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Tank upgrade in the starting


nodle

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Well it is offical the house i am buying is unconditional and the new tank has been decided. It will be a 6x2x2 foot i will post pics when i have something to show which will hopefully be in a couple weeks.

First question i have is when setting up the new tank i have five days overlap between the old house and the new house so i will leave the old tank set up and move the live stock over slowly? is this the best idea.

Second i have walls to paint in the lounge will be using Aqua sheild on the wall behind the tank this is an acrylic paint will this be an issue (Chimera) you may be able to answer this for me having done your in wall install

Dave

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It took me 3 days to move my tank, luckily you're tanks aren't quite as big.

I had another (smaller) tank setup at the new house 1/3 filled it with new salt water (let it sit for a couple of days). Then bagged and packed all the corals and fish into poly boxes. Then moved as much live rock into this holding tank as I could, adding water from the original tank at the same time.

Once the liverock was in, I unpacked the corals an put them in the holding tank.

I transferred about 60% of the existing tank water into drums. Then moved the big tank. Re-plumbed it and dumped this water back into it. The moved the live rock corals and fish back into it from the holding tank.

I found some minor damage to the wallboard where salt spray from the sump had eaten into the plaster core. So maybe some sort of aquanamel type paint would be a bit tougher.

Let me know if you need a hand when it's time to move.

Layton

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Dave - not sure on the type of paint as mine's an in-wall, as opposed to in front of a wall :D However, the room that houses the display tank itself is not painted at all. All the gib was removed and replaced with plywood - a little more durable and less susceptible to salt 'spray'. Dont forget that its only a problem if the water spills onto the wall or sits in a puddle somewhere will it soak in and warp the plaster - evaporation is essentially fresh water (the itself salt doesnt 'evaporate') BUT do be careful with salt-creep. If I would do anything different, I would have left a sufficient amount of glass above the water level to allow for water movement within the tank. Add about a 10mm rise above the overflow to the top of the water line for that size tank (assuming an average l/hr return) Then I'd allow at least a further 30mm to the top of the tank. The entire front of my tank has a 2" wide flat piece of glass running right across the front. Stops any potential splashes running down the front of the tank.

One other thing I would have done differently is I would have had a 5 foot hole in the wall and a 6 foot tank (6" hidden behind the wall on either side of the hole) or alternately a 6 foot hole and 7 foot tank! That way, it would give better sideways depth and also provide a place to put some streams without being overly visible in the display 'window'. Hindsight is a wonderful thing... :D

Good luck! Keep us up-to-date with progress...

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hi nodle,

try to make it more then 2' deep, mine used to be 2', the new one is 710mm but still not deep enough!!! will it ever? i would even say cut it down in lenght if you have to just to give it more depth. with a long slim tank you'll have less aquascaping then with a deep tank even if its not that long.

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When you say deep do you mean wide (as opposed to high)?

My 5 footer is 750 wide and that was a good depth, anything over 600 is cool.

If you mean high, 710 is high, my new tank is 730 and its very deep. Would have been nice to go higher, but its on the verge of impracitcal deep now. If it was an in-wall. and you had the space all around the tank you could probable go deeper, but would require some though as to how easiest to access everything.

Good luck with the new tank, sounds like a fun project.

Pie

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I don't think we do agree, hence the reason I asked.

Depth should be the top-to-bottom, as that is what deep means isn't it?'

If I said I swam 100 feet deep, you would assume I went down 100 feet, not swam 100 feet away from where I started.

When they talk about corals being from deep water, I assume they mean how deep under water it is, not how far away it is from another point.

When they say the cook straight is 100km deep, I don't assume thats how wide it is.

When people use 400 watt lights to penetrate deep tanks, they don't mean wide tanks do they?

Like the expression of being in deep shit, they don't mean how wide it is.

LengthxWidthxHeight.

Or maybee I'm wrong.

Pie

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Of course, if the front is going to be the side, then length is depth, aka width, and not height and conversly depth, aka width, is length and not height.

If one was to stand the tank on the end it gets a bit tricky, length then is depth and is the height, depth and height is either width, aka depth, or length, however, due to the open nature of the side which was effectivelty the top, the advantages of this configuratio is about as good as this post :roll:

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