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New Tanks/New Living Room

ezrk

Members
Hi Guys,

We are considering redoing our living room at least partly to acquire more fish :)

We would likely be looking at getting 2-4 foot tanks, probably 120s (28x24x24) though other sizes are a possibility, and wonder if anyone has any advice on tank and stand acquisition. We would do them as "reef" tanks with overflows and sumps.

A major consideration is that we need the whole set-up to look good and be pretty clean. We have a fairly modern looking condo without large amounts of space so "big" furniture doesn't work well. We are unlikely to go with a canopy for instance as it is too visually large for you room.

If anyone has any suggestions on where to buy both tanks, sumps, stands, and anything else for that matter we would appreciate it.

A couple of things to note:

- neither of us is much of a wood-worker, nor do we have tools and niether do we have space to build..so building something is probably not really an option.

- Yes, we in theory have room for an 8 foot tank, but prefer two four footers as we would like the fish variety rather than "big" fish.

- Cost is an issue, but we are willing to pay for quality here, the tanks will be the main focal point of our living room and need to look nice.
 

Andrewtfw

Global Moderators
Are you considering going with one wet dry filter for thectwo tanks? This could significantly increase the total gallons, making the system more stable. Deep blue makes "drag tanks" that are four feet long, 18 inches front to back, but are short. You may want to look into them. Since space is tight, you may want to go with an acrylic tank. This would allow you to place overflows where you want and dry boxes could be added if wanted.
 

Tony

Alligator Snapping Turtle/Past Pres
120s are nice-size tanks! I like Andrew's idea of a combined sump, but would always worry about disease spreading from tank to tank.

The problem with those tanks is that they are pretty uncommon, so you'll be tough pressed to find a used one, let alone two that are drilled. So in terms of saving money, gonna be tough to do there. I think that the opportunity to save will definitely be in the stand and sump/sumps.

Especially with the two tanks side-by-side, I'm thinking that a single, large stand would look better than two next to eachother. This opens the door to either a homemade one (my preference) or maybe even a stand for an 8' tank...

Sumps can be constructed cheap, out of rubbermaid containers and Target plastic drawers. built the one under my 180 for about 100 bucks (including the used return pump)
 

ezrk

Members
120s are nice-size tanks! I like Andrew's idea of a combined sump, but would always worry about disease spreading from tank to tank.

The problem with those tanks is that they are pretty uncommon, so you'll be tough pressed to find a used one, let alone two that are drilled. So in terms of saving money, gonna be tough to do there. I think that the opportunity to save will definitely be in the stand and sump/sumps.

Yeah. We are willing to spend a fair amount and understand that we are looking at buying two new drilled 120s if we go that route, the question is as much "well if we are willing to pay, where is the best place to get them?" feel free to PM me or Wendy if that is the best way to respond.

We thought about combine sumps and the cheaper rubbermaid route.

A couple of comments:

- We are seriously considering doing a Tropheus tank as one of the tanks. Is a combined sump an issue with one tank being Tropheus and the other a Malawi?

- We probably will do a planted sump/regugium to help eat up nitrates and also use it as a place to raise fry so want something that makes that reasonable. We are extremely limited in space so if we can get double duty by doing something like that it is worth a fair amount to us.

We have considered doing acrylic and this is one of our big uncertainties if we can really make it work well with an Mbuna tank with moderate frequent needs to pull lots of rock, etc.

Thanks for the ideas!
 

Tony

Alligator Snapping Turtle/Past Pres
Water chemistry differences between a troph setup and a Malawi setup would be minimal/non-existent.
 

Tony

Alligator Snapping Turtle/Past Pres
Having trouble editing from my phone, but meant to say "practically speaking" - they are both fine in the same water. pH 8.2 or so would make them both happy.
 

