Achilles2008
New member
Let me introduce myself, my name is Garry but I'd much prefer you to call me Gaz, I live just on the outskirts of London UK. After a shopping visit with my wife to New York, to my wife's surprise we stumbled across Manhattan Aquariums as you do and after chatting to a quite impressed Carlos Urena he suggested I share my tank with all the other reefers outside the UK. My current build and according to my wife the last started in January 2011 and has been documented on http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/showthread.php?t=480285
After keeping the obligatory goldfish and guppies throughout my youth this crazy interest progressed from my scuba diving, I just wanted a little piece of the ocean in my living room. So I drove Russell at Home Marine in Enfield UK, mad for a year and in May 2004 I purchased my first tank a Perc 120 mixed reef based on the Berlin method, 120 gallons measuring 4ft x 2ft x 2.5 ft. with all the gear in a hidden section in the back.
2007 some 3 years later sometime in November again from Home Marine in Enfield UK I upgraded to a Seabray 8ft x 2ft x 3ft deep and promptly joined Ultimate Reef to get me through my troubles.
With help and advice from Ultimate Reef members things started to look up in the tank, I was over my teething issues and stupid mistakes, ridiculous impulse purchases, losses and deaths when Marine World wrote a nice article about me and my tank which appeared in the January 2009 issue.
In 2011 we moved house, and I took the opportunity with the wife's blessing to purchase a bungalow with a double length garage so that I could have a tank built into the wall. The whole bungalow had to be modified around where the tank was going to sit. As my old tank was too deep and inaccessible, prone to flooding, I kept getting electric shocks, lifting 25 litre water change barrels up a ladder was dangerous and messy, it was doing my back in and it was so damn noisy (it made me want to go to the loo all the time) I was going to make sure that this tank would be everything the old one wasn't.
So the day of the house move I set up a holding tank the other end of the garage, transferred all the rock, corals, water and fish and within 24 hours I had lost everything, the reason behind this was because I used to much new water mixed with old and the holding tank started to cycle.
Display: 144 x 42 x 32 inches (366 x 107 x 81cm)
Tank Volume: 3167 litres (697 UK gal)
System Volume: 4600 litres (1012 UK gal)
It took 6 months of planning and asking advice on Ultimate Reef, and a further 3 months personally building the foundation and supports for this beast, I decided on a 12 foot long by 3.5 foot wide by 32 inch deep tank, I wanted Optiwhite on the front and regular glass elsewhere, I didn't want the interior of the tank cluttered with weirs and pipes so I ended up going for 2 external weirs and the back wall blacked out. In my opinion there was only one man for the job, our Vince of Aquarium Connections UK, as it was so big it had to be built on site and what a brilliant job he did, in fact he went above and beyond in sourcing all the second hand equipment I might need within my meagre budget.
The glass is 15mm all round and 30mm on the base, it all sits on 25mm marine ply with an 8 inch overhang around the back and sides that I can stand on for easy access to the interior of the whole tank. The 25mm ply sits on 2 x RSJs, a wooden beam measuring 12inch x 2inch, and of course 12inches of the hole in the exterior wall of the house, this all sits on 2 end brick tiers and one pillar holding the middle up and this all sits on 3 feet of reinforced concrete for the foundations which was all constructed by myself.
Under the tank there are 2 koi vats for the sumps measuring 50 inch x 30 inch x 15 inch that are connected either side of the supporting pillar by several 63mm tank connectors and pipe, both have 50mm overflow holes which are piped directly into the drain to save flooding out the fish room. There are 4 x 50mm down pipes in each of the 2 external weirs, 3 go into each of the 2 sumps and the extra one in each weir is in case the tank overflows which is piped directly to the drain. There is a further 3 sump tower on the other side of the fish room to be explained later.
I aquascaped my 2 previous tanks using the traditional reef wall method, my vision this time round was to copy something that I have seen on many diving trips and in my favourite tank of all time on Ultimate Reef, Thiru's Malaysian Reef, a wide open area with lots of swimming space with several bommies (a bommie being an independent freestanding rock structure), all different and all covered in corals with lots of small fish swarming around them.
