This thread will need to start with a little bit of a back story to bring it in today's progress. Back in 2011 my wife and I decided we would venture on to the next chapter in our lives by designing and building our dream home. The one thing that the house had to have was some kind of integrated fish tank within the design of the house. After many long discussions about where to place the tank within the design of the house we decided to have a sitting area known to us as our "Fish Room" in the house. The tank would be placed in the wall with a decent (small) sized equipment room behind the the wall.
The next decision was easy: GO BIG OR GO HOME. we decided on tank dimensions of 72x30x24 for rough volume of 240g. By going with a 30" depth (front to back) I took up some space in the equipment room but I truly love the added space within the tank. I summoned a somewhat local to me fish builder to build our tank which would be all glass with a starfire front. As the tank was being built I began to collect my equipment:
Equipment List:
Skimmer: Reef Octopus SRO-5000 EXT
Lighting: 4 AI SOL Blue LED in combination with a 4x80W bulb TEK T5
Controller: Neptune Systems Apex to include WXM, VDM, I/O Breakout Box. Later upgraded to the 2016 Apex and added a DOS, Trident and an AFS
Flow: Return pump Varios 8 controllable pump, 2 MP60QD and 1 MP40QD
ATO: Float switches through the I/O box with an aqualifter pump
Here are a few pictures of the tank, equipment and transfer of tank to the wall:
Once we got the tank home we realized that we hadn't accounted for the drywall on the interior of the cutout in the wall. No problem time to make some adjustments to the wall of course:
Luckily my dad and I were the builder of the home (no one to blame but ourselves) but more importantly were able to make quick work of the modification. Once that was done we were able to get the tank in its final resting place.
The next decision was easy: GO BIG OR GO HOME. we decided on tank dimensions of 72x30x24 for rough volume of 240g. By going with a 30" depth (front to back) I took up some space in the equipment room but I truly love the added space within the tank. I summoned a somewhat local to me fish builder to build our tank which would be all glass with a starfire front. As the tank was being built I began to collect my equipment:
Equipment List:
Skimmer: Reef Octopus SRO-5000 EXT
Lighting: 4 AI SOL Blue LED in combination with a 4x80W bulb TEK T5
Controller: Neptune Systems Apex to include WXM, VDM, I/O Breakout Box. Later upgraded to the 2016 Apex and added a DOS, Trident and an AFS
Flow: Return pump Varios 8 controllable pump, 2 MP60QD and 1 MP40QD
ATO: Float switches through the I/O box with an aqualifter pump
Here are a few pictures of the tank, equipment and transfer of tank to the wall:
Once we got the tank home we realized that we hadn't accounted for the drywall on the interior of the cutout in the wall. No problem time to make some adjustments to the wall of course:
Luckily my dad and I were the builder of the home (no one to blame but ourselves) but more importantly were able to make quick work of the modification. Once that was done we were able to get the tank in its final resting place.