Greetings all,
We're in the process of buying a new house with a large basement that we'll be finishing immediately for an amusement room. Several walls will be shared with a storage or utility area, and a built-in 125 gallon cichlid tank would certainly be plenty cool! We'll plan on reinforcing the studs that sit under the tank.
I'm already planning on running water directly to the tank for water changes.
Issues I see already:
1) Leveling the tank. Houses are not built flat or square!
2) Sound transmission through the walls.
Those of you who've done this yourself - what other obstacles do I need to plan for?
Now please shoot this idea down - what if I plumb the tank so that water is constantly flowing into the tank and out of an overflow apparatus? Let's say I plan on turning the water in the tank over completely once per day? Once every three days? The tank wouldn't cycle, since I wouldn't be using any dechlor. Obviously that would kill beneficial bacteria, but would it hurt the fishies? I imagine there'd be no algae issues either. What if I use a deep sand bed and snails? Would chlorinated water kill snails? If not, would I even need to vacuum the substrate?
As far as heat, I would run the water through some sort of large holding tank at about the right temp, and heat it there with some monster heaters. My guess is the tank would probably need a seperate heater, but maybe not? Probably...
Please tell me I'm crazy and it can't be this easy.
We're in the process of buying a new house with a large basement that we'll be finishing immediately for an amusement room. Several walls will be shared with a storage or utility area, and a built-in 125 gallon cichlid tank would certainly be plenty cool! We'll plan on reinforcing the studs that sit under the tank.
I'm already planning on running water directly to the tank for water changes.
Issues I see already:
1) Leveling the tank. Houses are not built flat or square!
2) Sound transmission through the walls.
Those of you who've done this yourself - what other obstacles do I need to plan for?
Now please shoot this idea down - what if I plumb the tank so that water is constantly flowing into the tank and out of an overflow apparatus? Let's say I plan on turning the water in the tank over completely once per day? Once every three days? The tank wouldn't cycle, since I wouldn't be using any dechlor. Obviously that would kill beneficial bacteria, but would it hurt the fishies? I imagine there'd be no algae issues either. What if I use a deep sand bed and snails? Would chlorinated water kill snails? If not, would I even need to vacuum the substrate?
As far as heat, I would run the water through some sort of large holding tank at about the right temp, and heat it there with some monster heaters. My guess is the tank would probably need a seperate heater, but maybe not? Probably...
Please tell me I'm crazy and it can't be this easy.