Building a House with a Large Fish Tank- Need your Advice

Wow, 20' ceilings! Why stop at 60" tall? Just kidding, that acrylic starts to get mad expensive.

If you have space for a dedicated filtration room, I would definitely want all equipment there instead of under the tank. The noise, smells, etc in a separate room would be my preference. The downside is that you will need larger pumps that will obviously draw more juice, but you will have the sun on your side so who cares? :thumbsup: Designing the setup so that you always have redundancies built into it will be your best bet to avoid catastrophe (multiple drains, multiple circulation pumps, multiple heater units, etc)

My tank sits on a 36" tall steel stand and the tank itself is 48" tall so the top of my tank is ~7'. Although I'm not as tall as you (I'm 5'11") I need a ladder to feed my fish. I'm sure you could design some sort of platform towards one side of the tank that would make feeding possible without the need to pull out a stepping stool or ladder at feeding time.

Hope you don't mind me posting this to your thread (if you do I can ask a moderator to remove the link), but here's a video of me feeding my tank to give you an idea what 7' looks like with the tank being 4'. It's freshwater...please don't ban me:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/RJPsdiSpjsQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
I dont mind you posting at all on my thread. its a beautiful size. What are your thoughts on acrylic vs glass for something that size?

If you go back to the beginning, you will see a schematic of my house there. We have a great room with the kitchen, family room, bar all connected. The house is about 8000 sq ft and the great room is about 60 feet wide. While the family room is 20 foot ceilings, the bar we lowered the ceiling so that we could have a more cozy environment. The tank is the separation between the family room and bar. So essentially space is not an issue. I can go as tall or big as I want. Im a little limited in length of the tank cause on either side I have an entrance into the bar area so dont want to make the tank so long that the arch ways to the bar get tiny. Im thinking 7 feet is fine but could go 6 feet wide and put some extra money into the height and go 60 inches. :)
 
With an aquarium that size in the middle of a brand new house, I would sleep a whole lot better with acrylic. But I keep freshwater fish, so I don't have to deal with the nasty coralline algae that you basically need a jackhammer to get off (ie- I can understand why so many of your reef guys prefer glass since it doesn't scratch as easily).

I would go as big as possible. I would definitely go at least 3' wide (front to back) so that you aren't as limited with the species of fish you can keep. If you were to go only 2' wide that would limit the species you could keep a lot more than going 3' wide or larger.
 
After having built a few tanks in the 1-5k gallon range there are some insights to a project such as yours. First off is filtration, it doesn't matter if it's a fish only or reef tank you want to filter it like a reef tank. I see and hear constant issues with large tanks that are under filtered and have ridiculous algae issues, just go see Caesars palace in Vegas and you can't even see the rock work in half their tanks. Thats got to be a multi million dollar job too. You need a big skimmer and gfo large water changes and all of it or else it will just get covered with cyano or hair algae. For the tank itself you can go to a 48" height of the front panel with glass at a reasonable cost and safety, the overall tank would be 50" or so with the bottom and bracing. I would estimate around $8k for a starphire glass tank in your length width and 48" tall. Acrylic can start getting very expensive as well over the 48" mark because you need to start useing 2 or 2 1/2" acrylic, but sometimes you can find a deal with some builders. Pro to glass is it's thinner so bigger tank volume and it is much mutch harder to scratch. For a fish only tank I would recomend against the fake corals because they need to be cleaned on a regular basis(weekly) otherwise they look bad, just good old live rock is best because it aids in filtration and when it gets some algae it looks natural not like you have a dirty aquarium. I would also advise against buying big or very aggressive fish, a small shark is fine but a grouper or shoal tang will disrupt the other fish. Mostly peaceful reef fish like anthias, smaller tangs and dwarf angels do best in aquariums big or small and 100 small colorful fish look beter than 10 big ones, to me at least. Also add juvenile fish and let them grow, mature fish don't cope with new tank mates well. For lighting LEDs are all the rage these days and cannons work well, radions will also work and are color adjustable. 2' of acces above the tank is also ideal for working on it.
 
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Got a bid for the tank. 84 long by 36 deep and 48 high. Not sure if Im allowed to post pricing here but they are using 1.5 inch acrylic for the 48 inch high tank. Would that suffice or would you guys suggest going to 2 inch acrylic?

Tank cost from first bid is reasonable and Im comfortable with the cost.
 
Plan on Cleaning all sides of inside glass every 2-3 days for a show piece like that. I would also plan for a fireplace in that spot someday regarding framing aka if a chimney needed to go here later, i.e. don't have a floor joist laying directly above where a chimney duct needs to go.

Lighting canopy, if you like suspended canopy, then linear actuators or winch planning in ceiling makes since? Or, several solana tubes porting natural light?

Acrylic this time, maybe glass next time, so make sure slab is poured for excessive weight of either tank ...
 
Just wanted to update this thread. House construction is well underway. Due to unforeseen delays, we didn't break ground till Memorial Day 2014. Framing and electrical is complete. Plumbing has been started. And the fish tank planning is under progress. I'll post photos and details later.
 
Life got in the way. Just have been super busy planning and building the house. I'll do a major update maybe later today if I don't have too much beer at the Super Bowl party. Final dimensions of tank- 96x48x48
 
glad to see this restarted. also glad to see the 48 inch depth. on a long tall tank like that 36 inches would start to look thin. plan on getting several different scrapers and pick ups. on my 36 inch tall tank i have used a few different ones and already broken one of them. remember, the easier it is to do maintenence tasks the more frequently they will be done, and the better the tank will look. i would second the earlier post about not putting coral inserts into the tank. i think then never look good in the long run, but nice live rock with a good covering of coraline algae looks great. as an aside at 36 inches deep i can just touch the bottom of my tank if i put my arm in up to the armpit and get the side of my face wet. im 6'2" and have long arms. keep us posted with pics when they start coming. ive been in the same house now for 10 years and need my construction fix to remind me why i never want to move.
 
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