Large Display Tank Suggestions???
 

We are getting the company display tank sorted out, the basic tank dimensions will be a little larger than we originally planed but Im not complaining. Dimensions are 18'x7'x8'. What Im trying to figure out is what can we do to make it funky? Should it just be its huge self and have a 14'x5' front window and a 4'-5' vertical oval on one side? What do you think of it having a step up on a far end that you can crawl under that you can put your head in and look around inside the tank with a vintage dive helmet? I want it to have a large free swimming area, but can anyone think of some feature to add that wont take a ton of swimming space away? If it was bigger I would do an acrylic tunnel. I need the swimming space for mini hammerhead sharks, it will have reef fish as well. what would you do?
Any ideas? Thanks....
"Im smiling, and scratching my head at the same time"

Make one gigantic reef tank. That would be sweeeet.

OMFG :eek: 18x7x8 :eek: make sure to get pleanty of pictures.


Man that must cost a bundle if those are the right diementions :lol:

Those are the right dimensions, I dont think about its cost, as I dont want to have a heart attack....lets just say way too much :eek:

I'd have some scuba gear near it! OMG that will be a huge tank.
Hmmm.. I wonder if you could convert a swimming pool into a reef diving pool?? Wouldn't that be sweet?

What about putting a few sunkin relics as if a ship had sunk and maybe a few well placed medical skelliton parts,add some reef rock a few corals...

Jim

so far my ideas are, a vintage pirate ship anchor replica 1/1scale in the center on an angle with a reef rubble rock pile around it, an artifical rock wall the whole back of the tank, a vintage replica of the first ever deep sea dive helmet lying on the bottom, I will put some decent sized piles of live rock supported on a frame(so each pile dosent have to be 10,000lbs), and it will house some soft corals, anemones and a very very large clam or 2, many schools of reef fish, many large tangs and angels... and then some, or 1, mini hammerhead shark

I would want to climb up the stairs and see it from the top. You would then have to restrain me from diving in. :lol: :mrgreen:

How about a smoke stack or two rising up from the the sand :idea: it could also double as your overflow! :mrgreen:

If your putting in an anchor, better to affix a divers line and a little red bouy and flag on the surface :idea: which could also double as a float valve for you 500gl surge bucket! :biggrin:

If I had a tank that big, I would pull in a few yards of white sand, a few lounge chairs and a whole whack of Corona's, what a commerical that would make :cool:

SPS...SPS...SPS (in chant mode)..

sorry, last time I checked, my budget was still way under $1,000,000.00

the tank will have a ladder on one side with an access hatch, I will be diving to clean it and might try some coral propagating in it as well, lighting will be 1000W halides, as sumpfinfishe mentioned I have been thinking of installing a large surge tank, I was thinking of at least 400gallons, flow in the tank will be somewhere around 40-50,000 gph. the overflow will be at the rear wall of the tank spaning the whole length, with returns comming out at many points of the overflow. I like the smoke stack idea, I have been thinking of getting some made out of fiberglass, I wont be able to use them as overflows though as the tank will sit flat on the cement floor. My fiberglass guy does the best replicas in the world, he does alot of the displays for the smithsonian institute, he has moulds for almost every large animal on earth including most whales, he is currently working a a mould from a 120' blue whale skeleton he has in his shop on loan from the smithsonian. He gets alot of cool things on loan from museums all over the world, the pirates anchor Im getting is from the 14th century I believe, also a replica of the first deep dive helmet ever made, as well as a couple other helmets that advanced the world of diving. If I had more room and could figure out how to have access to the top of the tank I would love to put a 3' acrylic cylinder in the center of the tank that you could get lowered into, I think that would be neat...

OMG DONT TELL DOUG
 

what ever you do don't let doug see thai he will want to have that tank too. :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

ANd i know you would doug!!!!!!!!

Mike :mrgreen:

once its up and running, eveyone is welcome to come and check it out, as well as the tank raised fish

Where are you going to put this bigass tank?Is this a show tank for a customer or your self? When will it be done? dave

I thought you started on this one over a year ago Kyle? when do you expect it to be done?

