Our 70-Gallon Room Divider Build - Kitchen/Living Room

[driftin]

I wanted to put a few photos together to show how we put a custom 70-gallon tank into our kitchen wall.

Starting with this:


And ending with this:

[driftin]

When we bought our place we had a completely unattractive (and basically unusable) kitchen wall that separated the kitchen from the living room. The better half (and this is one of the reasons I love her so much) said “Man, this would look awesome with a tank in it!”

A few brainstorms later, we decided to open up the wall and put in a tank and a table. We ordered a custom acrylic tank, eurobraced, that is 31.5” long by 27” deep and 21” tall. The 27” depth was the easiest dimension - chosen to mirror the depth of our counter tops on the other side of our kitchen and create some symmetry. Similarly, the 31.5” length just looked “right” aesthetically in our sketches. The tank is visible on 3 sides, so we had the center overflow built into one of the 27” sides. The tank would be LPS. All the live rock and sand would be carried over from my previous setup.

[driftin]

We tore down the wall (surprise!! originally constructed with NO studs!) and rebuilt it to get prepped for the tank and table.

Built the stand in a pretty standard fashion – 2x4’s and plywood (way over-engineered). We’re in a highrise building with concrete floors, which was great – floor was already level and the stand didn’t need to be shimmed. In this photo, taken from the kitchen entrance, the stand is in place and lagged into the wall studs for some added stability. The tank is in the foreground. We swapped an electric outlet around from the living room to face into the stand and put in GFCI receptacles.


Test fit of the tank:

Crowded workspace, huh?

[Chef Reef]

will repost at bottom..

[driftin]

In this next photo you can see the sump (20gallon long) under the stand. One of the difficulties with the tank dimension was a small sump. Things got really crammed in there as time went on.

This photo also shows the construction of the lighting canopy. I built this in two levels, each identical. I used lightweight 1x2’s to create these boxes. The lower box houses the lights; the upper box is a bookcase. They are screwed in to the wall and, together as a single canopy, hold their own weight plus a good amount without needing support from the tank. I used some plastic shims to keep it the same height off the tank top along its whole perimeter during installation, and decided to leave them in place as a safety. I wanted a gap between the tank and the canopy structure to reduce the inevitable chances of water soaking into the wood.




Access into the tank would only be available from the lighting-half of the canopy, and only from the kitchen side – so I needed a way to easily get the halides out of the way on a regular basis. I didn’t want to put a lot of time, money, or thought into this so I created a simple bracket the halides could hang on.


Not sure how clearly that photo illustrates the idea. I screwed the halide reflector to a long 1x2 strip which sits on an “L”-shaped bracket (in the foreground). After this photo was taken I put two safety strips onto the bracket to prevent the halide from simply sliding off and falling. This has actually worked pretty well, although I have given some thought to replacing it with a couple steel cables and eye hooks. But it works for now, as infrequently as I need to pull out the halides it’s a 30 second procedure. The power cables are long enough that I can pull out the lamps and sit them on top of the fridge next to the tank.

[driftin]

There’s a gap between my photos here, so I’ll try to fill in.

We knew we were going to renovate the kitchen and really didn’t know what kind of color scheme we would come up with, so I wanted to only put a thin and inexpensive skin on the tank stand and lighting canopy; one that could easily be replaced sometime in the future. Decided to go with ¼” plywood, and it worked out really well. I lightly glued it to the frame, and used finishing nails to really hold it in place. That’s in progress in this photo.

Hey, it’s Christmas time! And yes, I was in a LOT of trouble for taking over the entire kitchen.


Getting some of the panels to fit correctly was a pain… it’s not easy to cut a consistent 45 degree bevel on that thin plywood. But, we got it good enough for our tastes. Here you can see how it turned out, in a test fit of the stand and canopy doors prior to polyurethaning. Very simple doors – the same ¼” plywood with a 1x2 frame.
You can also see the makings of the bookcase above the lighting canopy. The lighting canopy is deeper than the bookcase, which leaves a large space at the back to allow hot air from the tank to vent out louvers cut into the top of the canopy. After this test fit I cut fan openings into the canopy door.

