Beginnings of a 220Uk gallon reeftank

Oops did i forget to mention the tank was free??
And people say that you gotta be a millionaire to keep a reef tank

So far the tank setup has cost me £100

SO unfair!!

FREE! Damn you Nav! Those are some funny pics though, you have half of England helping you carry that tank. I like the sump set up idea though, everything's lookin good.

--Dan

And I'm the one who got his old 100g for free

Well, I did have to work a little for it

Aquascaper said:

And I'm the one who got his old 100g for free

Well, I did have to work a little for it

Click to expand...

Haha, he mentioned it to me that he was giving it to someone on TFF.. you lucky, lucky mean person!

ok no fair that the tank is FREE!!!
I have spent already $2200
AH good for you, lucky that someone got a break for once

Thats it, if you do it for one. You can do it fopr all........lol

Bummer Nav, i would have had that thing chockas with lions ASAP. hehe. But i can see where you are coming from though, a reef in that would be..... undescribable. (sp?)

I think its too low. I like to look at my fish, not down on them. Whats the deal?

With the tank on the stand in its current state it is 4ft high exactly.
The depth is 2ft and this means its easy to do maintenance without straining. However, i still cannot reach the back and of the tank without a step ladder so its still going to cause problems when cleaning it.

My other reason for having it lower was for viewing purposes. When sitting down in the sofas it is a perfect viewing height. My other tank is 5ft high and when sitting in a chair you are actually looking up at the tank to view it.

The reason my old tank was placed higher was so that the stand could include a skimmer if needed (as the skimmer would stand 3ft high) The new tank will be skimmerless so the stand can be far lower. (if in the future i need a skimmer then i can place it outside the stand and plumb it in from outside).

When the top canopy, halides and other lighting are fitted, the tank will probably measure about 5-6ft tall. As the living room is already dominated by the size of the tank i felt that having a tank which potentially could be only a couple of feet from the ceiling would close off the room visually far too much. At least with this you still get to see the back wall and this gives the illusion the room is still larger than it is currently.

Hope this helps.

I see, I cant wait to see it all set up. Its gonna be mad.

With my 3ft tank i have a little fishing stool i use to just sit there for ages watching. I thought there had to be some good explanation for it being so low. I thought it might have been for the weight. Lower to the ground would mean more stability too.

Goodluck, ill check in when u post more.

When Aquascaper came over to work on the stand last week, we talked about painting the back of the tank or using backing ect. He came up with an intriguing idea that i am considering putting into practice

Instead of putting paint or backing on the tank, why not paint the wall behind it, or use a board and have it placed a few inches behind the glass rather than directly against it...

The reason for this is to do with the lighting..
Under halide lights you get a beautiful glitter effect on the tank just as you would when staring into a pont on a summers day, now with normal backing or paint this means the lights fromthe halides hhite the water and give the glitter effect but nothing more. If the backing was a few inches away then the lights from the halides should project through the glass onto the painted back and give a glitter effect against the wall. this in turn should give an illusion of being deeper than the tank actually i s.

The idea sounds plausable, so i think i will give it a try.

Here is a sketch so you can get the idea.

Ok next step...
Once the tank was drilled we suddenly realised that the holes were very close to the top brace bar. This will cause problems when the weir is fitted as the wter has to go over the weir into these holes. With the brace bar directly above then the wter will have problems flowing into the wier not to mention the trouble i would have getting my hand in there should a fish swim over and get stuck.

Solution...
remove the brace bar and put it higher so that i can get my hand under it .

here is a photo of the bar removed.

oh pleeez, I feel like Ive started reading a book and someones ripped the last pages out. Hurry up with your project, I cant wait to see it all up and running.

heh i have to do most of my cleaning on a stool aswell, i have to stand on it to pour water into it which makes me hit my head on the ceiling!!

Make sure you don't get the weir built to high like mine is as there's barely any space between water line and covers

btw how comes you havn't got the bottom drilled and just the sides??

The bottom of the tank is made up ot 2 sheets of 10mm glass to create a 20mm base.
If it were a single pane of glass i would have had the base drilled but considering it must drill through 2 panes and silicon i simply didnt want to risk it. 1 2x2.5ft pane of glass is easier to replace than 2x 7ftx2.5ft panes @10mm or a single 20mm pane of he same dimensions