Matt's 5000ltr Display

[d3hree]

Hi All

I have been lingering on your forum for some time now, I love it here.

There have been so very many threads that I have read that have been inspiring that I simply couldnt name them all.
However one thing I have noticed about RC is the depth of information that you folks go into and the care and attention you take in your build threads, seemingly as much care is taken with the thread as is with the build itself.

The time you take to answer questions and keep members involved in your builds is inspiring in itself. Due to this and the afore mentioned threads i thought I would try my best to join in and contribute to what is a great forum with some great members.

OK, so where to begin?
I have been in the hobby for some years now, starting with a 200ltr tank and quickly moving onto a 500ltr tank with about 150ltr sump.
I should just point out now that I am in the UK so I will stick to litres as opposed to gallons as they would get lost in translation.

On to the new tank. I have been planning this for approximately 2 years. If truth be told I dont think it needed that amount of planning but life constantly got in the way of me actually making a start. So I should correct that statement: I have been planning it for 5 months and daydreaming about the opportunity to start it for 19 months!

I will try to quickly get you up to speed with where I am at the moment but I think it is important to start at the begining to show how the current design evolved over time and why i made the decisions I did.

The 10ft tank will be residing in my dining room, it will span one wall.

Below is my first design, swiss cheese. With 3 seperate CL systems, multiple drains and feeds it was going to have too many holes for my liking so I soon abandoned this idea.

 

[d3hree]

The idea was to build the tank and utilise the space underneath for my daughters ever increasing amount of toys. I didnt want the restrictions that I currently face with the sump under the tank I wanted what you boys and girls call a "fish room"

Space here in the UK is somewhat limited to what you experience in what would seem most parts of North America and Canada so i had to think of a design that I could accomodate the filtration for in my garage that was 6ft away from the dining room.

Below is a floor plan of the proposed design

The idea was that the drains would leave the tank, go through the cavity brick wall to the outside. They would then drop to ground level, travel the 6ft to the garage, go through the garage wall and into the sump...easy eh?

 

[d3hree]

This to me seemed to over complicate what is essentially a simple principle. Winters can get pretty cold here...summers can be pretty nippy too!! So I had concerns about sufficently insulating the pipes. Although the water would be moving it would still have the opportunity to chill slightly and so I would be using more watts to keep it at a steady 25/26 degrees.

I decided to have the garage extended to meet the house and allow for the pipes to pass through the cavity wall straight into the garage/fish room.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Instead of physically connecting the two structures (which can run into it's own issue) you could simply build a box around the outside pipes and insulate the hell out of it, something like expanding foam would work nice. Also is your garage insulated? Most aren't around here. It would stink if you had to burn through electricity because your garage is near freezing sucking heat from your sump.

That said how much to scale is your house/garage... looks like your tank will take up 20% of the living space!

 

[d3hree]

Instead of physically connecting the two structures (which can run into it's own issue) you could simply build a box around the outside pipes and insulate the hell out of it, something like expanding foam would work nice.

This was the original plan, to box and insulate the pipes. However I decided that for the price of extending the garage to meet the house it was worth it. Plus the void between the house and garage was un-used space.

Also is your garage insulated? Most aren't around here. It would stink if you had to burn through electricity because your garage is near freezing sucking heat from your sump.

It isnt at the moment but the plan is to use kingspan, a layer of ply and then ceramic tiles to create a water proof, insulated fish room.
Also I will be having a partition added to the garage so that the fish room area is easier to control temperature wise.

The drawings above are not to scale, just for positioning of the tank vs sump to give you an idea. What is actually called "house" in the drawing is just one room. The tank is big but not that big.

 

[Motaz]

I have been through this process of thought although I have to do the other way around... Cool the water as in sumer it hits 45 deg outside so I inverted all to be in the same place under the display tank...

I am interested to see your final thoughts and plan of action..

Wish u luck

 

[dave.m]

May I ask what software you used to do your 3D drawings? Looks way cool.

Dave.M

 

[d3hree]

Having had the garage extended I could then take the pipework through the cavity wall on the left of the tank to an overflow box that was sat in the garage.

 

[d3hree]

May I ask what software you used to do your 3D drawings? Looks way cool.

Dave.M

Hi Dave, its 3dsmax with vray.

