Howdy all!
Warning: long diatribe explaining my thought process in next few paragraphs. Skip to picture if you don't care about it!
I've spent 9 months cycling my 225G tank and watching lots of coralline grow. I've conquered the hair algae, diatoms, and whatever else. I don't even do a water change more than every 6 weeks or so, but I have almost no bioload and so it's pretty easy. (What have I been doing all this time? Getting sidetracked by surprises and issues having nothing to do with reefkeeping!)
Anyway, I settled into analyzing what the next steps were for finishing out my system and I realized that I just don't have enough room under the tank to put all the equipment, and I'm also pretty picky about noise. I've gone to great lengths to reduce the noise to a tiny gurgle, and that's worked out pretty well. (Replacing fans in my Aquactinics hood, stealing the gated-drain-with-emergency-backup idea for no cavitation or bubbles, going to all Poseidon pumps, etc.) However, I have no room left for Ca, phosphate, or kalk reactors... nor a refugium or proper storage for my RODI and saltwater mix containers.
The first solution I came up with was to use one small, extra room on the lower floor of my house as an equipment room. Unfortunately, that room is clear across the house, the downstairs is a completely-finished half-basement, and there is no easy way to run plumbing and data (for controllers) between the two. It can be done, but my estimates are running into the $12,000 range!
So I got to thinking that maybe an alternative is to convert my only-somewhat-used media room into a fish room. This has several nice advantages: it's on the same floor as the tank, it's literally inches from the tank -- separated only by a 4-inch load-bearing internal wall, and it's much bigger (12 x 17 feet instead of 10 by 7). It also isn't below grade, so adding a drain in the floor may be considerably easier.
Once I started thinking about this possibility, it occurred to me that maybe I could just back my tank up into the theoretical equipment room and have an in-wall display instead! This would make things cleaner, buy me back 12 square feet of space in my living room, and move the last remaining dregs of gurgle noise to behind a nice wall.
And (are you drooling yet?), finally, it occurred to me that the marginal cost of
moving to a larger tank at the same time would be a relative "bargain!"
So, without further delay, here's what I've got for Bertha so far. First, a rudimentary diagram of the room with the tank laid in:
Two important things to note right away:
1. The upper wall of the tank faces out into my living room and the left wall faces out into the hallway adjacent to my living room. My entire floor is completely open except for this media room's walls, so you'll be able to see in both sides of the tank from most places in the main room. (I'll add a picture of the room in another post soon.)
2. There's a tiny square on the corner. As awesome as I think it would be to have the aquarium "wrap around" the corner of the room there, my architect friend has already confirmed my fears: that "hole" is a load-bearing pair of 2x4's that hold the entire loft (above the media--er, fish--room) up, so it's not going away.
The tank dimensions work out to around 800 gallons if I assume a 32" height. My current tank is 30" and I don't want to go much higher.
Obstacles and leading questions for you guys who have too much time to spend on these forums:
[list=1][*]
Structural concerns: This tank has to sit on the main floor of my house, underneath which is a fully-finished lower floor/half-basement. For the builders who're reading, the floor is comprised of 12" TJI's at 16" on-center that run vertically in the diagram above. There's a 10-inch steel beam running horizontally directly under the top edge of the tank in that same diagram, so the TJI's span the 17 feet of fish room (which is in the corner of my house.) For reference, I have an 8500-pound fireplace/stove just 10 feet diagonally away from the proposed location of this tank with roughly half the square footage and *three* 8-inch steel beams running in parallel underneath it. I didn't design the house or choose the 8,500-pound stove.
I also don't expect anyone to tell me the magic answer here, so I'll submit the drawings to my friendly structural engineer and let you know what he comes up with. I suspect what I'll end up doing is quasi-sistering in 2 or 3 steel beams parallel to and between several of the TJI's directly underneath the tank. I will probably also have to reinforce the 10-inch steel beam described above as well as its steel support posts. (Sorry if I'm mangling the technical terms for these construction gadgets; I'm a total rookie when it comes to building houses!)
[*]
Water concerns: It's imperative to me that the water in this tank not present a risk to the rest of my house, structurally or any other way. I don't want rotting, flooding, rusting, or anything else. I do have one small luxury with respect to these problems, and that's that I live at about 9,000 feet and it never gets truly hot or humid here. I do not have any active ventilation system in the fish room (or in my house, for that matter) except for windows... there is radiant floor heat and no air-conditioning. I do have two nice windows in the soon-to-be fish room, both on the bottom right corner in that diagram, and I also have the ability to drill holes in my wall to add fans, plumbing, or whatever else I need. I would appreciate initial thoughts on this. For reference, my 225G is fan-cooled and evaporates at an average of about 4 gallons per day -- 7 or 8 if it gets hot in the house. Those gallons don't even begin to affect the dry air in the main "room" of my first floor, at least as far as I can tell. I'd have 3.5 times the surface area on the new tank, but I think I might also have much better temp stability and I'd certainly consider active chilling if needed.
[*]
Plumbing concerns: This I also have to work out with my contractor. I'd want plumbing in that room and I'll have to get it through the floor. I think this is relatively easy EXCEPT I want to make the whole thing into a bathtub floor of some sort, so if disaster strikes I do not ruin the rest of my house. I can't really cut corners on this; it's just not worth it if I can't (literally) catch-all failure modes with a bathtub and a drain. (Well, okay, catastrophic failure of the acrylic wouldn't be caught, but I guess I have to have a reason for homeowner's insurance, right?!)
[*]
Sound: I'm a little concerned about noise bleeding through the walls. Since I'll have to repanel all the walls anyway (see "water" above), I can add additional soundproofing and bulk up the door to the hallway to cut that down. I am actually more worried about vibrational noise coming through the floor, in fact. This worries me because I can hear one of my Tunze Streams at night in my bedroom directly underneath the tank today. (I haven't been able to figure out why it's noisier; I think it's just a chance resonance thing.) My house is very quiet (remember, no active ventilation... and I live up in the boonies so there are few cars or people) so these things tend to stick out. I'd love to hear people's experience with this challenge.
[*]
Dumb question: This silly question just stems from my general inexperience and newbiness. I have a bunch more, but I'll start with one for now: 'm going to have trouble getting to the front corner of the tank unless I can climb on it, because I don't want to have panels that swing up above the tank. Can I get a tank with an acrylic top that's sturdy enough for me to crawl around on? My 3/4" on my 225G is pretty good, though I wouldn't want to have to stand on it!
[/list=1]
Thanks for reading the lengthy start to this thread. I hope this will come to fruition; a lot hinges on the plans to mitigate the big three concerns I listed first above.
Please let me know your thoughts!
Ben