Charlutz

Members
Hey Ethan -

A combined sump would be great, but if you are not planning on doing the building yourself, I think it might be difficult to find what you want via retail. Another issue is the noise. I think you and your wife came to my house for some albino bristlenose cats. (Sorry, I can't remember for certain but I sometimes have trouble placing screen names to faces.) Hope the ABNs are still doing well. Anyway, I don't know if you remember, but my big tank has a sump in it. There are a lot of things you can do to quiet them, but sump systems make noise. I'm not sure you want two of them in the living room of a condo. I'm a huge fan of sumps, but you might have an easier time with a canister filter. Something to consider. Good luck!
 

ezrk

Members
Hey Ethan -

A combined sump would be great, but if you are not planning on doing the building yourself, I think it might be difficult to find what you want via retail. Another issue is the noise.

Wish it was us, we would have loved to see your set up.

Noise is a consideration. I thought you could get sumps reasonably quiet with either Durso's or the Herbie set-up. Definitely interested in what people think here.
 
2 120's drilled in good shape may be a slim chance. I have been waiting and collecting them, I needed 3. I have 1 good, 1 has a scratch in the front and the other needs reseal and has a chip. They are not drilled and it took me about a year to gather all of them.

I could have spent 4-5 hundred a piece and had them sooner...
 

ezrk

Members
2 120's drilled in good shape may be a slim chance. I have been waiting and collecting them, I needed 3. I have 1 good, 1 has a scratch in the front and the other needs reseal and has a chip. They are not drilled and it took me about a year to gather all of them.

I could have spent 4-5 hundred a piece and had them sooner...

Yep. We basically accept that we would have to buy them new.
 

chris_todd

Members
Or you could go with the much more common 90g or 110g (48x18 footprint instead of 48x24). In fact, I have both a 90g sitting empty that I need to get rid of, and a 110g with Africans that I also need to move out of my basement/get rid of (I have to replace all the carpet in may basement, so the tanks will have to go).
 

Charlutz

Members
Wish it was us, we would have loved to see your set up.

Noise is a consideration. I thought you could get sumps reasonably quiet with either Durso's or the Herbie set-up. Definitely interested in what people think here.

It didn't sound like you were going to do a lot of custom building. There are ways to quiet down the systems, but it's relative. For a living room display, you might want to go see someone's setup who claims to have a completely quiet sump. Reefers usually do the most work to quiet them down and you could see the overflow options if you find one close to you. The one consideration though is that reefers no longer use trickle filters in their sumps and the water flowing through the trickle filter drip trays also makes a good bit of noise, so you'd need to see someone's set up with those. I've had and used sumps for 15 years and have built several of my own. I recommend them routinely for tanks over 75g, but I am hard pressed to recommend using them in a living room unless you are comfortable doing a lot of your own custom work and go in knowing what to expect. Don't mean to be a buzz kill. Just want you to be informed. :angel2:
 

emj920

Members
There are ways to make sumps quiet. The Herbie method is the best that I've seen.
I saw a 375 gallon in-wall reef tank that was quieter than most tanks with HOB filters. The only thing you could hear was a slight humming sound from the Reeflo pump, but that was probably because the surrounding wall around the tank wasn't finished or sealed off.
 

ezrk

Members
It didn't sound like you were going to do a lot of custom building. There are ways to quiet down the systems, but it's relative. For a living room display, you might want to go see someone's setup who claims to have a completely quiet sump. Reefers usually do the most work to quiet them down and you could see the overflow options if you find one close to you.

I am more comfortable doing custom plumbing and the sump, just not woodworking.

I have a good friend who keeps a 120 reef tank and sump that I am going to go to for advice on that end.

For the sump itself I was not planning on a trickle filter, partly because it is loudish. Rather I was going to use a combination of Poret foam, filter socks and some general bio media. Then flow that into a refugium set-up with fast growing plants to eat nitrates then another chamber for the pump(s).

We have considered doing 75s, 90s or 110s as well. Some of that is up in the air as we do measurements and space planning. I figure that getting drilled 75s is much easier than 120s so am trying to figure out the "worst" case scenario as in most difficult.

I really appreciate the input and thoughts!
 

ezrk

Members
There are ways to make sumps quiet. The Herbie method is the best that I've seen.

