Hi!
I have been thinking about making this thread for some time now. At first, I wanted to cover the evolution as it is developed, but as you can imagine, with my family, job and building this thing, I completely ran out of time. Anyway, I have been taking pics and I would like to report how I went from no room walls, to a fish, or I should say coral/reef, room with a 100g tank + a full 430g system made of a lagoon tank + 2 frag tanks. I also have the stand for a 500g system, but still have not built the system. I think it is a very interesting project which I have been planning a lot, and it deserves an explaining post.
I love this hobby, and I love keeping corals. Chalices are my favorites. When my wife and I started this new home project, I had in mind taking a full room for corals. No more mess in the kitchen or bathrooms due to cleaning the tank stuff, no more water on the house floor, and no more fear that my little daughter spills whatever into the tank. Moreover, I contemplated the idea of making the move to a professional farm to aquaculture my own corals and perform my own imports.
Being able to design everything from scratch was a huge opportunity (think about taking care even of the position of all the electric outlets!), so I took some time thinking about how I should place the systems. It was clear I wanted a big display system for enjoying properly the hobby, and some room for keeping corals and frags. I also wanted at least 2 independent systems, one being the lifesaver of the other. In the plans, the room was about 5 x 4m, and with this information I made some designs.
This was the v-0 design, including a peninsula style 500g system and 3 frag tanks (the 4th tank was the sump). Using "home.by.me" I did this:
Then I thought that I do not like peninsula tanks and I designed v-1:
Finally, I decided to go with the frag tanks sump below the first tank, which translates into more room for another frag tank. So I designed v-2: a standard 3 view 500g system + 3 frag tanks system (one of those being a lagoon style display tank) + 100g system + 50g quarantine system. In total, 4 independent systems:
It may seem it was easy to arrive to this last design, but it took some time, and in between those 3 pics I had many other designs which I did not like much as this one. Anyway, this, except the 500g, is what I have been building over the last 9 months. The home built started July 2020 and by the end of July 2021 I was able to start the cycle of the 100g system and the quarantine system. I started to built the frag system by mid december 2021 and concluded this past weekend (early march 2022).
The room went into the basement of our new home built. Here I was visualizing the room, which ended up being 5.4m long x 4.6m wide, making a total of 24.8m2:
I am very proud with the final result, and I hope you guys enjoy this post as much as I do writing it. I will try to be as much detailed as I can, since a project of this size requires some particular features that people does not tend to mention.
Today I will post some more pics showing what it came next.
I have been thinking about making this thread for some time now. At first, I wanted to cover the evolution as it is developed, but as you can imagine, with my family, job and building this thing, I completely ran out of time. Anyway, I have been taking pics and I would like to report how I went from no room walls, to a fish, or I should say coral/reef, room with a 100g tank + a full 430g system made of a lagoon tank + 2 frag tanks. I also have the stand for a 500g system, but still have not built the system. I think it is a very interesting project which I have been planning a lot, and it deserves an explaining post.
I love this hobby, and I love keeping corals. Chalices are my favorites. When my wife and I started this new home project, I had in mind taking a full room for corals. No more mess in the kitchen or bathrooms due to cleaning the tank stuff, no more water on the house floor, and no more fear that my little daughter spills whatever into the tank. Moreover, I contemplated the idea of making the move to a professional farm to aquaculture my own corals and perform my own imports.
Being able to design everything from scratch was a huge opportunity (think about taking care even of the position of all the electric outlets!), so I took some time thinking about how I should place the systems. It was clear I wanted a big display system for enjoying properly the hobby, and some room for keeping corals and frags. I also wanted at least 2 independent systems, one being the lifesaver of the other. In the plans, the room was about 5 x 4m, and with this information I made some designs.
This was the v-0 design, including a peninsula style 500g system and 3 frag tanks (the 4th tank was the sump). Using "home.by.me" I did this:
Then I thought that I do not like peninsula tanks and I designed v-1:
Finally, I decided to go with the frag tanks sump below the first tank, which translates into more room for another frag tank. So I designed v-2: a standard 3 view 500g system + 3 frag tanks system (one of those being a lagoon style display tank) + 100g system + 50g quarantine system. In total, 4 independent systems:
It may seem it was easy to arrive to this last design, but it took some time, and in between those 3 pics I had many other designs which I did not like much as this one. Anyway, this, except the 500g, is what I have been building over the last 9 months. The home built started July 2020 and by the end of July 2021 I was able to start the cycle of the 100g system and the quarantine system. I started to built the frag system by mid december 2021 and concluded this past weekend (early march 2022).
The room went into the basement of our new home built. Here I was visualizing the room, which ended up being 5.4m long x 4.6m wide, making a total of 24.8m2:
I am very proud with the final result, and I hope you guys enjoy this post as much as I do writing it. I will try to be as much detailed as I can, since a project of this size requires some particular features that people does not tend to mention.
Today I will post some more pics showing what it came next.
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