Mike’s 750 gallon build

[MikeInToronto]

Hello all

Just for starters, this tank has been up and running for a few months but I will start from the beginning and hopefully it doesn’t look like I went from 0 to finished in a week. I’ll also mention this first post is an overview (a luxury to have since the tank is already built and running) so there will be some repeating in the individual subsequent posts.

The tank is 120” x 48” x 30”. 3/4” standard glass. I didn’t go with Starphire for two reasons: 1) it scratches too easily and I am good at scratching the glass, and 2) I heard a few places that the blue of our lights makes it redundant. I’m not saying it’s true but 1) alone was enough. It’s just under a nominal 750 gallons.

The seams are armoured and it’s eurobraced along the perimeter. There are no braces across the middle of the tank. I did not make this request so I trust this is common enough with builds by Miracles.

The tank was built onsite by Miracles. Overall I’m satisfied.

Now I’ll talk specifics in the next few posts.

[MikeInToronto]

I got a couple quotes for this tank and they were all roughly the same but the Miracles quote included a stand and also extended the warranty an additional 4 years if I used their stand. It was a no brainer.
The stand has a rubberized coating and it made of steel. It has 12 legs. The original design was meant for 6 leads but I was a bit paranoid that my floor would crack under the weight of the tank (I know, this wouldn’t happen) but it put my mind at ease. The floor is concrete.

It was partially assembled at the Miracles site but in order to get it into my house it had to be fully welded on site. Miracles sent a welder.

[MikeInToronto]

The glass is regular 3/4”. I didn’t go with starphire glass because I’m prone to scratching and also, I’ve heard that our modern day lighting make it negligible. I don’t know either way.

Here is the glass:


The process was pretty quick and the tank was built within a week of having the glass dropped off.


After this I had to wait 5 weeks for the silicone to cure. I had so many other things to do the 5 weeks were nothing. I’ll talk about that white box on the ceiling later.

The overflow is acrylic or something.


Here’s a side view while I was trying to figure out if that brace was going to get in the way of the plumbing. It doesn’t.

[MikeInToronto]

For lighting I went with 10 Radion G4 Pros. I picked them all up during our Boxing Week so they were on sale. To hang the lights I build a rack out of t-slot aluminum.


It feels super heavy but it weighs like 56 lbs. Weird.

I installed 3 dedicated 20 amp circuits for the tank. The lights have one installed in the ceiling. I built a box to hold all the power supplies so there are no wires hanging around. Since I redid my basement prior to putting in the tank, looking back I should have had the power supply box sunken into the ceiling to make it flush. It’s okay though. The box is that white thing in the second post.

The other two circuits are to hold two Apex power bars. Since they are max 15 amp each, this gives me some wiggle room. I’m not even close to using that much electricity.

[WarDog]

Very nice, keep it coming.

[kyl]

Beauty! Yeah, PPG Starphire seems to scratch far too easy compared to the other "low iron" tanks I've been exposed to in my hobby time thus far (IM Nuvo's).