I have read quite a bit about that. The challenge seems to be that it requires cutting three drains instead of the more standard two, so most standard reef tanks can't support it. I suppose you could use the return line drain and jsut run the return over the back of the tank (or get a completely custom tank of course).
 

longstocking

Members
This just sounds way too complicated ... lol... I have sumps, but I don't mind the sound of water trickling.... mag pumps are quite.

But in your case I think I'd just go with ehiem canister filters and be done with it. Quiet and will do just fine for what you are wanting to do.
 

WendyFish

Members
This just sounds way too complicated ...
That's my feeling too! On the other hand, to a certain degree that's part of the fun. We have so little space that continual tank expansion isn't an option, so we gotta keep building better mousetraps. :D

On the other hand, it's all fun and games until it turns out to be loud and we threw however much gear and money into it. Then again, my backup plan for that is to put in one of those Zen fountains. Lots of people pay good money for sump noise!
 

verbal

CCA Members
If you go the acrylic route you might look at fishtanksdirect.com their prices on the 200/240 gallon Tenecor look very good. Putting a divider in the tank yourself would probably not be much harder than building an overflow.

For stands it looks like glasscages has good prices, although they are unfinished.
 

WendyFish

Members
So, we have done a lot of research at this point.

We visited basically every LFS we've worked with before, and some we haven't. I mean this in a very nice way: a lot of stereotypes were turned on their head -- we have gotten some *great* receptions from places that have been stereotyped as geared to beginners; met a new store that has been awesome; and were disappointed in a store that we had high hopes for on the custom front. Just goes to show you to have an open mind and try everything. Also makes you wonder, at the same time you see LFSes failing, how it is so hard to get a relationship going when we are asking for 2x 120 custom setups, and willing to pay for them. (Miss you, TFW!) Maybe something is wrong with us. Maybe something is just wrong.

Anyway, we've now talked to some fully custom shops, got quotes on just the 120s (Starphire front) and in conversations with a cabinet maker to see if they can help us with stands. Also hunted down various new couch setups to see what might work well.

We've been playing with Google SketchUp to try to get an idea of how things might look. My trial Photoshop rendering was poor. :p Below is the view (and the real room). Everything is to scale. I love this as a tool. I think we need to move the tanks more to the center of the wall so that we can get under the one closer to the corner. Theoretically, with a joint sump we could just do everything from the middle-room tank, but I'd rather plan for worse.

A few main variables are up in the air right now.

Do we want a joint 8' stand, or two 4' stands? Since we have 4' tanks, two tanks gives us the option to move them elsewhere at some later date if we want.

Do we want to go with a sump or canisters? Thoughts in this thread have been loud and clear on the noise (haha, get it, loud?)... on the other hand, we still wonder whether solutions like Herbie might make it still good for us. We're nerds for perfection and the idea of a planted sump sucking down nitrate is just appealing (yes, we would still change water). Plus we have very limited space, so beign able to use part of sump as refugium for fry would be nice. As far as I can tell reefers mostly use sumps and many have tanks in their living rooms. This is our main thing to figure out. Tony, in light of your recent thoughful comments, we'll prolly seek you out at next meeting for your advice. Any others are welcomed, please come find us!

Is 8 feet of tanks just too much? Except that we love the idea of adding the tropheus tank, really the right solution for the space would be a 6' tank. I'm a little in love with 6' bow, I gotta admit. We could add a couple more clusters to the mbuna tank (leading contenders being flavus and -- departing to Vic space -- fulu) which would be some consolation as I find both appealing.

Any advice on the open items would be fun. :D

LR.jpg

Living Room.jpg
 

verbal

CCA Members
Would two 125s work better? One way would be one in front of the other. The front one would be a display tank and the back could be for grow out or breeding. The disadvantage is it might look funny on the side and you don't have much of a view of the back tanks.

Another similar possibility would be a custom stand with a 75 long(a short 125) on the bottom and a 125 on the top. Or possibly even a bow front for the top tank.
 
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