We started three years ago planning for the consolidation of our tanks/reefs down to one or at least two systems. We over the last few decades, are like most people in the hobby, have accumulated multiple tanks via the stores, friends and just plain purchases. We have at times been running multiple systems and also different systems like fresh and salt, or daisy chained salt tanks. The cool part to doing all that is one can really get a lot of variety and play with multiple aspects of the hobby in general. The BAD part is the work load to maintain them. We here found that my wife and three girls had harder time making any of them great instead they all just became standard. So a few years back, since we live in multiple level farm house in central Minnesota, we decided to plan one bigger build that was the best of the knowledge/preferences we have and make it our "Dream" reef. Surprisingly at we brain stormed the idea we came up with 2 floor system, tank upstairs, sump in basement and the size didnt grow to large. I think that is because we love the larger tanks but to a degree-to large gets crazy cost and work wise so we have learned over the years with our tanks and our clients.
Okay with that in mind we decided on a few things we liked, in the family room we liked quiet and hence the sump needed to go, hence basement. Also the tank has to long, for we love to see fish use the distance, depth is cool yes but swimming length is must for larger fish in the veterinarians view here. Then came the process of weight support....all I can say is added trusses to the floors two years later. So sorry we dont have great pics of all that but at the time structural engineers were working their magic we were not thinking yet of video shooting all those aspects.
Once all that was out of the way we started the fund setup, budgets and planning phase. That all leads to today where we have picked out the tank builder, sump builder and many parts for it-mostly people from Reef2Reef we have used through the forum here. The assembly has started as things are arriving. We do most of the documentation in video form for that is easy for us. We enjoy seeing everyone builds here and learning likewise from you all, we hope to share this build with you.
Okay with that in mind we decided on a few things we liked, in the family room we liked quiet and hence the sump needed to go, hence basement. Also the tank has to long, for we love to see fish use the distance, depth is cool yes but swimming length is must for larger fish in the veterinarians view here. Then came the process of weight support....all I can say is added trusses to the floors two years later. So sorry we dont have great pics of all that but at the time structural engineers were working their magic we were not thinking yet of video shooting all those aspects.
Once all that was out of the way we started the fund setup, budgets and planning phase. That all leads to today where we have picked out the tank builder, sump builder and many parts for it-mostly people from Reef2Reef we have used through the forum here. The assembly has started as things are arriving. We do most of the documentation in video form for that is easy for us. We enjoy seeing everyone builds here and learning likewise from you all, we hope to share this build with you.