hungarian 350 gallon reef tank for low money

[kovike113]

Hi Everybody!

I have been reading RC for a while and I really like this forum. I have gone through many threads in the last couple of months.

Let me introduce myself and my 3rd reef tank, thatI have built in February 2015.
I'm Laslo and I live in Hungary, near to the capital (Budapest). I'm 39 years old, I work for a bank, as an IT leader.
I have started to deal with reef aquariums about 8 years ago. My first reef was a smaller one, around 60 gallons. A friend of mine built it for me, it run 2 years. My second aquarium was 200 gallons, it was built on my own mostly. I have bought a used stand and glass. It was not bad, but many comprosmises had to be made due to the used parts.

So I have started to think about how my dream tank would look like. I have registered all issues that I would do different if I could start it from scretch. It was a really long list

January 2015, I could afford to start the new project along my plans. I suddenly sold my old tank (transport was promised by end of February), so I had 8! weeks to do all the work. How to say, it was quite challenging

Sizes of the tank:
Display volume: 350 gallons (glass thickness: 0,48 inces)
Length: 98 inches
Depth: 33 inches
Height: 25 inces
Sump volume: 80 gallons

I have also made some important conditions:
- easy to maintain
- not too expensive to build (4000 US Dollars total investment)
- cheap to maintain (less than 100 US Dollars in a month)
Some of you may think it is impossible :rollface:

I have ordered the glass for the display and the sump and started to build the brick (ytong) stand.

To be continoued soon..

 

[kovike113]

Building the stand

I choosed brick for the stand (called ytong).

Reasoning: strong with ferro-concrete bypasses, long parts might be bypassed. I wanted to have an easy and comfortable access to the sump. It will not corrode as many other materials. Noise management will also not be an issue.

It was quite easy to set it up, but the finetuning of water balance was a bit hard :hammer: Finally I could fix it in time.

 

[kovike113]

DIY led light

DIY led light

It was not an option to use HQI or T5 fixtures, due to high maintenance cost that I wanted to avoid. Original led fixtures were hardly available of this size. Maybe I could have used for fixtures, but I decided to make the light on my own.

I have ordered all the parts from ebay. 250 pieces of 3w leds were used. Cabeling took some time :headwally: 2 weeks...

Both the heatsinks and the holder is made of aluminium, so salt water should not be an issue.

The weight of the heatsinks is 50 pounds each! They can be opened up if needed.

 

[kovike113]

Display tank

Display tank

It took 4 weeks to get the display and the sump but it was just on time

I had 1 week until go live and still lot to do. Light, plumbing, water probe, etc. It was pretty hard to meet the deadline, because a plumbing was leaking heavily. I could fix it only for the second try. I had to wait a day between probes, due to glue tie.

6 of us brought in the display, it's weight was near to 700 pounds. It took us 3,5 hours to bring in, paint the back with black, put it on the stand and build the sinker box (black glass). I have also tubed the sinker tubes. One with tap, one with no tap.

All electric devices were to be moved from old tank only after moving creatures.

Display is still empty, but the reflection of old tank

 

[kovike113]

Moving into the new tank

Moving into the new tank

It was time to move things to the new tank. Two of us have started at 9 am. First we had to finetune the lightning, it lasted a couple of hours. We have actually started the move at 2 pm. All creatures and equipment had to be moved simultanously. Building rocks went quickly and smootly fortunately

Around 7 pm it looked like this.

It was a pretty hard day, but fortunately it turned out very successfull.

 

[kovike113]

Furniture

Furniture

I have already prepared project, so next day, it was all done. We just had to install it quickly. Here it goes :lolspin:

Looks a lot better and is a lot more quite!

The upper part arrived a week later.

 

[kovike113]

Skimmer

Skimmer

Skimmer is doing pretty good! It is an ATI Powercone 250i with a modified overflow. It is powered by a Jebao Dc12000 pump.

 

[kovike113]

Flow

Flow

Correct flow is granted by 2xJebao RW20 wave makers and 2xTunze6100 with multi controller. Two smaller Tunze is also working in the display.

 

[kovike113]

Now

Now

This is how it looks like currently.

 

[anbosu]

Nice tank!

 

[kovike113]

https://vimeo.com/150429078

 

[kovike113]

https://vimeo.com/150429467

 

[kovike113]

https://vimeo.com/150429553

 

[kovike113]

Nice tank!

Thanks!

 

[Achilles Torben]

Hallo to our European friends in our neighborhood. Congratulations for such a nice tank with so beautiful fish. It was a big challenge to minimize the coast. Two years ago I stay in Budapest and celebrate the birthday of a family member. Hope to see more in the future.

 

[kovike113]

Hallo to our European friends in our neighborhood. Congratulations for such a nice tank with so beautiful fish. It was a big challenge to minimize the coast. Two years ago I stay in Budapest and celebrate the birthday of a family member. Hope to see more in the future.

Hi! Thanks

It has really been a challenge to keep costs low. But reached fortunately :rollface: Where do you live in Europe?