[driftin]

I built a wooden table that would fit the opening in the wall, and extend in front of the tank to provide a nice viewing table. This is a photo of the installation of that table from both the living room and kitchen. You can also faintly make out a second door I put into the stand, under the table. This allows for more access and is also the only way to fit the sump in and out of the stand.




By the way, that vacuum is part of a Fein sanding system I borrowed for this install. That thing is AMAZING. What a workhorse.

And… here we are. Ready for epoxy on the table, and polyurethane on the stand and canopy.

[driftin]

And now, the finished product. This is right after the epoxy and polyurethane dried, and before we did any aquascaping. What a sheen that epoxy coating provides, we were really pleasantly surprised. (You can also see the beautiful brown backsplash on our kitchen wall, the primary motivator for us to remodel!)






You can kind of see the one real mistake I made while constructing this. We tore out and rebuilt the wall before the tank was delivered, and I screwed up one of the dimensions. I wanted ~2” between the tank and the fridge. Instead I have under ½”, which is really constraining some planning I’m doing now on a closed loop, and even magnets for powerheads.

I think the only other thing I would do differently would be to make the canopy a bit taller, so I could increase the size of the lighting canopy door. It’s a tight squeeze to fit in there.

[driftin]

So, we did go ahead and remodel the kitchen I’ll have to get some updated photos of the finished tank now, with aquascaping and a nicer kitchen in the background. It all came together; we refinished the cabinets and they wound up having basically the same color as the tank stand and canopy.

Specs:
70 gallon tank with 20 gallon fuge/sump. I plan on creating a duplex sump, which I read about in the advanced topics forum. It seems ideal given my space constraints in the sump.
(2) 175W metal halide lamps (Iwasaki 15K)
(2) 24” PC actinics
Shallow sand-bed, at deepest point 1”
RODI under the sink, fed to the tank under the floor. In the sump I have the top-off and a home-made kalk reactor, and a valved line that I use for new saltwater etc.
In the process of designing a closed loop, because my MJ’s keep falling off the back wall and breaking corals. Hopefully I can find some more space in that stand somewhere.
AquaEuroUSA 135recirc skimmer.
Mag5 return pump up to the display tank.

Fish:
2 onyx clowns
2 pajama cardinals (breeding!)
1 starry blenny
1 yellow clown goby
1 six-line wrasse

Corals:
Frogspawns, Hammers, Lobophyllia, Monti caps, Monti undata, Encrusting monti’s, Blue red and green hairy shrooms, Maze brain, Purple bubble, Open brain, Orange sun coral, Plate coral, Zoas, Ricordia, And at one point, Xenia, which has been impossible to keep in check

Pretty typical selection of inverts, including peppermint and sexy shrimp, hermits, an assortment of snails, feather dusters, green serpent star, emerald crabs, conchs…

[Chef Reef]

thats nice. i like seeing a smaler tank in wall. i really like the looks of this. GJ. any chance for close up pics of the tank?

[driftin]

Originally posted by Chef Reef
thats nice. i like seeing a smaler tank in wall. i really like the looks of this. GJ. any chance for close up pics of the tank?

Definitely! I'll get the camera out sometime this week and get some more current photos up. These are actually about a year old!

[todd rose]

Very nice!

[maxxII]

Jim,
Very nice!
Thanks for taking the time to post up all of your efforts in this...I;ll have to show this to the wife, maybe I'll be able to sell something like this past her....

Nick

[driftin]

I wish you good luck! Even though this was originally my fiance's idea, there were several times during the construction she threatened to leave me over the tank We have different definitions of "Large tank"

Now that it's complete though, the tank has become a real focal point for the area. We wind up eating all of our meals at that wooden table and when friends come over we wind up sitting there too. Actually had to buy more bar stools so more people could sit.