Thanks

Matt

 

[d3hree]

Next I started to plan the lighting.

I bought 4 x lumenarcIII reflectors and 6 coral vue ballasts.
The ballasts were made up of 4 x 250w and 2 x 400w.

I plan to set the tank up with 2x400w centrally with a 250w either side.

In the future if i chose to I can drop the 400w centrally and replace with 250's ( this was the reasoning behind buying the extra two ballasts)

I wanted to be able to rotate the lights rather than have the conventional "straight down" lighting.

I wanted to be able to rotate the lights away from the front glass and light the tank more like a stage.

So I set about trying to figure out a gimbal sort of arrangement for the lumenarc reflectors.

Out of all the planning the lighting gave me the most headaches and therefore the lighting rig constantly changed...more about that later.

 

[d3hree]

The next issue to address was flow and how to get lots of it!

Personally I am not a fan of powerheads especially in a 5000ltr display so I chose to opt of closed loops, several of them.

The return from the sump will be 16000lph and will be delivered back to the tank via a calfo loop.

50% of the nozzels will be directed across the waters surface and 50% down towards the reef.

 

[mx838]

What holds it up? Very interesting design. Tagging along

 

[d3hree]

What holds it up? Very interesting design. Tagging along

There will be a stand Infact the stand has been built. These drawings are just my workings out.

 

[d3hree]

I had the good fortune to visit David Saxby and spend some time with him discussing flow, his tank is stunning and I would have been foolish to not take on board his thoughts on flow and closed loops.

So I simply stole his ideas and designs

These are early drawings and things have moved on a little from this design. There will be 4 seperate closed loop systems totalling 64000lph. Each fed from a seperate 16000lph laguna pump.

The idea behind it was that I can turn a couple of the pumps off for quieter/gentle night time flow but still not have any dead spots.

One of the pumps will feed an OM 4 way with revolutions.

There will be a single revolution in each corner.

You will notice that no holes are drilled in the tank to feed the closed loops back. This was another suggestion from David Saxby, by limiting the amount of holes in a tank limits the amount of things that can go wrong....maybe not today, not tomorrow but someday.

 

[dave.m]

Stunning images! This is turning into a graphic novel. :thumbsup:

Dave.M

 

[d3hree]

Stunning images! This is turning into a graphic novel. :thumbsup:

Dave.M

Lol, thanks Dave. The story of this graphic novel is a tale of how one man desperately wanted to start building his large fish tank but work commitments continuosly got in the way...so he kept drawing pictures of his large fish tank, changing his mind on how it would work, day dreaming of the time when he could actually start.

At least the workload meant that I have designed the hell out of the tank, I know exactly how it will work and now that it has been started I have used the drawings as reference so that (hopefully) I wont make any errors.

 

[d3hree]

fibreglass??

fibreglass??

I started to get some quotes from "build on site" aquarium companies.

All I can say is "wow". I dont know how it is for you over there but here in the UK glass prices have gone up 5 fold over the last couple of years.

The average price I was quoted for 120" x 48" x 48" was about £12,000. Which in your money is about $19,308.95 (using xe.com)

I could have dropped a foot off of the height making it 36" high so the glass could be thinner. This dropped the price to an average of £4000. But I had planned and dreamed of this tank for a long time. I didnt want to sacrifice my plans due to cost to then look at my 36" deep tank wishing I had stuck to my guns.

I was prepared to pay the $19k and change to have the tank I wanted.

Speaking to a friend and fellow reefer one day and discussing my plans he asked me if i had explored a fibreglass tank?

I hadn't...I hadn't even heard of a fibreglass tank other than those at public displays. So I spent some time reading every thread I could find relating to fibreglass tanks.

 

[d3hree]

to cut a long story short it turned out that a fibreglass tank would suit my requirements pretty well.
With only a single viewing pane of glass and with the tank surrounded on 3 sides by brick walls there was no need to pay for glass that wouldnt be needed.

 

[d3hree]

The end goal,

If anyone has ever seen Ralfp's tank they will recognise this cabinetry design, another idea I have stolen

 

[Ansphire]

wow.. i feel dumb didn't realize this was a sketch and was wondering how that tank was floating... lol

cant wait looks amazing.