Design suggestions?

KevinW

KevinW

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Hillcrest
Hi all,

I am looking at building a system (probably FOWLR or possibly some corals depending on the amount of light that I can get into the tank) which would also function as a "coffee table" in my lounge. Essentially looking at building a tank about 1.8mX1.5mX0.6m or so that will sit on the floor (suspended wooden floor) with a removable glass lid (table top). For lighting am thinking of a suspended unit with metal halides. Filtration would have to be "in tank" as such (as I do not want to have to crawl under the house everytime I need to do any maintainance). I am thinking of having a central box made using black perspex with a home made skimmer (sort of like the one at Julies in Gateway) and all the pumps, heaters etc in it.

Any suggestions and/or comments welcomed!

Cheers
Kevin
 
Sounds like a good idea although may be a bit of a mission to get setup - but that's 1/2 the fun :)

I have suspended floors and my builder told me to watch out with my 850l tank...... I think the movement can also be a problem with the tank....

Good luck though....
 
Hi Sims,

I have planned on adding extra joists to take the weight of the tank. It will be also sitting between four pillar supports so should be OK.
 
Hi Kevin, i looked into something like this years ago when i still had discus and they never did it because of the maintenance issues involved, they tend to be very difficult to work on and so maintenance tends to be neglected. Although suspended floors may be an advantage here as you could have an upstream sump and refugium by running the plumbing under the floor to another room.
 
Yip if you can add support to the floor then a sump plumbed under the floor would work.... I also toyed with the idea of digging a basement - you should have seen the builders face whan I said that....
 
I was thinking of leaving the table top/cover glass loose so that I could just lift it off to get access to the tank. My main concern is how to fit an effective filtration system into a central box at the same level as the tank. I could drill through the floor and run the plumbing to a basement but this would mean about twenty metres of plumbing which then leads to problems with insulation and water temperature (Hillcrest not as cold as JHB etc but currently looking at minimum overnight temperatures of 3 to 4C).

There is no way I am digging a basement Sims! Already dug a hole for my pond and had to use a backactor because there is rock about 1m down all over my property!
 
this sounds rather interesting.no pro at it,so will be tagging.ive previously used an octagon tank about 50L as a coffe table,but that was fresh water tank,worked lekker but when it comes to marines and a major size tank like that got no experiecne
 
Sounds nice, will be nice to view a tank from above, But I think gas exchange is going to be a problem if it is covered with glass, unless the glass is raised higher than all the sides of the tank. And also you will probably get quite a bit of condensation so you really will have ongoign issues with keeping the top glass clean enough for decent viewing.

Also you obviously don't have young kids (or do you) cause I can see disaster happen, if they are running around playing in the house.

Clinton
 
Hi Clinton, Yep - definitely no kids unless four cats count as kids! I was thinking about supporting the cover glass about 10cm or so above the water surface on turrets along the top edges of the tank sides. You have a point though about the condensation...might have to make that more like 25 - 30cms. That would probably also solve the problem with the water level in the central sump asI could leave it close to teh tank water level and still have space for the skimmer collection cup.
 
Kevin sounds like an interesting project, and defineatly something unique.

Hope you can get it worked out, would love to see this up and running.
 
I would still try seperate the filtration, otherwise going to be very difficult to work on.
 
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