In 2017, we started building a second home on our property for my parents to live in (and eventually us). We chose to build an earth-sheltered house because it fit perfectly in our landscape and has a lot of additional benefits. During construction - a full year before I started my first reef aquarium and joined BAR - I dreamed of having an in-wall aquarium in this house. I even cut one out of cardboard and placed it on the wall.
Since then, I have learned a lot about reefing and my ambitions for this tank have grown - it will be much larger than the cardboard cutout from 2018, for one!
The basic guiding principles for this tank are:
I've been designing this tank in my head since the day I took that picture and I have a few unconventional ideas that I want to run past you, so I figured I'd start this thread now.
If you have questions about the house itself, head over here: https://www.bareefers.org/forum/threads/our-hobbit-house.28952/
Since then, I have learned a lot about reefing and my ambitions for this tank have grown - it will be much larger than the cardboard cutout from 2018, for one!
The basic guiding principles for this tank are:
- There will be a display side (the side we're looking at in the picture) and a fish-room side. From the display side, no equipment will be visible. On the other side, all bets are off. The fish room side will have a horizontal blind that can be pulled from one side to the other to become the background of the tank.
- The tank will be long. The plan is to make an opening in the wall that is the same size as the window above it - 120" x 20". The tank will be taller and longer than the opening, so maybe 140" x 24". That ends up in the 300-400g range depending on the depth. The door into the fish room will be flipped to make room for the extra length of the tank.
- The tank will likely be euro-braced, it doesn't need to be rimless.
- It will be at eye level: no bending down to look at it (and I'm 6' 10") which means a very tall, custom stand - most likely steel. The idea is to think of the tank as a piece of art hanging on the wall and not a container full of interesting things at counter-top level.
I've been designing this tank in my head since the day I took that picture and I have a few unconventional ideas that I want to run past you, so I figured I'd start this thread now.
If you have questions about the house itself, head over here: https://www.bareefers.org/forum/threads/our-hobbit-house.28952/
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