Very Large Display Tank, Help Appreciated
 

Hi all, my new business UnderWorld Aquatics is starting to come along nicely with a couple of good projects on the go. I am in the process of building a small display building in our backyard, it will basically look like an average 24'x26' garage but will be loaded with holding tanks, rearing tanks for tank raised fish, and will house some display tanks. I am looking for suggestions on my main display tank right now as it is almost finished being built and will be one of the first tanks to arrive. Things I am looking for inspiration for are, overflows, returns, plumbing ideas, lighting, mabey even aquascaping ideas. Tank specs so far are 14'longx7'deepx8'tall with 24"radius corners on all 4 corners. The front of the tank has a 10'longx5'tall acrylic veiwing window, when looking at the front of the tank the side to the right has a 4' vertical oval veiwing window. The tank is made of fiberglass with an extremly smooth black or dark blue(havent decided yet) interior gelcoat and has 2 inset acrylic veiwing windows. I would like to place the back of the tank as close to the wall as possible so was thinking about having the overflows or one long overflow at the rear top interior of the tank. Some other ideas I had was to use some digital metal halide ballasts with some 1000W 20k bulbs to get some penetrating light into the tank. I was also thinking of having some sort of rock shelves on the rear wall, I would like to keep some mushrooms, soft corals, anemones, and mabey some hard corals as well. Even though I would like to keep some corals this tank is more geared towards housing 1-2 black tip reef sharks, some large varities of tangs, angels, and some schools of various fish so I would like to keep alot of open swiming room. Any ideas are greatly appreciated as I need to make some decisions soon as the tank is nearing completion. Filtration will be located to the left side of the tank when being veiwed from the front. I will need someones help with building a very large calcium reactor. Also looking for various ideas to cover the fiberglass body of the tank? One more opinion question... I have access to a 17' great white shark that is very real looking, I was thinking of having it cut at an angle behing its main fins and having it mounted on the roof of the fishroom so that it looks as though it is bursting out of the building, what do you folks think of this idea???
Thanks for any and all help!!!!!!!!!!

WOW :exclaim: :cool: :eek:

I really can't help you with anything but I would love to see the finished project.

well I have no clue how to help as I would have simmilar questions about my tank but on a much smaller scale.

as far as the shark goes it sounds like a great plan but I would add some kind of water splash coming out of the wall as well other wise it will just look like a dear head on the wall, and you want it to look like it is going to drop right on you. (do you get what I am saying?)

Any way good luck and be sure to take lots of pictures as you are building all of this cool stuff!

Wow, Pisces Pet Emporium has a large display tank that has a scimmer box built up throught the middle of the tank. I thought it was awsome but I have not had the pleasure of seeing many large tanks. It looked neat as you could see different fish swimming around, not sure which ones to look at, too many favorites. I stop in while on route to the mountains for snowboarding. They need a bench so I can stay a couple of hours. Good luck, hope you post pics, maybe I can visit next time I'm in Kelowna. The shark sounds great, would be cool if you could have some of shark outside and the rest on the inside... Marcus.

For the shark I was thinking of mounting the head on the roof of the building coming out on an angle with broken roof tiles and boards sticking out around it so that it appears that the shark is bursting out of the building. Does that sound good?
Please give any input you can think of for the tank as it will turn out alot better if I use ideas from the whole canreef board instead of just my own ideas.
Thanks: Kyle

As far as the black tip reef sharks go there is a thread on RC where a author ( cant remember name ) stated that the sharks need to " glide " 2 body lengths and a BTRS can grow to 6 ft so tank size should be in the range of 18 ft long or more ( apparently they stress from swimming all the time if no room to glide ) ... vlamingi tangs grow pretty large ( 2 ft ) and a school of those would be cool

Cheers

By my calculations that tank would be in the neighbourhood of around 5800 Gallons so a skimmer to handle that would likely be commercial ... maybe check the Vancouver Aquarium for a source to a distributor ... I could think of a really LARGE quad Beckett design with Dual 8" Risers but I am not sure that one would be sufficient ??? would be fun to build tho :biggrin: ... maybe 2 quad Becketts ??


I like the idea of a overflow that runs the full length of the tank as that will skim the surface for you nicely ... any consideration as to sump/refugium size ?

If you use 10/12K 1000W bulbs you might get better penetration right ? ... may even look blue at the bottom just like the real thing :smile:

TOTM at RC is a mostly softie tank with Zoos and mushrooms ... looks really cool ( and really colourfull too ) and you wont have to spend a fortune on lighting :cool:


Cheers

Dont know how big the sumps will be but a few hundred gallons each for sure, was planning on running multiple large ETSS skimmers and if I dont go with them I will use some RK2 skimmers. Will need help with designing a calcium reactor large enough to keep the levels up. The tank should hold somewhere around 5500gallons because of the radiused corners. People help me out here... would 10-12k 1000W metal halide bulbs be more penetrating and make the tank brighter than using closer to 20k bulbs. these are the kind of things I need pointed out. Keep the helpful critiquing comming.

About the black tip reef sharks, I have seen many btrs in captivity and have never seen even an older mature btrs much over 4' They have been reported up to 6' but these measurments are given for the largest btrs ever tagged or captured. Most btrs in captivity seem to stay 3 1/2 - 4 1/2 feet in length when full grown. Ive heard of the odd one exceeding this by a bit but hey Im fine with it for now. In the next couple years I will be building a house and setting up another large display and the tank will be well over 20' long so if they do seem to outgrow this tank they can be moved into the new tank. and for now with the length and width of the tank with radiused corners they can glide quite abit around and around.

About the Vlamingii tangs, I have already had a school of them and like them very much I was planning on having a school of them already. Other fish that I am adding will likely be fish that like to feed heavily on Mysis shrimp as I have an unlimited supply at my disposal.

You could talk to Grant at Big Al's (Burnaby and Richmond). He's built large commercial skimmers and I think has built some of the units at the Van Public Aquarium. He's set up a 12x8x4 tank in Burnaby that houses at least three btr sharks. You may reconsider all those tasty angels and tangs too :biggrin:, I'm pretty sure he lost quite a few fish to the sharks.

PS: I like the "shark in the roof" idea, I just asked if I could have one and was promptly denied, she thought it would rot and start to smell after a while.

Hello,

Let's work on this calcium reactor and discuss this over e-mail.

Titus