Happy New year all!
I've been wanting to post to this forum for a while now about the new build I'm working on and finally sliced out some time. For some background, I've had multiple SW and FW tanks in the past, and due to a leak in a FW tank, I took the opportunity to convert the space into a SW tank.
***I am in NO way an expert, so any tips, tricks, or simple adds now that could make my life easier now would be welcomed!***
Let’s get into it.
I started design in early 2016. I am taking my time with it (if that wasn't apparent almost 2 years later...). When starting this build, the things I started with were:
· Size and shape with the space limitations
· Philosophy on maintenance
· Electrical needs
· Structural support needs
· Support systems and necessary space for them
Space and look limitations - Simply I get about 53” by 53” box. No ceiling hung items, and no visible equipment with the doors close.
That lead me to a rectangular tank, 4ft long. The issue I ran in to was that every off the shelf tank as 24” deep and only 18” tall. I wanted the tall size, but also wanted the depth to be less to allow for more negative space in front of the tank to better match the décor of the space. That lead me to a custom tank. I also knew I wanted to be able to have a tank larger than 75 gallons to work with.
Philosophy on maintenance - I struggled with this one for a long time. I knew I wanted to be able to reach in the tank which meant no higher than 24” else I’d need a platform to work in it. I also knew I wanted to have it be as little maintenance as possible, which meant water changes needed to be made very easy or eliminated.
After much deliberation, I ended up ordering a custom stand and tank from Felix over at ReefSavvy. It was a 6 month lead time, which wasn’t surprising. I’ve seen his work and have continually heard nothing but great things. After some back and forth I got the tank and stand on order. The stand came in in Late April 2017, but the tank was delayed (more on this later). This was actually a good thing for me, as it gave me plenty of time to stare at, measure, plot, draw up, and measure again the empty stand. It also forced me to better evaluate my power needs and continue to work on my maintenance philosophy.
Electrical Needs - The last tank I had was on an outlet in the living room which was shared with the entire room. This meant the TV, lamps, ect. I wanted to add a second, dedicated circuit to the area for redundancy, and also for piece of mind that the TV shorting wouldn’t take down my tank. I added a double gang outlet fed from a new 20Amp GFCI breaker. The beige wall is the existing outlet, the blue wall is the new outlet.
I ended up changing my mind on this strategy, and I’m going to double my protection. Right now, if any item plugged in to either outlet shorts, the entire circuit will trip, killing power to everything. I will be changing out the GFCI breaker for a standard 20Amp breaker, and changing the outlets to parallel GFCI outlets. This way, if a piece of equipment plugged in to one of the outlets trips, the other outlet will still be fully functional.
Stay tuned for more progress!
I've been wanting to post to this forum for a while now about the new build I'm working on and finally sliced out some time. For some background, I've had multiple SW and FW tanks in the past, and due to a leak in a FW tank, I took the opportunity to convert the space into a SW tank.
***I am in NO way an expert, so any tips, tricks, or simple adds now that could make my life easier now would be welcomed!***
Let’s get into it.
I started design in early 2016. I am taking my time with it (if that wasn't apparent almost 2 years later...). When starting this build, the things I started with were:
· Size and shape with the space limitations
· Philosophy on maintenance
· Electrical needs
· Structural support needs
· Support systems and necessary space for them
Space and look limitations - Simply I get about 53” by 53” box. No ceiling hung items, and no visible equipment with the doors close.
That lead me to a rectangular tank, 4ft long. The issue I ran in to was that every off the shelf tank as 24” deep and only 18” tall. I wanted the tall size, but also wanted the depth to be less to allow for more negative space in front of the tank to better match the décor of the space. That lead me to a custom tank. I also knew I wanted to be able to have a tank larger than 75 gallons to work with.
Philosophy on maintenance - I struggled with this one for a long time. I knew I wanted to be able to reach in the tank which meant no higher than 24” else I’d need a platform to work in it. I also knew I wanted to have it be as little maintenance as possible, which meant water changes needed to be made very easy or eliminated.
After much deliberation, I ended up ordering a custom stand and tank from Felix over at ReefSavvy. It was a 6 month lead time, which wasn’t surprising. I’ve seen his work and have continually heard nothing but great things. After some back and forth I got the tank and stand on order. The stand came in in Late April 2017, but the tank was delayed (more on this later). This was actually a good thing for me, as it gave me plenty of time to stare at, measure, plot, draw up, and measure again the empty stand. It also forced me to better evaluate my power needs and continue to work on my maintenance philosophy.
Electrical Needs - The last tank I had was on an outlet in the living room which was shared with the entire room. This meant the TV, lamps, ect. I wanted to add a second, dedicated circuit to the area for redundancy, and also for piece of mind that the TV shorting wouldn’t take down my tank. I added a double gang outlet fed from a new 20Amp GFCI breaker. The beige wall is the existing outlet, the blue wall is the new outlet.
I ended up changing my mind on this strategy, and I’m going to double my protection. Right now, if any item plugged in to either outlet shorts, the entire circuit will trip, killing power to everything. I will be changing out the GFCI breaker for a standard 20Amp breaker, and changing the outlets to parallel GFCI outlets. This way, if a piece of equipment plugged in to one of the outlets trips, the other outlet will still be fully functional.
Stay tuned for more progress!