expanded the original fish room by adding two out buildings so that I will now be able to operate up to 600 tanks. All devoted to discus and a few special angelfish in a angel project I am interested in.

I installed forced air gas heating, overhead tube lighting, and have built in six complete central drip filter systems on all the grow out tanks. I have also put about half the breeder tanks on a central drip though system just to experiment with that method of filtering the breeders.

I have six hundred gallons of replacement water in storage barrels that are also connected to an automatic refill system and are heated with a heat exchanger ( Home made ) that carry's the water over the forced air heater and back to the storage barrels at a slow flow rate via a small pump.

Of course, work is still going on to build up the two new out buildings and to restock my breeding pairs.

When in full operation I expect to be able to produce up to Ten thousand discus every 60 days. ( 90 days ) from hatching to selling size at 2 1/4 inch.

Jim E. Quarles