Floor to ceiling cylindrical tank

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

fishmonkey

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Dec 30, 2008
Messages
1,207
Location
Phoenix, Arizona
So I've had this idea for quite some time now! I am remodeling the house next year, making it super contemporary :cool:, so this is definitely something that has a good chance of happening. The idea is two large cylindrical tanks next to each other, one SW and the other FW. but for now, we'll just talk about the salty side!

Using this calculator: Volume Calculation
I found that if I were going 8 feet tall, with a radius (outside to center) of 3 feet, it would come out to about 1700 gallons. That is a LOT of water!

So, I would like it to be completely viewable from all sides, so that means that all the plumbing will have to come up through the center of the tank. I am really clueless as to how to do that :ermm:. Any suggestions or further reading on that? :banghead:

And lighting...oh boy that'll be a big one haha! I was thinking about DIY (or custom) LED lighting, but I will have to look at how far down they can penetrate before their PAR readings start dropping off. Those corals REALLY love their light!

I guess I just wanted to hear your thoughts, questions, ADVICE? :popcorn:
(oh, and for all intents and purposes, let's say that this has an open ended budget.) :blink:
 
Last edited:
Sounds like a challenge!

You will need to account for the thickness of the walls of the tank, in estimating gallons since the outside will be larger than the interior, it might have to be really thick.

What about devising a way to put a ring of submersible lights around the bottom where the substrate stops to make sure you get plenty of light where you need it.

How are you going to get down to the bottom?
 
There is going to be a fish room above the tanks on the second floor, with access to the tanks from above

Sounds like a challenge!

You will need to account for the thickness of the walls of the tank, in estimating gallons since the outside will be larger than the interior, it might have to be really thick.

What about devising a way to put a ring of submersible lights around the bottom where the substrate stops to make sure you get plenty of light where you need it.

How are you going to get down to the bottom?

The glass thickness I was thinking maybe 1/2" - 1" tempered glass. I'm not really worried about exactly how many gallons, I just know it will be a LOT! :D

I was thinking about the ring of lights, maybe about halfway down, hidden by a rock overhang, to supplement the bottom half of the tank?

Getting down to the bottom of the tank... That's going to be a really big challenge, seeing as how the only access would be literally from the top of the tank...on the second story. What I would really like to do, would be to make a robotic arm that I could control with some sort of controller, kind of like the ones that they have in automobile assembly lines. Mainly it would just be used to place or move corals, so nothing really fancy. See, this is the only time that I want 10 foot arms :D

And a thread will be made for sure, Rodeo!
 
Personally I would go with thicker acrylic..... Lighting will be a beast, and expensive, if you have a budget in mind.
 
yup, sounds like a big challenge, but very intriguing too!

If you made the radius a bit wider than you could just dive in to clean it, get yourself a hose to breath out of and a hose to suction with LOL
BUT, wonder how you'll get enough suction from inside the tank to do your waterchanges. You'd have to do something to get the end of your hose lower then the tank

nvm, you just need somethng that'll hook up to the sink. And a HUGE RO/DO unit!

Heck, it might be your best bet to just hire an LFS or somewhere to do maintenance for you. I'd find it to be a nightmare if I had to do it myself, reguardless of how pretty the tank would be.


I think that a ring of LED's at the bottom outside facing up angled in would be helpful, then another around the center.
You could also do an insert or rock or something around the center so that you can hide your plumbing and it'd look pretty cool for your corals and what not to be around the center.
Not sure how you'd do that either though.
 
Make the floor on the second story a clear walk over type so you can see through the floor on the second story to the tank, lol

Maybe a few vertical lighting strips maybe 3 in the rear or less seen side.

It is the crazy ideas which cause progress to be made! I am still looking for a really good idea for my motor home shrimp/fish tank! lol
 
Yeah, I am still on the wall about the glass or acrylic. The lighting is going to be extremely interesting. I was thinking about going with another "ring" of lights around the midsection of the tank, hidden in the rockwork, but that isn't feasable because anything that I contain them in would become encrusted in coralline algae, making the lights ineffective, and prove next to impossible to clean. Still something to think about...

For flow, I think I would have some sort of massive closed loop manifold system running through the center or the tank, behind the rockwork. I could have the actual manifold with valves in the fish room, so I can have a highly customizeable flow.

I think that I will have two skimmers. the AquaC EV-2000 Protein Skimmer is rated for 2000 gallons, but I can't seem to find many reviews on it, so I don't know.
 
I think that a ring of LED's at the bottom outside facing up angled in would be helpful, then another around the center.
You could also do an insert or rock or something around the center so that you can hide your plumbing and it'd look pretty cool for your corals and what not to be around the center.
Not sure how you'd do that either though.

That seems to be the general concensus on the lighting. The main lighting will be some sort of DIY LED light's with some good optics to throw the light as far down as I can.

The design is going to be a "cylinder" of rockwork and coral in the center, which will hide the piping, closed loop flow system, and whatnot.

The RODI unit won't have to be too big. I shouldn't have to have more than 75GPD. Although that would take about 3 weeks to fill... I'll probably go with 150GPD :D
 
Last edited:
Cylinder aquariums would be sweet but did you think about the distortion of looking through the glass? A hexagon would cut that out and be a bit easier to clean as well.
 
I am aware of the distortion, I just think that it is a small price to pay for such a beautiful piece of nature, and a hex tank would not go well with the design of the house. These two cylinders are going to appear to be holding up the balcony overlooking the living room, as if they are a structural part of the house.
 
I am aware of the distortion, I just think that it is a small price to pay for such a beautiful piece of nature, and a hex tank would not go well with the design of the house. These two cylinders are going to appear to be holding up the balcony overlooking the living room, as if they are a structural part of the house.

Ahh I see. That would be really awesome to do
 
Wondering something.. How are you going to scape these?

I was going to have a column of rocks running up the center of the cylinders, and they would be slightly flared out at the bottom, so it would end up looking kind of like a really tall, skinny cone of rocks. That way I can hide the plumbing and whatnot in the center of the tank!
 
it's time to call those morons from Tanked(although their tanks look off the chart). maybe they will do it for free if you think big and create enough drama to be feature on their show:brows:
 
it's time to call those morons from Tanked(although their tanks look off the chart). maybe they will do it for free if you think big and create enough drama to be feature on their show:brows:

Just don't let them stock it for you.

I think if you get on the show, Discovery pays for the tank, but you pay for the fish. I think...
 
you have to pay for the fish? what i have heard is that everything is free, but obviously i could be wrong. but anyhow, even getting the fish tank setup for free is a great deal.
 
Hence the "I think" part :) I suppose the only way to know would be to contact Discovery to try to be cast. A residential job like this, 2 cylinders, would be hard for them to refuse, I'm betting.
 
Back
Top Bottom