Steve

How about a pair of sea lions or a Hump Back?

this is going to be our personal show tank to make peoples jaws drop and let them see what we can do, they just have to cut the cheques...the mould for the fiberglass tank was started about 6 months ago, now it has been cut in half and sections are going to be added to lengthen it from 14' to 18' mabey 20' havent decided yet. As you can imagine, the equipment required to run this beast is a little on the pricey side, I have been building, and purchasing equipment for it for the past 6 months, also I have been fine tuning the design of the filtration and lighting and plumbing nightmare, and am working on finalizing the asthetics of the tank such as the rear rock wall with shelfs built in, I want the back wall to look like a reef shelf on the edge of a coralreef, Im drafting support grids to hold up the liverock shelfs, Im also trying to finalize viewing windows so the mould can be finished, do I go with 1 huge window, or 2 smaller ones on the front... Im leaning more towards a single 14'x5' viewing window
The tank is going in a garage/showroom that we are building for the sole purpose of holding our display tank and other livestock holding tanks and a few tank raised rearing tanks. we have all the permit crap figured out, now its time to build when the weather gets better, I have to put cement columns into the ground under the very thick reinforced foundation that the tank will sit on, Im really not sure when it will be finished, basically as more money rolls in I get a little closer to the finish date. It might be done sometime in the summer, hopefully. Thank god some people feel compeled to owe me favors, and thank them so much for being in the position they are in, there are a few big dollar items involved in this project that I dont have to pay a cent for except shipping... the tank alone with the rock work is silly expensive, the 14th century pirate ship replica anchor isnt cheap, the same one in the smithsonian was huge dollars, then we are getting a bunch of replica dive helmets that the smithsonian had copies made of, all silly expensive, and fiberglass display fish... I have helped someone out, and he is returning the favor... Ill gladly accept! The tank will be nothing short of jaw dropping impressive, I have no doubts about that, my fiberglass buddy is an artist with some serious talent!!!

personaly I think you should skip making it look like a under water junk yard, you can always get a 20 gallon tank and put the tackey bubble treasur chest and diver. why don't you actualy reporduce a section of the reef with that much space you could have both the open and the shelterd lagon side of the reef and all the critters that go with it from eals, schooling fish to sharks.

Steve

that is what Im going to try to do, but I think I would like to have the anchor in there too, Im not throwing all the trinkets in, some are just for display purposes, I will house them in acrylic cases. If anyone has some good reef shelf pics, I would love to see them, to get ideas...
Thanks

ok just a anchor would be good, but it might be neet to have it so it is burried in the reef like the ship lost it there and the reef has growen around it. will be cheeper to do also hehe

Steve

http://au.msnusers.com/LynnCooperspi...oto&PhotoID=89

http://au.msnusers.com/LynnCooperspi...oto&PhotoID=63

Steve

very much like you said, I was thinking the anchor could be partly burried and on an angle with reef around it, its an exact replica, it will already look incrusted, it has all the encrusting life that was on it when the divers found it. I think partly burried in a rock pile would work, something for the fish to swim around too...

I love the sea pen pic!

If your doing sharks, that tank is deeper then it needs to be. It makes it hard to clean, needlessly risky. Why so deep?

Also, Why fiberglass?

On the size of your viewing pane, I assume acrylic is the material of choice? Do you know what thickness you would need for a pane 14'X5'? Single or joined sheet?

How big does a mini-hammerhead grow? Any idea what the scientific name is?

Cheers,
Vic [veng68]

By deeper, I assume you mean how tall the tank is, because at only 7' of depth(front to back) I feel that the tank is just large enough to house sharks. as for the height, at 8' tall, of course cleaning is a little different than your average tank, thats what SCUBA is for.... I dont understand where your comming from with "needlessly risky"??? how so? Are you speaking of swiming with the sharks? They are pretty mellow, and even if I went with black tips and white tips, I wouldnt have any quams about jumping in with them. The tank is going to be an open reef shelf with sharks as well. With the 8' of height, I will actually have some room to create a reef shelf. If I go with a single front pannel of 14'x5' it will be of the new scratch proof acrylic, and it will be a single sheet with a thickness of no less than 2". Why fiberglass??? Because its the best material the tank could be built out of, FRP is also a good material but the fiberglass will be nice, baby butt smooth inside walls of any colour, amazing strength, very light weight for its size, easy to insulate,(it will be heavily insulated)and its portable. When I move, it moves, cement is a last option for big tanks, it is a pain in the butt to work with for plumbing, hard to seal, pain to repair settling cracks, we can build 50,000+ gallon free standing tanks out of fiberglass, I wouldnt consider cement unless I was going over 50,000 gallons for freestanding, cement is also silly expensive to do properly. With fiberglass you can also make any shape of tank you want, its great stuff! The mini Hammerheads are Sphyma Tiburo, and rarely grow over 3'-4' and they do not get nearly as heavy as the blacktip.

