My wife and I are building a new home and I'm going to be upgrading from a 180 to to something over 300. I'm leaning toward a 96" X 30" X 30" which is roughly 375 but I need some help before I settle on the tank size. I'm lucky enough to be building this into the wall in a fish room where I'll have about 9.5' by 11.5' space in the room. The tank will be be in the front right corner of the room and will be view-able to the outside room on the front and right side (only the first 2 feet of the right hand side). So I'm having a stand / workbench built across the full front wall of that room that the tank will go on.
Before I settle on the size what I'm struggling to figure out first is maintenance of this size tank and then the stand height. At 30" deep and 30" wide I don't think I'll be able to fully maintain it from the back even on a ladder. I'm even considering building a 3' high platform right behind the tank so I'm not always moving a ladder back and forth. Anyway what do people do with tanks this size if you need to get near the front if something falls over?
The other piece of this that is complicating things is that I want to make sure that I have a good flow going to the sump. I'm planning to use a 150 Rubbermaid stock tank now that I finally have the space. This will not be under the tank but off to the side of the room. I was planning to put that up about 12 inches on a section of raised floor and then have another skimmer section in the pump where the overflows drain too so even if that section is flush with the top of the stock tank I'm already at 37" and does that then push the tank up higher in the room which then only makes the maintenance that much harder. How much drop do I need to maintain a strong flow, should I measure the drop from the bottom of the tank or the top of the overflow (if I'm using a durso). Could I use a coast to coast to solve this problem?
Any help would be appreciated. I hope this will turn into my build thread but it'll be months before anything is actually built but the planning has begun and so have the questions!
Thanks so much!
Before I settle on the size what I'm struggling to figure out first is maintenance of this size tank and then the stand height. At 30" deep and 30" wide I don't think I'll be able to fully maintain it from the back even on a ladder. I'm even considering building a 3' high platform right behind the tank so I'm not always moving a ladder back and forth. Anyway what do people do with tanks this size if you need to get near the front if something falls over?
The other piece of this that is complicating things is that I want to make sure that I have a good flow going to the sump. I'm planning to use a 150 Rubbermaid stock tank now that I finally have the space. This will not be under the tank but off to the side of the room. I was planning to put that up about 12 inches on a section of raised floor and then have another skimmer section in the pump where the overflows drain too so even if that section is flush with the top of the stock tank I'm already at 37" and does that then push the tank up higher in the room which then only makes the maintenance that much harder. How much drop do I need to maintain a strong flow, should I measure the drop from the bottom of the tank or the top of the overflow (if I'm using a durso). Could I use a coast to coast to solve this problem?
Any help would be appreciated. I hope this will turn into my build thread but it'll be months before anything is actually built but the planning has begun and so have the questions!
Thanks so much!
