My Story And Plans

[FiSh123FiSh]

As I am only almost 18 this seems impossible for me to do but I was going to save up for a small 30g marine tank but as I am in college and then uni next year (Bsc in aquaculture and ornamental fish studies) I think this shows my passion for aquatics lol. I thought it was unfair to leave my parents with a full on marine tank. They already have 3 freshwater tanks to look after!

I have been saving up and im a 1/5 of the way to my budget of £15,000

The dimensions are 3.5 metres in length, 2 metres wide and 2.5 metres hight. Similar to a small van.
I plan to have this in a wall so it can be viewed from 2 sides.

If you are thinking, this kid will never be able to do this. If you stick around another 10 years I think you will be amazed! I've already started drawing plans to come back to after uni.

It will hopefully be completely self looking after as it will hold almost 2000 gallons of water which I hear that its easier to look after a larger amount of water than a small one

I will have a large sump with a refugium to the side of it.

Not so sure about lighting yet as more options may come about later on. But at the moment its would be halides or arcadia.

The problem I face in my generation I do not know anyone who has fish keeping as a hobby.(except people on this forum ). I can't find people who are generally intersted in tropical-coldwater or freswater to coldwater-tropical marine. I've been fish keeping for 8 years it started with goldfish but then quickly moved onto tropical.
I really want a marine tank but as I said above it wouldn't be the greatest of time to start now. I can imagine your thinking why not start with a smaller tank then move up. I don't really have an answer to this... One thing I don't like with fish keeping is keeping fish in a tiny space compared to what they would naturally live in. That why especially with marine. I think its very important to give them the best possible copy of their natural habitat. I'm sure many of you agree with me.

I'm not one for sunken ships and divers in my tank I like it o'natural but thats personal prefrence. So I will make this tank as natural as I can!


The question I ask you is..... If you had this space how would you handle it? The DIY side of it is what I am quite interested in. Just to get a few ideas going


and yes I'am serious about all this.

 

[GAB99]

yeah im looking on the upside of not getting my bigger marine tank, hell if (big if) i can go back to my favorite place in the world i dont want to leave my dad with a 200 gallon fish tank lol, itd be easier to let him have the 65 gallon and maybe i get to take my fish with me if not they stay to but thery're not too easy to F*** up lol.


im the same as you lol. i want to get a really big (well,not one lol maybe two huge ones and a bunch of "smaller" ones lol) tank when im by myself and make it all natural, mybe let the kids have a cheesy decoration in their first ones, but i digress, i want a bunch of S*** that i doubt ill get, if life was that easy i bet everyone would have huge tanks, not that that would be a bad thing lol, then wed have to find something else thats cool and noone has... maybe a personal rainforest rofl.

 

[Pearsondesign]

i used to have a 7ft by 3ft by 3ft marine aquarium about 6 years ago.
it was very easy to look after and i rarely had any bad water conditions.
it housed large fish, lionfish, groupers, tangs and a varied selection of corals and polyps.

but, it was a bit*h to keep clean and the lighting necessary to maintain coral growth and adequate lighting for viewing was very hard to get right.

having said that, even though it was built up with live rock and corals, i still ran 2 huge external canistor filters and a huge skimmer.

good luck with your plans, just make sure your ready for it to possibly triple in cost from what your budget is set to, if you wanna do it properly that is.
think about the cost of salt for water changes for a start...

 

[ben1987]

i have a couple of questions for you,

how would you clean the glass?

will it be made of glass? id expect a glass tank in those dimensions to cost a big chunk of that budget

theres no way an arcadia hadlie would penetrate 2.5 meters depth. they stuggle on tanks 30 inches deep. you would need several 1000W halides and you would still be pretty dull at the bottm. The running costs of a system like this would probably be in the region of 1000-1200 per month on electric alone. Then possibly two buckets of salt per week to do a water change. 100 grand to stock it.

15 grand will get you an awesome set-up, theres no doubt about that. But not in those dimensions. it would cost you 15 grand for the skimmer. 30inches high is about the tallest tanks to be considered practical, so you dont get your face wet when working in it. Somthing like a 6'x3'x30" would be amazing. Then it could be lit with 400w lumenarcs and all types of corals and clams could be kept.

 

[steelhealr]

College is a LOT of work. Honestly, I would wait until you complete schooling before investing all the time and effort (did I read this right). Stick with something challenging but handleable right now. A 30 G nano would fit the bill. JMO.

SH

 

[ben1987]

College is a LOT of work. Honestly, I would wait until you complete schooling before investing all the time and effort (did I read this right). Stick with something challenging but handleable right now. A 30 G nano would fit the bill. JMO.

SH

he was planning it for after i think...nice to se you back btw

 

[steelhealr]

See that...a little fresh air and the mind goes ga ga. SH

 

[FiSh123FiSh]

As its the summer holidays I've had a lot of time on my hands so I had an 'I wonder' moment and called about a tank. It would be 3mx1mx1m acrylic with 40mm thick sheets. Guess how much?... £10.000 which should be okay becuase LR came to £1.700 (250 kg) and Lighting came to £1.600 (which is 4 fittings)

I would need a sump and ref. but that wouldnt be too expensive. I would need a couple of large skimmers.

