Thinking about building a custom 380 gallon...

[Joker741]

I have a cubby in my house that currently has shelves in it that I have been thinking about having a custom tank built for. It will be a FOWLR tank.

The good thing about this location is that there is a 18" wide x 24" deep x 96" tall closet to the right that I can put all of the pumps, filters, and other equipment in. Also, behind the tank is a bathroom and I plan on hooking into the drain for the tub with a valve that will be used to do water changes.

My concerns are that the planned dimensions of the tank are 47" wide x 24 1/4" deep x 78 1/2" tall (with the back 4 1/4" being used for an over flow, making the tank just over 387 gallons) and the tank would be next to my pellet stove (about 18" away and the stove has a large airspace around it).

So, my questions are, do you think that the tank will be too deep to light properly? Do you think a chiller will work well enough to offset the heat from the pellet stove? What other problems do you forsee with the tank?

 

[pat8you]

If it is just a fish only then lighting isn't as much of an issue. If you ever decided that you wanted corals in there it would be very difficult/ nearly impossible to light a tank like that for corals.

Another issue that i see with a tank that tall is that fish use horizontal swimming space much more then vertical. Despite is being an enormous tank i think that a lot of the bigger fish like the tangs, angels, wrasse that are one of the best reasons to get a FOWLR would feel very cramped.

If you were to try and make it work next to the stove you would need a large fan in that 18" air space next to the stove to keep that from heating up and transferring the heat to the tank. Even so i'm not so sure that's a good idea. A stove can put out a ton of heat. On the plus side, a tank that size would have so much water volume that it would take a heck of a lot of heat to change the temp in there.

If you didn't mind a little construction. I would knock out that closet and grab that extra length. You could then change out some of that height for some width and store all the equipment underneath. Would require more work but i think it would produce a better tank in the end.

 

[Joker741]

I would love to knock the closet out, but that wall is load bearing.

Guess, I will have to look at some options.

Thank you for the reply, I really appreciate the input.