A diy 1000 gallon system

Hensie44 · Jun 12, 2020

Hi greetings from The Netherlands. I want to inform you about a small project i started a few years ago. Got a new house and it was time to build my kind of dream tank. It is a room divider between living room and billiard room.

So some statistics:
Showtank:
1000 gallon (including sump)
Length 6 meters - 19,5 feet measured from the outside
Height 75 cm - 29 inch
width partly 70 cm - 27,5 inch and the other part 110 cm - 43 inch

Lots of challenges during this project. This project started as a Tanganyika tank but i changed my mind halfway during the build. I started building in 2017 and a few weeks ago i put in the first fish.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me take you on the yourney bit by bit.

This screenshot of the sketchup file shows the scale of this project.

Top view:

And the tank within its casing,

Blue Tang Clan · Jun 12, 2020

Are these separate tanks -- connected with bulkheads? Or welded together?

Sleeping Giant · Jun 12, 2020

Hensie44 said:
Hi greetings from The Netherlands. I want to inform you about a small project i started a few years ago. Got a new house and it was time to build my kind of dream tank. It is a room divider between living room and billiard room.

So some statistics:
Showtank:
1000 gallon (including sump)
Length 6 meters - 19,5 feet measured from the outside
Height 75 cm - 29 inch
width partly 70 cm - 27,5 inch and the other part 110 cm - 43 inch

Lots of challenges during this project. This project started as a Tanganyika tank but i changed my mind halfway during the build. I started building in 2017 and a few weeks ago i put in the first fish.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me take you on the yourney bit by bit.

This screenshot of the sketchup file shows the scale of this project.

Top view:

And the tank within its casing,

Would love to hear more about this incredible aquarium

Smarkow · Jun 12, 2020

Wow! What a cliffhanger of a start.

Smarkow · Jun 12, 2020

Also, welcome to R2R!

Hensie44 · Jun 13, 2020

Blue Tang Clan said:
Are these separate tanks -- connected with bulkheads? Or welded together?

It is just one big tank

Hensie44 · Jun 13, 2020

All right after my first post I got everyone's attention ;-)
Now it is time for the gory details of this build.

First of all. I'm not the first reefer, and certainly not the last, with a big tank and mine is not really big by water content. What makes my build kind of special is the shape of the tank and a few build choices i have made which i haven't seen before. That's the reason i wanted to post my build. For others to learn from my choices. They may be bad, they may be good. Time will tell.

My problem is how to compress 3 years of building fun, or agony as some might call it, into a few readable posts. I won't do it chronological but by subject. It will take me a few weeks to get you guys and girls up to speed. When i'm at the point where my posts reach real-time i will take you along for the ride.

So you can expect posts about:

Budget
The Tank itself - glass specs - tank construction
The stand - enclosure
Sump
Plumbing - overflows
Pumps and powerheads - closed circuit
Cooling
Heating
Lighting
Skimmer
Filtration
Rocks and sand
Automation
Reverse Osmosis - Auto top off
Calcium reactor
Additives -> DSR
Fish
Corals

Maybe i forgot something, if so i will add it later.

This project has forced me to learn a lot of new skills which i didn't possess before, welding, masonry, tank building, plumbing, led light repair, reef keeping, and so forth. This in itself made it worth the journey.

Ok, enough for now.

Devaji · Jun 13, 2020

Epic!
keep the post coming this is going to turn out amazing!

Skullring · Jun 13, 2020

Looks like a great idea. Looking forward to the story.

najer · Jun 13, 2020

Hooked!

count krunk · Jun 13, 2020

Wowza

Dragon52 · Jun 13, 2020

Interesting Build

BlazinNano · Jun 13, 2020

Super excited to see pictures of it running!!!

fishlover1478 · Jun 13, 2020

awsome not related but what fish is that

Dragon52 said:
Interesting Build

Hensie44 · Jun 14, 2020

quirkylemon103 said:
awsome not related but what fish is that

I asume it is the Acanthurus Xanthopterus. A fish which can reach 70 cm (27 inches) so to big for home aquariums (even mine

).

Reefkeeper14 · Jun 14, 2020

Looking forward to getting to learn more about your aquarium, it already looks like it will be awesome!

Hensie44 · Jun 16, 2020

Before I can go into the specifics of each item in the list of subjects above I have to state that my budget is way to small for all things I want. I am not a millionaire nor is there a nice inheritance on the horizon. I am sure that I am not alone in this regard

. This all means I have to cut corners where I can.

When I bought my current house 5 years ago I decided to expand my living room, and to create a billiard room. That would take all my savings. I also knew that I wanted a big tank between the two as a room divider but at the time I didn't know if budget would allow it. But it is always good to plan ahead. So I consulted my architect and made sure that the foundation was strong enough to withstand 5 ton of weight. All it took where some extra rebar mats and 1 cm was added to the thickness of the concrete slab. I also added a extra sewer drain right beside my tank to be. The extra cost of these additions where neglible on the whole project because they where done when the expansion of my house was build. If you have to do these kind of additions after the work has finished, the cost would be enormous.

At this point I should explain that I have been keeping Tanganyika cichlids for more then 20 years and the plan at that point was to create a new Tanganyika tank. I contacted a few local tank building companies and they sent me quotes for building the tank. Those quotes did not make me happy and i had to decide to postpone the decision on the tank. At that moment in time I could not afford it.

