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Planning a new in-wall tank


mFrame

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Looks like the wife and I are going to start construction of our dream home.  I have approval to have a dedicated fish room making use of the under the stairs storage and wall.  I'm going for an in-wall tank around 7', 230ish gallons.

I know some basics, like having a sink drop (water supply and drain).  The house will have water softener and RO unit in the garage where they're easier to access and maintain.  We'll ultimately have solar and something like the Tesla powerwall, so power outages shouldn't be an issue.

I'm wondering what other advice or tips any of you who have done this would recommend.

Flooring - concrete floors are standard downstairs.

Electrical needs?

I'm planning to have my topoff  and mixing containers situated about the tank and use gravity feed rather than pumps for supply.

I'd like a quick water change system that dumps old water to the sink drain.

I'm thinking of doing a 7' tank connect to a smaller specimen tank.  They'll have a shared water supply but will prevent occupants from moving between.

 

If you've got links or pics of ideas that you have, please feel free to share or link to your build thread.  Trying to explain to a builder with text is so much harder than just showing him.

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Since you are pouring foundation,  think about a recessed floor with drain. This way if you lose a few hundred gallons it will just go down the drain not out into a room. Have them epoxy the tank room floor when they come back to polish your main floor. A nice faux marble look to the tank room floor maybe?

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How exciting! Also think about humidity control. Make sure not to use standard drywall around it. BRS recently did a video where they talked about their BRS 160 tank where they cut a hole in the wall to run the plumbing through from the external overflow box and how salt creep and splashing was a big problem with the drywall.

Edit: Just saw something in victoly's thread that I didn't do on mine...access from the front of the tank.

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This sounds incredibly similar to what I’m currently building. What lights are you thinking? My one big regret right now is 7’ long is a real difficult tank to light with bar style lighting. T5s don’t come in 3.5’ or 7’. Radions can make it work, but that’s a lot of Radions. I am plumbing in HVAC to the room to keep it cool in the summer and will probably have a dehumidifier in there as well.

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17 hours ago, Gig 'em @ NDstructible said:

This sounds incredibly similar to what I’m currently building. What lights are you thinking? My one big regret right now is 7’ long is a real difficult tank to light with bar style lighting. T5s don’t come in 3.5’ or 7’. Radions can make it work, but that’s a lot of Radions. I am plumbing in HVAC to the room to keep it cool in the summer and will probably have a dehumidifier in there as well.

Two 3ft aquatic life hybrids (or similar) and 4-5 XR15s?

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For electrical, i would make sure to have at least two dedicated circuits. Maybe even three if you have individual HVAC for the fish room. 

Mine has 4 circuits, although only two are dedicated. 

As far as temp control goes, I try to keep my ambient room temp at 80 and my humidity below 60. I have been able to achieve that with a central AC drop, a portable air conditioner and also a vent fan which at this point is really more to keep reef stench out than to do real heat/rh control. It's much more complicated than people give the problem credit for, unless you just want to through a ton of watts at it and you dont care about heat loss into the room. 

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On 11/10/2019 at 10:27 PM, Gig 'em @ NDstructible said:

This sounds incredibly similar to what I’m currently building. What lights are you thinking? My one big regret right now is 7’ long is a real difficult tank to light with bar style lighting. T5s don’t come in 3.5’ or 7’. Radions can make it work, but that’s a lot of Radions. I am plumbing in HVAC to the room to keep it cool in the summer and will probably have a dehumidifier in there as well.

I've been pretty happy with my (9) BuildMyLed 2' fixtures on my existing build.  That said, they're getting a bit old and BML isn't around any more.  Not sure what I'm going to use yet, but it will definitely be LED.

post-884-0-24314100-1361205460_thumb.jpg 

18 hours ago, victoly said:

For electrical, i would make sure to have at least two dedicated circuits. Maybe even three if you have individual HVAC for the fish room. 

Mine has 4 circuits, although only two are dedicated. 

As far as temp control goes, I try to keep my ambient room temp at 80 and my humidity below 60. I have been able to achieve that with a central AC drop, a portable air conditioner and also a vent fan which at this point is really more to keep reef stench out than to do real heat/rh control. It's much more complicated than people give the problem credit for, unless you just want to through a ton of watts at it and you dont care about heat loss into the room. 

So (2) circuits?  How many amps/etc?

I thinking of having central a/c drop, and the room will have an external wall so I'm hoping to direct vent.  I'd prefer not to have to have a separate a/c in there but I may be dreaming.

 

We're also planning on installing solar at the house, so plan to have some free electric $$$ (right, free :) ) to power things during hot days.

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I have two 20A circuits dedicated to the fish tank. I have a third non-dedicated circuit (runs washing machine and ambient lights) which also runs the portable AC. The 4th circuit in the room runs some auxiliary outlets plus the exhaust fan. The only things I installed for the tank specifically were the two new circuits, the other two were pre-existing and just happy little accidents that they were a) large enough and b) separate such that i could still achieve semi-adequate temp/rh control if one circuit failed (e.g., the exhaust fan works but the PAC fails). 

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I have 4ea 20 amp circuits for the tank room. They are on a separate panel outside with other 2 other circuits for fridge, water storage tank pump and its UV unit ( so we can flush the toilet and drink water in case of power outage) and some lights. This has a transfer switch so a generator will kick on in case of a power outage.

I use a continuous duty exhaust fan in the tank room vented thru the roof. 

The room has an air duct for heat and A/C . No separate unit.

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