01/06/18 - Day 0
We bought a new house (okay, well - we bought a dirt lot where they will be building a house...), which means it's time for a new tank. It also means that I GET A FISH ROOM!!!! <squeee!!!>
We're not building a custom home, but will be customizing the house - very likely post-closing as the builder doesn't seem inclined to add my fish room as part of their initial build (go figure)... So as we were signing our paperwork, I snapped a few pics of some of the plans. Relevant to the fish room, the house has a 2-car garage with an attached "Storage" area. One of the walls in that area is the "Nook" (read: dining room) on the other side. So the plan is to enclose the Storage area, divide it roughly in half (we also need a small workshop space) and put a new tank in the wall between the Storage and Nook. There's a bathroom also sharing a wall of the Storage, so that's where the water and drain will hook into. I've been told we'll have pretty much carte blanche when it comes to power, so I'm just working on the assumption that I'll be able to get 2 dedicated 20amp circuits for the Fish Room (and 1 or 2 for the workshop as well). Here's the plans (such as they are):
The wife and I have done our fair share of remodeling and I do a bit of 3D printing, so to the drafting program I went to "carve up" the walls and such:
Basically; make a big archway leading from the Nook into the Storage, add a door from the hallway to the Fish Room, and wall off the Storage area from the rest of the garage. I've not yet added the dividing wall between the Fish Room and Workshop (nor an exit door into the garage) as I want to see how much room I'll need for equipment and such. Note that we'll need to store a ski-boat in the garage, so I'm trying to keep the rooms as small as possible while still be useful.
I decided that I wanted to be able to see into the tank from the sides a bit, so (pending wife approval), I've kicked out the tank some into the Nook. I also wanted a smooth look to the whole thing, so continued the kick-out depth from floor to ceiling. My current thinking is to decorate the kick-out using something like shiplap, so that I'm not trying to match the drywall that will exist in the rest of the room. That'll be a design choice with the wife, I'm sure, but for now I'm going to assume that I will just need a "faux wall". Also included is some matching countertop (which my be too expensive - we're likely going with quartz as it's worked well in our current home):
I'll be adding some kind of above-tank access hatch to the hood; for now it's just the general shape of things.
The tank itself will be a glass 72x24x24 (180g). I'm really hoping to be able to work out some kind of "infinite background" on this tank, so I'm going to avoid anything on the back wall if I can help it. For that reason, I've laid things out with two overflows - one in each side towards the rear:
The ones I've got in there now are the EShopps Eclipse M's. Two of those would give me 4x 1" drains via 2x 1.5" bulkheads. I'm looking to run a Bean Animal drain system, so I guess that means I'd just have 2x emergency drains - never really a bad thing. I've not placed any of the returns just yet; I figure they'll come in from up top and not be drilled into the tank itself.
From within the room, I wanted to try and add in some sound-proofing, so I figured I could put up some easily-cleaned "second wall" (perhaps even with some insulation between) under the tank:
For the stand, I started off with the idea that I would get a friend of ours to build it out of 1x1 steel bars. But even at just material cost (including powder-coating), I think that would get expensive - and wouldn't really add much value to the build. Better to save the budget for other areas, I figure, so I laid out a stand using 2x6's and 2x4's:
The green elements (darker green are the 2x6's) are the things I am pretty sure are needed for structural support (or that I don't care if they are there). The yellow pieces are just there to support the interior "second wall", so they may get reduced/removed once I decide on the material for that.
The big question I have on this design is the orange and red pieces. I'd like to put the sump under the tank, basically, but don't really want to have to deal with the post in the middle of it. Given the 180g tank size plus quartz slab, are those pieces needed for structural support? Is there any way to remove them (by doubling up on the cross-beam, for example)?
Am I missing anything required on this stand? I've seen several comments on "over engineered" stands while researching this, but I'm not quite sure where the line is in that regard...
I guess that's enough of a start for now. As always; thoughts, input, and questions are always welcome!
