What happened?
I have been into the aquaria hobby for over a decade dealing with mostly planted/freshwater tanks. The passion evolved into keeping higher-end/high light/Co2 injected planted tanks and eventually worked up to a 125 gallon tank that I built into a wall of our living room. While doing this I got hooked on salt water which always seemed outside my realm of skill. Then I found reef central and saw that there was no real veil of secrecy surrounding the hobby. Initially I was going to build a wet room directly behind our 125 and turn that into a full blown reef tank.
So to get a handle on the hobby I set up a 55 gallon tank in our bedroom. It set with salt water and sand for several weeks and I wound up with a single rock, a couple of hitch hiker snails and a peppermint shrimp.
Then a few weeks later, another rock and two more peppermint shrimps, I found that the wife and I were spending hours in front of this simple, basically empty tank. About a month after that I ordered about 40 lbs of rock from an online vendor and sat back and learned. The tank stayed this way, except the addition of a few crabs. I then added 6 black bar chromis and really became hooked on the hobby
The plan for the 125 had changed and I began planning a tank that was eight feet long in our home office/entertainment room. After a few financial hick-ups, it took several months, several design revisions and a ton of patience from my family, but the project is now, well underway. One of the subsequent goals of this project was to make the tank fairly quiet. We did not want to hear the buzzing of pumps and other noises that are distracting from the viewing of the tank. A little splashing water would be okay, but no mechanical sound. This meant moving all the equipment to a wet room, 21’ away in the garage.
I had been posting small updates in the large tank section of RC, but still being fairly new to this hobby, I have elected to let that thread die and post here as I hope that suggestions, problem spotting and general discussion will be more prevalent and help in making this tank a real healthy environment.
The Tank:
So initially I set up thinking that I would be doing a standard 240 gallon tank (8’X2’X2’). This idea became to evolve slowly and over time I planed a bigger tank, which went through several revisions to include 96�LX27�HX28�D, with dual overflows and all the plumbing hidden with possibly SCWDs assisting with the closed loop. After some suggestions and research we decided to go with a 96�X30�X30�, with ¾� acrylic, with a single, exterior overflow, and a single closed loop running with an OM 4-way. With the ¾� acrylic, this makes the internal, usable volume of water approximately 332 gallons. The tank is currently being built by James at Envision and is scheduled for delivery around mid to late August. The tank will be viewable from two sides, the front and the right side. The left side and back will be black with the left side supporting the single, exterior overflow. The left side also has the intake for the closed loop at the back, lower section, under the overflow box. The flow of the overflow will be approximately 1600 gph, but is capable for nearly 2000 gph. The closed loop will be a little over 2000 gph. All the returns will be plumbed through the top, with six 1� bulkheads being installed, two for the sump return and four for the closed loop returns.