Ha..ha..what fun! For me, I like the 11' x 4' suggestion instead of the 13' x 3'. But of course, something like 13' x 6' would be even better! I would trade depth for length anytime until you get to a square tank.

Obviously, I went acrylic...have you considered that? Check with James at Envision and see what he could do. Things might jump sharply in price with panels over 10 feet (I can't remember...) James would build you a tank that won't fail, that's for sure.

13x6... that would be a monster... :mrgreen:

I like the idea of 4ft but I worry it will take away too much from the room. The tank's foot print will actually be 5.5ft from the back wall to the front of the tank, this accounts for the 2ft walkway behind the tank, and possibly a 0.5ft coast to coast overflow, plus the tank's 3ft depth.

So before I pull the trigger on this puppy and do something that can't be undone. I want to hear opinions on what I'm proposing;

- 13Lx3Dx2H tank eurobraced
- All glass tank? Probably
- Stainless steel stand build in 3? sections
- Clam & SPS dominated
- Busy with a variety of fish
- Returns & water movement done via various Ocean Motions 4 ways; 4 on each end, 12 on the back panel, 8 on the bottom
- Lighted with T5 & MHs
- Dosed with kalk. & Ca. reactors
- We'll skim, but with what, we don't know
- I'll run a 'fug, and will probably use the 180g as a sump.
- I also want to do a frag grow out tank that can be run inline, or offline
- Back up power provided by a generator
- Back up flow provided by 3-4? close surface mounted vortechs to oxygenate the water

Am I missing anything?

Are you planning to plumb an auto top-off system directly from your ro/di? Remember how Oregon Reef's ATO fudged his whole system while he was away? Might put some careful thought into that :)

Nope, the plan is to make RO/DI & Salt water elsewhere and then pump it in to the tank. No direct plumbing between the RO/DI system and the tank. Yeah I definitely don't want to have my system suffer that sort of disaster.

That was a tragedy, but it was caused by his skimmer pumping out the water, and the ATO refilling it, not by the ATO malfunctioning. Sadly, he's shut that entire system down, and dismantled the tank and removed all the equipment. He still has his coldwater tanks, and says he'll be back, bigger and badder eventually.

I was crushed to read that he'd shut down his system. I loved it and have taken some of his ideas to put into my next system. My favorite feature was the trench and all the little regal tangs swimming about.

I might be worried that the the tank would look a little squashed with the lengh vs. hight?

I might be inclined to go 30" tall. But I like tall tanks so I am biased :mrgreen:

13' seems extraordinarily long to me - my worry would be that it will make the the 3' depth feel narrow. Although you should be able to get some neat wave effects in a tank that long. I'm curious - what kind of glass thickness are we talking about here for 13' long? I'm guessing they've stepped it up because otherwise $1000 more for 2 more feet seems a bit disproportional.

11' or 13' - let's face it, either way would be spectacular though!

I can barely reach the bottom at 24", any higher and I'll have a problem. Although Kevin does have long arms.....hmm

So are we saying that 4ft deep would be a better choice room constraints aside?