I will add some pictures when Ive figured out how to do it.
After keeping the obligatory goldfish and guppies throughout my youth this crazy interest progressed from my scuba diving, I just wanted a little piece of the ocean in my living room. So I drove Russell at Home Marine in Enfield UK, mad for a year and in May 2004 I purchased my first tank a Perc 120 mixed reef based on the Berlin method, 120 gallons measuring 4ft x 2ft x 2.5 ft. with all the gear in a hidden section in the back.
2007 some 3 years later sometime in November again from Home Marine in Enfield UK I upgraded to a Seabray 8ft x 2ft x 3ft deep and promptly joined Ultimate Reef to get me through my troubles.
With help and advice from Ultimate Reef members things started to look up in the tank, I was over my teething issues and stupid mistakes, ridiculous impulse purchases, losses and deaths when Marine World wrote a nice article about me and my tank which appeared in the January 2009 issue.
In 2011 we moved house, and I took the opportunity with the wife's blessing to purchase a bungalow with a double length garage so that I could have a tank built into the wall. The whole bungalow had to be modified around where the tank was going to sit. As my old tank was too deep and inaccessible, prone to flooding, I kept getting electric shocks, lifting 25 litre water change barrels up a ladder was dangerous and messy, it was doing my back in and it was so damn noisy (it made me want to go to the loo all the time) I was going to make sure that this tank would be everything the old one wasn't.
So the day of the house move I set up a holding tank the other end of the garage, transferred all the rock, corals, water and fish and within 24 hours I had lost everything, the reason behind this was because I used to much new water mixed with old and the holding tank started to cycle.
Display: 144 x 42 x 32 inches (366 x 107 x 81cm)
Tank Volume: 3167 litres (697 UK gal)
System Volume: 4600 litres (1012 UK gal)
It took 6 months of planning and asking advice on Ultimate Reef, and a further 3 months personally building the foundation and supports for this beast, I decided on a 12 foot long by 3.5 foot wide by 32 inch deep tank, I wanted Optiwhite on the front and regular glass elsewhere, I didn't want the interior of the tank cluttered with weirs and pipes so I ended up going for 2 external weirs and the back wall blacked out. In my opinion there was only one man for the job, our Vince of Aquarium Connections UK, as it was so big it had to be built on site and what a brilliant job he did, in fact he went above and beyond in sourcing all the second hand equipment I might need within my meagre budget.
The glass is 15mm all round and 30mm on the base, it all sits on 25mm marine ply with an 8 inch overhang around the back and sides that I can stand on for easy access to the interior of the whole tank. The 25mm ply sits on 2 x RSJs, a wooden beam measuring 12inch x 2inch, and of course 12inches of the hole in the exterior wall of the house, this all sits on 2 end brick tiers and one pillar holding the middle up and this all sits on 3 feet of reinforced concrete for the foundations which was all constructed by myself.
Under the tank there are 2 koi vats for the sumps measuring 50 inch x 30 inch x 15 inch that are connected either side of the supporting pillar by several 63mm tank connectors and pipe, both have 50mm overflow holes which are piped directly into the drain to save flooding out the fish room. There are 4 x 50mm down pipes in each of the 2 external weirs, 3 go into each of the 2 sumps and the extra one in each weir is in case the tank overflows which is piped directly to the drain. There is a further 3 sump tower on the other side of the fish room to be explained later.
I aquascaped my 2 previous tanks using the traditional reef wall method, my vision this time round was to copy something that I have seen on many diving trips and in my favourite tank of all time on Ultimate Reef, Thiru's Malaysian Reef, a wide open area with lots of swimming space with several bommies (a bommie being an independent freestanding rock structure), all different and all covered in corals with lots of small fish swarming around them.
I will add some pictures when Ive figured out how to do it.
