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!!!!!!!!!!