And yes this would be after college, uni ect

 

[ben1987]

thats a more manageable size, still hard to clean at the bottom. acrylic scratches pretty easily though.
one of these too?
http/www.charterhouse-aquatics.co.uk/catalog/deltec-3070-external-skimmer-p-3009.html

 

[drsquirrel]

i have a couple of questions for you,

how would you clean the glass?

will it be made of glass? id expect a glass tank in those dimensions to cost a big chunk of that budget

theres no way an arcadia hadlie would penetrate 2.5 meters depth. they stuggle on tanks 30 inches deep. you would need several 1000W halides and you would still be pretty dull at the bottm. The running costs of a system like this would probably be in the region of 1000-1200 per month on electric alone. Then possibly two buckets of salt per week to do a water change. 100 grand to stock it.

15 grand will get you an awesome set-up, theres no doubt about that. But not in those dimensions. it would cost you 15 grand for the skimmer. 30inches high is about the tallest tanks to be considered practical, so you dont get your face wet when working in it. Somthing like a 6'x3'x30" would be amazing. Then it could be lit with 400w lumenarcs and all types of corals and clams could be kept.

£1000-1200 in electric? Where do you get this from? It sounds really wrong.

Assume 1000w of pumps 24/7 (1000w/hr - this is pretty high but can assume big pumps for everything, return, power heads, various reactors, skimmer etc and probably still come under)
4000w of light 8hrs (1333w/hr - I realise this is probably a bit low for the size, but i've already finished calcs and cannot be bothered to change them )
500w of heat average (remember to consider that heat leaving the tank will reduce house heating needs by the same amount, 500w/hr)
200w control gear (200w/hr - I think this is pretty high still, guess it depends).

Assume 10p/kwatt hour...
3033w/hr * 24hrs = 72792w/hr = 72.8kw per day = £7.28 * 30 = £218.40 per month

Assume my calculations are way under * 2 = £432.80 per month



Maybe I am mistaking you though as 1000-1500 sounds okayish for *everything* though - electric, salt, replacing various filters, carbon, phos, food.


I'd hate to have to use a whole bucket per change, although if it was like that I would be looking at buying it in larger quantities at a discount

 

[ben1987]

i have a couple of questions for you,

how would you clean the glass?

will it be made of glass? id expect a glass tank in those dimensions to cost a big chunk of that budget

theres no way an arcadia hadlie would penetrate 2.5 meters depth. they stuggle on tanks 30 inches deep. you would need several 1000W halides and you would still be pretty dull at the bottm. The running costs of a system like this would probably be in the region of 1000-1200 per month on electric alone. Then possibly two buckets of salt per week to do a water change. 100 grand to stock it.

15 grand will get you an awesome set-up, theres no doubt about that. But not in those dimensions. it would cost you 15 grand for the skimmer. 30inches high is about the tallest tanks to be considered practical, so you dont get your face wet when working in it. Somthing like a 6'x3'x30" would be amazing. Then it could be lit with 400w lumenarcs and all types of corals and clams could be kept.

£1000-1200 in electric? Where do you get this from? It sounds really wrong.

Assume 1000w of pumps 24/7 (1000w/hr - this is pretty high but can assume big pumps for everything, return, power heads, various reactors, skimmer etc and probably still come under)
4000w of light 8hrs (1333w/hr - I realise this is probably a bit low for the size, but i've already finished calcs and cannot be bothered to change them )
500w of heat average (remember to consider that heat leaving the tank will reduce house heating needs by the same amount, 500w/hr)
200w control gear (200w/hr - I think this is pretty high still, guess it depends).

Assume 10p/kwatt hour...
3033w/hr * 24hrs = 72792w/hr = 72.8kw per day = £7.28 * 30 = £218.40 per month

Assume my calculations are way under * 2 = £432.80 per month



Maybe I am mistaking you though as 1000-1500 sounds okayish for *everything* though - electric, salt, replacing various filters, carbon, phos, food.


I'd hate to have to use a whole bucket per change, although if it was like that I would be looking at buying it in larger quantities at a discount

i meant total running costs just worded it really wrong. there was once a bloke on UR, whos electric was over £750 on a similar sized set up. i might have exadurated a bit too, but i think you need a lot more than 15k to be considering a 2,000 gallon set up

 

[drsquirrel]

I felt that is what you probably meant.

I was just thinking about the cost to replace bulbs alone, say 6x 1000w @ £100 ea replaced every 6 months. £1200 a year, which is... £100 a month just in MH bulbs! Even if you only changed every 12 months, that would be £50 a month.

 

[Hawkins]

unless you plan on living with your parents forever then i doubt this size tank will work.. you need a rethink