You do realize that you're going to have to give us your address so that we can see this thing next time we're driving through... :smile:

If you could build the tank sturdy enough, I'd like to see a hydraulic jack that hoisted 1 end up and down an inch or two, so that you could get a back and forth surge thing going on. :cool: Or maybe an inside baffle that raised and lowered and accomplished the same thing.
(Save some money on circulation plumbing... lol )

Mitch
(I'm joking, btw, on the hydraulic jack...)

for surge, Im trying to design a large surge tank of about 400+ gallons

Hey Kyle ... What are you using for epoxy ( brand ) ? ... what type of Fiberglass matting ? ... what are you using for a frame to put the fiberglass structure on ? ... reason is I am thinking of building another tank ( I currently have a 300G fiberglass tank 96L X 24D X 31H ) and this time I was considering doubling the size ie. 96L X 48D X 31H or approx 600G ... I want to know if there are better alternatives in fiberglass construction that I could incorporate in the new tank and also what kind of dollars would be involved in getting a scratchless acrylic front panel ( also considering the 3/4" starfire if/when it comes available and of course which one would be the most cost effective ) ... any info would be appreciated

Cheers

Kyle have you put any thought into the design of the surge yet, what method do you want to use?

Im not sure what the scratchproof acrylic pannels will cost, and I dont personaly construct the fiber glass tanks, but I know he uses many different weaves of fiberglass and many different bonding agents which probably dosent help you at all...

I was thinking of a large suspended sump with a water level limiting, open stand pipe drain to prevent overflow in case an electronic selinoid ball valve fails, the ball valve will work on an open closed cycle, and the pump will move water continusly, probably a large ball valve of 4" or more.

Sweet. Yeah the key to a good surge will be the larger pipe diameter the better. I'd love to see real "crashing surge."

Have you ever heard of a Carlson surge using 4" diameter pipe? I bet it wouldn't be practical. I'm thinking the actuated valve would be the only way to go. A MOV for 4" PVC gonna be pretty costly though. :neutral: Mind you, you only buy it once, so .... hmmmmmmmmmmmm I think I know what my NEXT project will be AFTER the next tank is built :biggrin:

what kind of lighting will it have? i assume 1000watters?

Yes the tank will be lit up by 1000W metal halides, and yeah the actuated ball valves are kinda pricey and with adding up the amount of water I would like to move in 10 seconds(400gallons) I have to do some figuring out, as I need to move 144000gph to move 400gallons in 10 seconds, I might have to rig some trap door that is actuated and a large fiberglass tube to transfer the water cuz I dont want to spend thousands of dollars on one 16"+ daimeter actuated ball valve...
if anyone has some suggestions they would be appreciated!
Thanks

Any updates on this project?

Cheers,
Vic [veng68]

this project is on hold for abit as we are first putting in a 1200+ gallon display in our living room, and we are very busy renovating our house, all things need to be done before the very large display tank goes together. The big tank will have to be on hold for at least a year

yeh right
 

sorry guys but I smell troll for sure. You'd have to be a millionare to even think about that size tank let alone a 1200g! The 1200g tank alone when all said and done would easily be up in the $15,000 range and thats being conservative! Also, a 1200g tank would need special ventilation bigtime or the house would rot! an 18'x 7' x 8' tank no way! sorry bud I do not believe this thread at all, it should be in the dreamers forum. hydro alone would be well over a thousand a month!!!!!

Re: yeh right
 

ummm, I am not sure where they went, but there was pictures. Plus he's in the tank manufacturing business - not a troll.

Re: yeh right
 

Thanks buddy, look into it a bit more before you speak up....

And the 1200+ gallon will have a retail value in the $20000.00 range and the 7500+ gallon is over $20000.00 for the tank alone. As said, the big tank is already built :rolleyes:

Kyle
What happened to all your photos of the big fiberglass tank,maybe dig up a few photos of what you build and that would change his tone,which was uncalled for.
Is the tank your putting in your house being built with scratch proof acrylic?

Can i come troll in your tank when its done kyle? You bring the beer i'll bring the bait!!!

Heh kyle and i have done business and he is a 100% stand up guy As any long tuerm members know

Still wpould be fun to go fishing in a 1200g tank!!!!