480gl elos braceless earthquake trap

[tylorarm]

I promised Jesse at ELOS I would post a picture or two a couple months ago, better late than never. New tank will replace 125gl in same room that has broken top brace. Once I finally get the 480gl up and running i'll get rid of the 125gl. I'm on a snails pace is an understatement. Adding to the excitement though is the fact that I'm pretty close to the Hayward fault, keep those fingers crossed. I've never uploaded pic's before so let's see if this works:

Pre-water



Post water

IMG]http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd109/tylorarm/P1010621.jpg[/IMG]

[tylorarm]

[tylorarm]

Took me a while to find someone to lug a 1,300lbs empty glass aquarium. Thanks to Crown Relocations:

[tylorarm]

whoops try again:

[tylorarm]

Stand is from AGE:

[tylorarm]

Stand sits on 1.125" plywood. Under the floor in crawl space is bracing designed by structural engineer that is comprised of two 6" posts into 2'x2' concrete bases with microlam beem in between.

[Kreeger1]

brave , brave

[tylorarm]

Worst case scenario is 2" deep 25' x 15' shallow tank

[h20poloman2]

wow, amazing looking tank. Didn't even realize that ELOS made custom tanks at this point. What are the actual dimensions on that bad boy?

[tylorarm]

Yes, they do custom work but don't play it up. Tank is 84"x48"x28". Glass is 4 sides starfire (or Elos equivalent) with 19mm sides and 38mm bottom (about 1.5" thick bottom).

[tylorarm]

A little tough to tell from the picture but the glass is amazingly clear. When empty you could look out through the back window and hardly tell you were looking through 2 x 19mm glass panels.

[FishyBiz]

Originally posted by tylorarm
Worst case scenario is 2" deep 25' x 15' shallow tank

Whats the small black boxes inside the tank?

[tylorarm]

Those are closed loop boxes. For some reason Elos was reluctant to drill the bottom but had no problem building their dry overflows. So, i asked them to build a couple dry overflow boxes in the middle to house my closed loop returns. All the closed loop intakes are on the bigger overflow boxes on the narrow sides, and protected by grills. I have 2 darts and 1 RD 82M3 for closed loops. The RD is split and part goes through 114w Aqua UV. I had a tarpon where the RD is but it was too noisy for the wife.

[tylorarm]

The bottom is typical Elos with multi panes of glass and designed to have some flexibility.

[tylorarm]

The mermaid shot here gives a better look at the tank bottom:

[boozeman]

Awesome !!!
Jesse had mentioned this tank in a conversation....nice to finally see pictures of it
good luck on your build :thumbsup

[xinumaster]

man, that is huge!

[tylorarm]

Thanks, i could use some luck. I've been spending too much of my very limited time on existing tank fighting all sorts of demons. I've gone from overcrowded 125gl sps dominated tank to sps free over the past summer. Certainly had monti nudi's, not sure on the AEFW, where my acros just went STN one at a time sort of like Kip's tank. i think it was more like a host of other issues rather than AEFW though, as i could never find any of the little buggers. Gave up and pulled all sps in late August. Looking forward to a fresh start, although that wasn't the plan.

[slovan]

Wow! This is the biggest Elos tank I have ever seen on RC. Congrats on the beautiful tank and I hope your corals do better this time around. Subscribed...

[tylorarm]

Just got word from Jesse that they have one 10.5' in his warehouse. I hope they've got a fork lift cause mine was weighed by Crown at 1300lbs.

[slovan]

Personally, I would be perfectly content with yours! I love the 48" depth on your tank. That should provide a lot of possibilities when it comes time to aquascape.

BTW, what kind of lighting fixture is it and what kind of bulbs will you be running?

[tylorarm]

Many thanks to all the RC contributors, so many ideas picked up from so many sources difficult to give credit to them all. Something borrowed from pretty much everyone in my build to date (luckily no copyrights). Steve Weast's tank blew me away and was inspiring (but no proper spot for an inwall), all the great builds documented here including the Texas trio & now quad (Makoj, Naka, invincible and now Dudester), StLouisguy, Leonardo, bbrantley, goodwin9, jnarowe, ssparks, mflame, nyvp and so many others. Never mention the hundreds of highly useful threads on coral care, plumbing and all the other facets of this hobby.

[tylorarm]

Lighting fixture is Giesemann Specta 3x 400w MH and 4x 80w T5 alla Invincible's, although my wife actually picked out the fixture against alternative 400w choices of sfiligoi (filger) and luminarcs (my favored by veto'd pick). I'd have gone with Elos fixture but 400w'ers weren't out yet. I'll be running two 400w 14.5k giesemman coral bulbs with a 10k reflux in middle, and one Giesemann super actinic and one ATI blue plus 80w T5 on each side.

[tylorarm]

Lights:

[tylorarm]

Another pic of the lights (note they're hung higher than will be once the tank is going when they'll be much closer to the water).