Sprockett
New member
I've been running a couple of nano's for quite a while now, and unfortunately everything is outgrowing the tanks faster than I can keep up. So my wife and I started discussing getting something bigger, I found a 180g reef tank locally for a good price. It's 6' x 2' x2' (or right around there), it's been drilled in the back and sides for a closed loop and a sump system. It's in good shape and I just could not pass it up...
After a great deal of discussion we picked a spot in our dining/kitchen area, the tank will sit right against the wall of my garage. Now before anyone assumes I'm going to build it in the wall or house everything in the garage, I use my garage to build guitars and do woodworking for other people so it's not an option. I *DO* however I do have my RO/DI out there and a 35 Gallon rubbermaid trashcan for keeping saltwater.
Our plan for the kitchen is to build a full wrap around book/china case for the dining area, so the tank will actually be part of that unit, I will be running lines from the little wet area in the garage to the tank so I no longer have to drag around a hose for water changes and I'll be hooking up the RO/DI to keep the water level up automatically.
My intention is to run an overflow/fuge in the bottom of the case, since the stand will be 6', 4 of that will go to the fuge and the other two for storage shelves and electronics. The only thing going through the wall will be some plumbing that I can run to the wet area of the garage. I'll most likely use my 12g Nano for a quarantine tank, and move it somewhere out of the way.
So now I run into some of the questions about getting things setup......
1. I'd like to recover one side of the tank (the one with all the holes) for viewing and replace the glass there, how feasable is it to do something like that?
2. For the stand I was thinking of using 2x5 dimension lumber, with a sandwich of ply epoxied in the middle for strength, the idea being that it should be much stronger than standard 2x6 lumber and more stable. Is anyone else doing this??
3. How big of a saltwater storage tank should I keep for this?, and also what about fresh water? I'm going to have to find a way to store these out of the way nice and neat. Can you stack these, I would like to see what others are doing.
4. How are other people with large tanks running their plumbing for things like water changes? I was thinking of draining out of the sump into the houses drain, and then putting a pump in the mixing tank that to push it back over to the sump so I could easily do clean (meaning no water all over the house) water changes.
I'm still making my lists and planning things out, I won't be picking the tank for another few weeks so I'm using this time to get my plans together before I do anything.
Cheers
-Paul-
After a great deal of discussion we picked a spot in our dining/kitchen area, the tank will sit right against the wall of my garage. Now before anyone assumes I'm going to build it in the wall or house everything in the garage, I use my garage to build guitars and do woodworking for other people so it's not an option. I *DO* however I do have my RO/DI out there and a 35 Gallon rubbermaid trashcan for keeping saltwater.
Our plan for the kitchen is to build a full wrap around book/china case for the dining area, so the tank will actually be part of that unit, I will be running lines from the little wet area in the garage to the tank so I no longer have to drag around a hose for water changes and I'll be hooking up the RO/DI to keep the water level up automatically.
My intention is to run an overflow/fuge in the bottom of the case, since the stand will be 6', 4 of that will go to the fuge and the other two for storage shelves and electronics. The only thing going through the wall will be some plumbing that I can run to the wet area of the garage. I'll most likely use my 12g Nano for a quarantine tank, and move it somewhere out of the way.
So now I run into some of the questions about getting things setup......
1. I'd like to recover one side of the tank (the one with all the holes) for viewing and replace the glass there, how feasable is it to do something like that?
2. For the stand I was thinking of using 2x5 dimension lumber, with a sandwich of ply epoxied in the middle for strength, the idea being that it should be much stronger than standard 2x6 lumber and more stable. Is anyone else doing this??
3. How big of a saltwater storage tank should I keep for this?, and also what about fresh water? I'm going to have to find a way to store these out of the way nice and neat. Can you stack these, I would like to see what others are doing.
4. How are other people with large tanks running their plumbing for things like water changes? I was thinking of draining out of the sump into the houses drain, and then putting a pump in the mixing tank that to push it back over to the sump so I could easily do clean (meaning no water all over the house) water changes.
I'm still making my lists and planning things out, I won't be picking the tank for another few weeks so I'm using this time to get my plans together before I do anything.
Cheers
-Paul-
