Build Thread: Basement Shroom Farm for under 500?

[GrumpyAlison]

Hello again :) I'm working on setting up a low-tech frag station (mostly for shrooms, duncans, blastos & maybe zoas) in the basement and I'm challenging myself to do it for less than $500 including rocks, pumps, salt, water, etc…

Here's the space I'm working with:

Clearly I need to clean the stuff on the floor - we've been cleaning the basement and I have too many hobbies and yeah… I know it's messy :P

The top rack of tanks are jut random tanks of cherry shrimp & another one filled with marimo balls I've been growing for a year or two.

The middle row is a 20L and a 26, both of which I got for free from people in a facebook plant group, and which will house most of the coral frags until I fill them up at which point I'll figure something out to get more space…

The bottom row is just 2 27 gal industrial buckets I got from Lowes for $8-11/piece. I love these things - they're pretty strong and I've had guppies in one of them for about a year (recently gave them to a friend).

The cinderblocks I had floating around from some outdoor plant racks I made a while back… Speaking of which, this is the other side of my basement hobby corner…

I'm also a bit of a succulent/bromeliad nut...

Anyway...

So far, I've done the following:

• Filled 20L with water & sand & ammonia to start cycle.
• The 26 is a phyto-culture station for now - eventually I'll make it a real frag tank…
  
• Deposit 80% of the live rock I have in a big black bucket with some air stones & pods to see if I can get a giant pod-army going

My current plan is to keep the two systems separate - 1 glass tank with 1 refugium - and stash some backups of each coral in both tanks in case there's a crash. I travel a lot for 10 days at a time and my roommates watch my tanks. It's been good so far but I'm paranoid.

I'm also strongly considering rehoming my cherries & using the old tanks for culturing phyto and/or storing ro water for a custom ato system I'll make.

Things I need to do:

• Make the space walkable
• Move my power cords so I don't electrocute myself (I'll 3d print covers & brackets for them)
• Clean the guppy bucket and convert to salt water

Things I'm considering:

• Replacing the 26 with another 20 for ease of access to the top. I'd love to not have to light the tank from the front…
• How to make covers for the bucket tanks to keep humidity in
• Get plumbing
• Taking the water out of the 20 and drilling it to make more reliable/cheaper plumbing
• What to use as a lid for the tubs (that isn't acrylic...). I was thinking cutting holes in the original lids and covering them with clear vinyl or spare greenhouse plastic I have lying around.

These will be low-tech tanks like I've been running on all my other tanks. So no skimmer, no dosing - basically just a glass box with some rock, algae & power heads... At some point I want to see if I can set up a 10 gal for $70 and see if the reef explodes like people told me it would, but that's a different score to settle XD

Current cost to date (including stuff I had on hand & am re purposing):
100 lbs live rock: $258 (because I'm a spaz...)
20L & 26 : free
Power Heads (x4): $28 (I get the cheap amazon ones :P)
Buckets (x2): $19
Bubbler & Splitter: $24
Sand (60 lbs): $48 (I like sand…)
Salt: $~5?
Light: $18 (I have a cheap one from my original pico lying around)
________________________________
Current Cost: $400

Wish me luck! I'll do my best to keep things updated as I go.

 

[GrumpyAlison]

Oh, and I just fragged maybe 4 of the 30+ mushrooms I have (all of which are different kinds) yesterday. It was my first time fragging anything and it was slimey and disgusting and horrible, but it seems like all the pieces are working on closing up/healing, so yay for that...

I did some theoretical math yesterday and if I were to start with a single mushroom and frag it in half, then each month frag each of the new shrooms in half again in a year I'd have 4096 shrooms :P
Obviously that's probably not realistic and doesn't account for some halves not making it, me setting some shrooms aside to grow out or sell, or me being lazy and not wanting to spend all day slicing mushrooms in half, but it's still a funny number to think about. Imagine 4k watermellon mushrooms in a 20L...
That might actually be a funny challenge to test with some common mushrooms - can you start with 1 and have 4000 of them a year later...

 

[count krunk]

why the use of the bubbler?

 

[GrumpyAlison]

why the use of the bubbler?

Aerate the water for the pods and give at least a little circulation until I get proper plumbing in.

 

[GrumpyAlison]

Update - I anger cleaned.

 

[GrumpyAlison]

I haven't got a chance to do anything practical for the tanks in terms of drilling, but I did decide to pick up another 20 at the $1/gallon sale to replace the 26, which will go on the top shelf and act as a clean water reservoir at some point.

I also decided to suck it up and drill a hole for the return line as well as the overflow, so theoretically once all the plumbing pieces come in, I can drill the tanks and redistribute my live rock so i have some real tanks going eventually.

New 20 gal: $20
Cost for plumbing: $59
400 GPH pumps for return: $33
Previous cost of tanks: $400
-----------------------------------------------------
cost to date: $512

I'm slightly over-budget, but mostly because I decided to splurge on another tank and better plumbing.

Meanwhile, I keep accumulating mushroom corals and Duncans to fill the tanks with...

 

[GrumpyAlison]

I got really busy and ended up not updating the thread for a while, but the tanks now have stuff in them.

I threw all the rocks in/kept little rubble piles in the corner for all my shrooms.

Each tank has 2 peppermint shrimp (curious to see if they breed successfully without fish in), a red brittle star and an assortment of random snails.

For filtration, the tanks have giant piles of assorted macro algae (flat blade, dragons breath, chaeto, red ogo, etc).

If I get time this weekend, I'm hoping to finally finish the tops on the plastic bin refugiums so they fit onto the bucket/help keep it from bubbling and have holes to allow light in so I can put my algae beneath the tank and run everything on a reverse timer.

I'm running one the Aqua Knight lights from amazon since everything I have seems pretty happy under them and they've very cost effective. I have the light in the center and use the shadier edges of the tank for my mushrooms and the higher flow, higher light center for some of my lps/sps. (strictly speaking, I just got the 2nd one - it's been running a 4', 20 watt 6500k led just to keep the algae growing in the mean time)

And here's some pictures of interesting things... Mostly duncans and mushrooms hanging out in the tanks. All taken under whites except the last one.
The poccilipora looks grumpy because it was positioned in such a way that the side facing the camera didn't get as much light, but the whole other side is poofy and purple and lovely. I'm considering lining the back of the tank with mirrors if I don' fill it with vertical frags...



Edit: The 'add thumbnail' button lied to me!

 

[GrumpyAlison]

It's been a minute, but this is the setup as of this morning & I'm actually working on taking it down. It's done a great job at growing GSP and some duncans and I went from 1 to like 7-10 sunkist bounce shrooms, but maintaining this many separate tanks sucks so I'm condensing them into one big 75 with a 40B refugium underneath.

The build thread for that can be found here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/75g-build-thread-condensing-3-smaller-systems-into-one.818608/

The system & setup definitely worked, it was just very annoying to do maintenance on which meant a lot of algae grew in tanks and I didn't do as many water changes as I'd have liked. At some point it just made more sense to consolidate everything (including my display tank upstairs) into a single big unit and call it a day. I think in the end things will end up dong better because I'll do maintenance more regularly and I also won't need to deal with the hellish mess of cables that's overrun the shelves here.