Technically 330 if you want to add in the fuge and pipes, etc.
I will post pictures later tonight as I am at work while writing this article.
History:
Several years back a friend of mine gave me his 24g nano to use (why he thought i would be interested i have no idea as i never mentioned anything to him related towards fish since i have known him). But it was sitting around his house and he was doing nothing with it so he just showed up one day and said (and i remember the words exactly, "I had this laying around and i figured you could do something with it, the hobby is really fun".
It sat around my house for about a month and being a dumb first timer figured i would just jump into it without reading anything. Well, i knew a little from what i came across some websites online from time to time, salinity and water quality... But some was on-the-fly learning. I have had only 10 fish roughly die on me and 80% of that was because they didnt survive the drip acclimation, so it may have been overstressed fish or something... And the other 2-3 were because of age or aggression in the tank and one because of a tank cycle (learning experience).
After always dealing with rapid water parameter swings and bored with only having 3-4 small fish, and partially because while i was at Jacks getting some water conditioner, i saw they had a 55gal tank on sale for 80 bucks and came with all the mechanical equipment to get started (needless to say, i snagged that up), so i upgraded. I didnt have a stand for it at the time when i bought it so i just pushed together a couple end tables till i could find something that i liked and filled it up. Thats when i found out about the tanks water cycle (only had the 24g nano for about 5 months when i found this deal). Lost 1 fish because of that, luckily. About 6mo later i built a temp stand because i was just not happy with what was locally and some of the really nice ones were way over priced! Slap some trim on and charge an extra 300 for it, please...
A few years later, i started to feel bad for the fish. Granted Damsels have plenty of space in a 55g, but i was thinking, how would i like to live in something equivalent all my life like my house. I dont think that i would be happy with that at all. So i set out to find a solution to get a bigger tank. After scouring the net, craigslist and brand name sites and their over inflated price for used and new equipment, i came across an article about plywood tanks. So i researched and researched and researched them. Eventually, after reading several conflicting articles about what you should and shouldn't do, i went to Lowes and bought some 5layer plywood (3/4" thick).
Originally i was just going to build a 200gal tank and noticed that i would have a lot of wasted wood. So i calculated how "BIG" of a tank i could make without it being "WAY TOO BIG". Ended up building a 96"lx27"wx25"h (roughly 280 gallon). Could have been bigger, but my wife would have killed me as she was kind of already unhappy with the size
. I Gorilla glued the corners, fiberglass resins the corners and the whole inside of the tank, put 3 layers of paint for the color that i wanted (tropical blue, go figure) and applies a layer of silicon to the whole inside. I ordered a 1/2" thick piece of glass from Hemms Glass for around $180. Build a stand out of 2x6's, drilled the wholes for the plumbing and water tested it. One small leak (missed an air bubble in the silicon which ruptured with the weight of the water) so i fixed that. Stained it Ebony black just so that it didnt look horrible as this was my test tank. Was up and running for about 400 bucks not including the equipment.
So i bought the 7-800gph pump ( a little smaller than i like but it was about 100 bucks at the time) a couple power heads to make up for the lack of flow plus i could control the flow around the tank better, bought some shop lights and put some T8 Daylight bulbs in it (Fish only tank), bought 600lbs of playground sand (silica free), 200lbs of liverock and let it all cycle for about a month and threw a Chromis in there. 4 Months later, i threw the rest of my fish in there. Oh and at the time, i had a skimmer also for both tanks, can’t forget that skimmer that is so greatly needed. After all said and done, my tank was consuming about 800-1000watts. A few more years later after testing different silicon’s, adhesives, learning the limits of the $20 sheets of 3/4" plywood, feeling confident that my fish are happy with the large amounts of room they have to swim, the well balance of my tank, etc. I started to focus on energy efficiency.
I got into what the skimmer does and why it's important, more efficient models as far as pump electrical consumption, air to water ratio, etc and stumbled across an ATS (Algae Turf Scrubber). Even though, with its bad rep in the past as a failure, mostly due to our lack of understanding, i decided to build a test rig and give it a try. I have never been happier. It is gravity fed, all the live rock, live sand and algae scrubber combined keep my tank well stabilized, and has been over the past 2-3 years. It's gravity fed and got rid of the skimmer, saving me 70-100 watts. Got rid of my filters, carbon, etc, saving me countless dollars every year. I know this is a sin to most people, but i only change my water every 4-6mo because it is so well maintained. I do dose chemicals as needed to keep things well balanced though, it seems to be cheaper as I’m not running a full on reef tank, yet.
Then really the only thing that was left is lighting. That’s when I discovered LEDs. SO I set out to build my own, build a couple test models to test out spread, intensity, par, etc (bought a PAR sensor for my multimeter). I’ll explain this some more when I get my light pictured posted. I got into LEDs also primarily because I was starting to get interested in wanting some “plant lifeâ€, but come to find out they are animals as well. But regardless, I wanted them, and I knew my light wasn’t enough. But it didn’t stop me from purchasing a couple low light corals for testing on how “intense†it needed to be to sustain life. I have only lost 1 coral out of about 15 or so and that was because a fish knocked it over and I didn’t notice it for a few days (going to school, working and family takes most of my time) and died from lack of light. I have more LEDs and optics on the way, so I’ll be building 3 more official units to cover the rest of my tank. Unfortunately I haven’t done a test yet to see how much my LED unit consumes with my kill-a-watt meter so I cant exactly specify how much in energy savings I will have over my other lighting ATM. But I’ll get to that soon.
But anyways, to keep a long story short, that brings me to today’s projects, rebuilding the 280 gallon DT for a finished product that I can truly feel confident and happy with. And the total price of the tank will cost me only a couple hundred more than the previous one because I bought Marine Plywood this time.
That’s all I have for now, if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I’ll do my best to get the pictures posted within a couple days (I should have time tonight depending on how involved I get with building my tank).
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