Designing future tank, will tank input!

AaronCombs

My wife and I will be building our home in a couple of years. To please me she is allowing me to build a room for my wonderful hobby of fish keeping / breeding. So I can't be happier, lol.

The room would be built slightly different compared to other rooms in our house.

Here me out on this so bare with me. Our house will be a 'non traditional' house. Sounds weird I know, but you'll love it.

Firstly, I will dig into the ground until I reach rock... reason being this will be one large tank, and need support. The house will be built into a large hill as is, so digging this deep will be done anyways.

I will then be using concrete (and blocks) to build support for the tank. the outside and inside will be coated with Line-X. For those who are unaware of this great chemical compound, it is used to blast proof buildings, as well water proof nearly everything, IE leak proof my tank.

The tank so far in the sketches will be 10'x10'x3' = +/- 2000 US gal's (WxLxH).
This spectacle of a tank will be viewed from above, not from below or the sides, as they will be made out of concrete.

Due to the nature of concrete by absorbing / releasing heat, a heater to maintain a temp could pose a challenge. So to adjust, the surrounding ground will be retrofitted with copper piping and sand. Filled in the pipes is a solution of anti-freeze and water. That will be heated via sun and circulated through the pipes. the floor section, where piping is ran, will be done with bricks, so if repairs or any such needs to be done, it can be done so with ease. This also will give me a nice warm floor to walk on in winter, lol.

Now the tank will be setup filter wise like a normal outdoor pond. As for fish, I'm torn between some types of fish. However I probably will just do a community tank that is under populated so they can breed. We'll see, we can work that out when time comes.Substrate will be varied based on the section of the tank. I'm thinking of using different substrates.



Now this is impressive in my book, but I'm not done. Because this is my hobby I can't stop there.
Around the walls of the room, more tanks will reside. These will be sitting on concrete base as well. From there one of two things will happen. Either I will have a custom tank built along the two main walls to take up the entire length OR I will have several Large tanks running against the walls.

The reason I'm torn is because having several tanks would allow me to have other main species that would not go into the massive tank. Example, saltwater tank setup, in one tank, Cichlids in another.



I'm now trying to convince the wife that a room for breeding fish would be a positive thing too, lol...
We'll I can try at least haha.Pending the floor plant and placement of this room I might be able to do a side room with the tanks. We are still having the architect give us different floor plan sketches.




Well I hope I don't kill everyone's dream of owning a huge tank... However like I said it will be a few years before I can have it. So until it's running it'll be my goal. And as always I will defiantly post up pics once it is running.

I'm looking for ideas on how to make this tank better. I plan on offsetting electrical costs with solar panels from roof. So I'm not too worried about that. I might put in some SMALLER skylights to light the walkways up. I was thinking maybe some lighting on the sides of the tank, similar to those in pools. Plus the above lighting.

Oh and I'm trying to decide if I want to use the typical pond filter system or build a custom one.


Tell me your thoughts on what you'd recommend. I will take these into consideration.






Aaron

bones14

If it's only going to be viewed from above I would make it an indoor Koi pond.Koi will breed as well and be more visible than community fish.The other tanks in the room would be the community tanks,species tanks,etc.
Sounds like every fishkeepers dream room though,good luck with it.

AaronCombs

Thanks, I've also been curious to try out a more complicated tank... with that setup as well... lol... but I would have to create an overflow system to be safe.

in the 10x10x3 tank, create an upside down tank in it. This would have to be custom made with acrylic. With that said, here is a sketch up of what I was thinking...

http://yfrog.com/jxfuturetankbottomless1j

It would increase it to 2587 gallons. If the bottomless tank is 5x5x4... now this could be made even taller, pending I might do this as well.. we'll see. Now depending the makeup of the ground, because Ky is full of clay, we might just dig it in, pave and line-x it, or tarp it.

I'll have to see how much it would cost to have it built and drilled for pump system to balance it out. However I can't make up my mind on what I'd put in it. As for Koi it is an option, however my wife said she already wanted one outside. She wanted this as a 'teaching tool' for kids.

The outside Koi pond she wants would be built with concrete blocks in a shape of a heart (big picture). That lined with one of those really big pond tarps. As for the size on this one, It'll probably end up 2k gal or larger.


Oh I forgot to mention, my wife is a CFS (child and family studies) major (She graduates in dec10), so she will always have kids coming over to check all this stuff out. As well we will have visitors all the time because of the type of house we are building. The estimated cost of our house, excluding my projects (hehe), will be roughly 20k US dollars, land will cost us probably another 20k to 30k (Several acres).

I'm torn between three majors, each different. Engineering major, teaching, or business. Currently I sell fine jewelry, as well a full time student.

I'm trying to figure out which would be best for me, each require time when working, but I think I might pick teacher, because I grew up in the lifestyle and am more than capable of doing it. My mother was a Special Education Teacher, 3 classes from PhD.

I'm ranting lol, sorry haha.

Peace