So the work started on the expansion. I had construction workers built the outer shell of the expansion. Which took roughly three months. I myself would be responsible for everything else (ceiling, finishing floor, floor heating, stucco, electricity, kitchen, tiling you name it). In this way it would take a lot more time to complete the project. But my time is less costly to me, then that of construction workers. It would mean I would spend less time watching the telly, errr watching youtube

.

Ground work just before the pouring of the concrete.

It took me a little less then 2 years to reach the point where my work clothes where worn out and I could start enjoying my work. Now it was time to count my beans and decide if I would and could create my dream tank. Based the quotes received earlier it was still clear to me that I could not order the tank at a tank building company. But I had met with some people who had built large tanks themselves and they had given me good tips. I now had the confidence that i could built the tank myself. Again it would take a lot more time, but it would be a great experience, or a big disappointment. In any way I started the tank project. At this point it was still going to be a Tanganjika tank. This meant that the stand was not designed to house a sump.

Laying out the tank location on the concrete floor to get a feeling about the size

MaddyP · Jun 16, 2020

Following!

Hensie44 · Jun 25, 2020

So I have added a billiard room to my home and expanded my living room. Normally each room would be made rectangular. But regulations and the shape of my property prevented me to build a big enough expansion to my house to achieve this. So I got creative. Since the actual space needed for a billiard room isn't a rectangle with sharp corners but a rectangle with rounded corners. The radius is determined by the length of the cue plus a little extra to swing it.

by the way this is not a pool table, nor a snooker table but a carom billiards table to play the three-cushion game on.

So by using this shape I could fit the billiard room and create enough room for the open kitchen to be accessible from all sides. Wait for the footage later on in this series and you will understand. Anyway this left me with a curved wall which could fit a tank of 70 cm wide (27,5 inch). But fish tank are rectangular aren't they?

Well in that case you haven't seen enough episodes of tanked. For the tanks they build, the sky is the limit and cost is not a concern. Most of their tanks are acrylic which can be bend in a lot of shapes. Well the company behind this show went bankrupt and a lot of their projects were abandoned by their owners after a short period. This is how Ohio fish rescue could obtain two of these tanks for a nickel and a dime. The problem was moving those monster tanks (look it up on Youtube).

In my country acryll is seldom used for tanks. The cost difference between acrylic and glass makes acrylic only a valid option for Zoo's or super large tanks where glass would not be sufficient to withstand the pressure. But even glass can be curved. There is a famous big all-glass reef in The Netherlands with a curved front panel. It is 6 meters long and holds roughly 2000 gallons. You can read about it here

This tank inspired me to investigate these curved front panels. I found out that they were 2 plates of 10 mm glass laminated together and then curved. Next the glass was tempered which is an exception because you normally wouldn't use tempered glass in an all-glass tank. Needless to say these panels where way out of my budget. Not only the creation of these bended front panels is costly but transport of the curved panels is risky thus you pay extra.

So back to the drawing board. We can create 90 degree angled L-shape tanks. So why not create a multi part tank put together using an angle which is less sharp. After some playing around I decided to split it up in 4 parts each having an angle of 11,5 degrees. This made sure that the floor space had enough free room to que in every ball position on the billiard.

One important design decision was that I would be able to maintain the tank from all sides. It may not be clear from the screenshot below but there is room behind the biggest part of the tank.

So I had designed my “dreamtank”. But now the question was, can it be built and will it be structurally save. As I stated earlier I had asked quotes for building the tank. It was immediately clear that the tank had to be assembled on location.

There is a lot more to say about the tank design. But that will be part 2.

Hensie44 · Jul 15, 2020

Ok part 2 of the tank design.

Pictures or it didn’t happen. Sorry at the building stage of this project I didn’t take to many pictures. But rest assured I will deliver some

In part 1 I tried to explain how the tank layout came to be. I knew the footprint of the tank but now I needed to decide the height of the tank., the bracing to be applied, glass thickness to be used. This would have been decided by the tank builder. But since I was not prepared to pay the price a professional tank builder quoted. Not that the quote was unreasonable. But still it was a significant figure. My biggest issue was that I was afraid that unforeseen extra costs would arise, like transport, on-site assembling and so forth.

So I decided to do everything myself. Maybe not the smartest choice but hey, no pain no gain. But seriously I started to search the internet about tank building guidelines and found some. But I learned most by examining existing tanks. Not that there are ones that have the form my tank would have, but there are similarities.

Height

The height of the tank is one of the most important measurement because it more or less dictates the glass thickness to be used. I wanted as much height as possible without making servicing the tank difficult. I choose 75 cm (29,5 inch). I expected the water height to be 70 cm. This left enough room for bracing.

Glass thickness

Now the height was determined. The thickness of the glass could be calculated. Many tools on the web to choose from. I used this one and this one. I ended up using 15 mm for the big part of the tank and 12 mm for the 4 smaller parts.

What to do with these glass panels (and this is just a fraction of it)

The stand
The height of the tank and glass thickness also determined the weight of the tank.

Glass weighs 2,5 kilo per mm thickness per square meter

For the showtank 660 kilo’s of glass was used (1466 lbs)

Water contents of the showtank (excluding sump) 3200 liters (850 gallon) => 7050 lbs
Rocks and sand will add 250 kilo

Total 4000 kilo ( 8818 lbs)

Needless to say this is quite heavy. Given the length of the structure I did not opt for a wooden stand. Steel would be a perfect material to build the stand, but I have no welding equipment and have no welding experience. So I opted for masonry, bricks and mortar. It would be strong enough but it meant that there would be no room for a sump underneath.

The design of the stand