We bought a new house (okay, well - we bought a dirt lot where they will be building a house...), which means it's time for a new tank. It also means that I GET A FISH ROOM!!!! <squeee!!!>
We're not building a custom home, but will be customizing the house - very likely post-closing as the builder doesn't seem inclined to add my fish room as part of their initial build (go figure)... So as we were signing our paperwork, I snapped a few pics of some of the plans. Relevant to the fish room, the house has a 2-car garage with an attached "Storage" area. One of the walls in that area is the "Nook" (read: dining room) on the other side. So the plan is to enclose the Storage area, divide it roughly in half (we also need a small workshop space) and put a new tank in the wall between the Storage and Nook. There's a bathroom also sharing a wall of the Storage, so that's where the water and drain will hook into. I've been told we'll have pretty much carte blanche when it comes to power, so I'm just working on the assumption that I'll be able to get 2 dedicated 20amp circuits for the Fish Room (and 1 or 2 for the workshop as well). Here's the plans (such as they are):
The wife and I have done our fair share of remodeling and I do a bit of 3D printing, so to the drafting program I went to "carve up" the walls and such:
Basically; make a big archway leading from the Nook into the Storage, add a door from the hallway to the Fish Room, and wall off the Storage area from the rest of the garage. I've not yet added the dividing wall between the Fish Room and Workshop (nor an exit door into the garage) as I want to see how much room I'll need for equipment and such. Note that we'll need to store a ski-boat in the garage, so I'm trying to keep the rooms as small as possible while still be useful.
I decided that I wanted to be able to see into the tank from the sides a bit, so (pending wife approval), I've kicked out the tank some into the Nook. I also wanted a smooth look to the whole thing, so continued the kick-out depth from floor to ceiling. My current thinking is to decorate the kick-out using something like shiplap, so that I'm not trying to match the drywall that will exist in the rest of the room. That'll be a design choice with the wife, I'm sure, but for now I'm going to assume that I will just need a "faux wall". Also included is some matching countertop (which my be too expensive - we're likely going with quartz as it's worked well in our current home):
I'll be adding some kind of above-tank access hatch to the hood; for now it's just the general shape of things.
The tank itself will be a glass 72x24x24 (180g). I'm really hoping to be able to work out some kind of "infinite background" on this tank, so I'm going to avoid anything on the back wall if I can help it. For that reason, I've laid things out with two overflows - one in each side towards the rear:
The ones I've got in there now are the EShopps Eclipse M's. Two of those would give me 4x 1" drains via 2x 1.5" bulkheads. I'm looking to run a Bean Animal drain system, so I guess that means I'd just have 2x emergency drains - never really a bad thing. I've not placed any of the returns just yet; I figure they'll come in from up top and not be drilled into the tank itself.
From within the room, I wanted to try and add in some sound-proofing, so I figured I could put up some easily-cleaned "second wall" (perhaps even with some insulation between) under the tank:
For the stand, I started off with the idea that I would get a friend of ours to build it out of 1x1 steel bars. But even at just material cost (including powder-coating), I think that would get expensive - and wouldn't really add much value to the build. Better to save the budget for other areas, I figure, so I laid out a stand using 2x6's and 2x4's:
The green elements (darker green are the 2x6's) are the things I am pretty sure are needed for structural support (or that I don't care if they are there). The yellow pieces are just there to support the interior "second wall", so they may get reduced/removed once I decide on the material for that.
The big question I have on this design is the orange and red pieces. I'd like to put the sump under the tank, basically, but don't really want to have to deal with the post in the middle of it. Given the 180g tank size plus quartz slab, are those pieces needed for structural support? Is there any way to remove them (by doubling up on the cross-beam, for example)?
Am I missing anything required on this stand? I've seen several comments on "over engineered" stands while researching this, but I'm not quite sure where the line is in that regard...
I guess that's enough of a start for now. As always; thoughts, input, and questions are always welcome!
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