Thoughts/suggestions regarding tank height?

[capman]

I've had a really busy and complicated summer. It was also very eventful regarding my tanks in some bad and very depressing ways...more about my partial tank crashes in another post when I have some time to write *a lot* and am a little less depressed about the huge losses that occured due to a combination of equipment problems and stupidity on my part (for now, lets suffice it to say that if I have offered you bits of SPS corals in the past and did not get around to giving them to you yet, it will be some time before I can deliver on my offer, since I now have very little in the way of SPS corals to give away!). Consequently, I have been away from this forum for a few months now, partly because it was too depressing to think about corals for awhile! I have missed this forum.

Anyway, my department will be meeting with the building planners for our exciting new science building at Augsburg College next week to finalize room layout and furnishings and the like. One of the features of this building is to be a large reef aquarium on public display (not hidden away inside labs like our current reef tanks). I don't know exactly how large this will be, but I'm guessing it might end up in the 300 - 500 gallon range, and behind it is to be a lab with multiple research tanks that will be on the same water system as the big tank. Probably we will also have a really big sump in the basement of the building (one floor down), which will allow us to connect in some smaller tanks in a nearby teaching lab as well.

Anyway, the architects are suggesting a tank about 3 feet tall. I agree that this sort of tank height would make a spectacular display, but someone (that would be my students and me) has to take care of this thing, and I'm worried that that sort of tank height would be really hard to deal with. It seems to me that not being able to reach the bottom would be a really big impediment to almost all aspects of tank setup and maintenance.

So, what are your thoughts on this tank height matter? What is the tallest tank you have had, and how hard was it to set up and maintain your tall tank?

Thanks

Bill

[WildPraire]

Bill!

It's so great to see you posting. I've missed your commentary on the forum

I'm terribly sorry to hear about the tank problems you have had. I'm sure that everyone in the club will do their best to help you restock.

As for the three foot deep tank, my only experience is with a 24 inch deep tank with a fixed canopy that adds 10 inches of height and opens from the top. I get up on a step ladder (okay I'm short) and still can't reach the bottom of the tank, this makes it very difficult at times to do seemingly simple tasks. Add that my natural gracefulness, and working on the tank for a long time, I seem to forget I have two steps down to the ground. No serious falls yet but it may just be a matter of time. While a three foot tall tank would be stunningly beautiful, I would think that it would take some special consideration of what could be done to facilitate basic maint.

Hope to see more posts from you on this.

Sue

[otolith]

Bill, YOU'RE BACK! We were wondering about you. Having worked on a 30" tall glass tank, and also a 24" tall acrylic tank with flanges, I would probably consider those the most comfortable max heights for a tank. A 3 ft tall tank would leave you dependent on the cheapo tongs if things fell to the bottom, or else getting your whole shoulder wet. The other problem with a tank that tall that's going to house corals is that it could leave you with a lighting dilemma. Would 400W be enough? or would you have to go to the 1000W bulbs? I think you'd be better off making the tank deep, it can be just as impressive with added depth to the tank--say 4 feet. Maybe an 96"x48"x30"--somewhere around 600g! That would be quite a tank for your new building. I bet you I even know where you could get quite a few frags to stock the tank as well.

[maxseeley]

Bill,

Question, who is going to build the tank? I would love to give you a bid; please give me an email @ maxseeley@mn.rr.com - I work with Charlie @ Aquatic Enviroments.

I have to agree with Derek, 24" is the max. I would go on any reef tank for cleaning, maintance, and lighting. Plus, not going higher then 24" will save you a bunch on money on acrylic.

Thanks,

Max

[MERCEDES]

Capman! We have missed you, I am so sorry to hear about the problems you have had. You know we will help you restock in any way we can. The sunflower anemones have started to split I have lots of zoanthids and other softies and Tracy has way to many SPS corals to even name so you know we can get you frags as well as many of your other friends in the club. About your height question, 3 ft is probably going to be a pain to clean and be able to access the whole tank. 30 inches would seem to be a good size since when you take into account the sand bed you may only be looking at 25-28 inches depending on the depth. For a tank that size(you are sooo lucky) you don't want it to be too short, Derek is right about doing a tank that has more depth to it. The landscaping you will be able to do will be wonderful with lots of open space for the fish to swim around. His dimensions are ideal, since it will be on display you may want to have a bit higher stand so people will not have to bend over to see the tank. You can have them build a walkway on the lab side for easy access to the top and also you will have a nice place to sit in front of the tank in your lab area. Are you going to do glass or acrylic? If you do acrylic you may want to consider some way of protecting the front from being scratched by visitors. Maybe recessing it back into the wall slightly and putting a ledge in the front? If it is in the wall you could save money by having just the front and back viewable and use black or blue acrylic for the sides or different glass if you use glass. I am sure you must be excited to be able to build your dream lab and have the tanks and filtration systems just how you want them. Is your female clown okay and your monster sized anemone? Please let us know what we can do to help, you have helped all of us in one way or another and I know if given the chance to help you I doubt anyone would hesitate. Please don't be a stranger and good luck with the new and improved science lab.

[capman]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and support (and thanks for the frag offer!...maybe I can even get a frag back of the really nice bright green A. millepora that I lost...that colony was huge!). And gosh, I feel flattered to be missed. The summer was not just occupied with tank disasters, but with the writing of a grant proposal, and a lot of family/household stuff (good stuff)...summers are almost busier than the school year it seems (if that is possible). And, like I said, thinking too much about corals sort of hurt too much for awhile. I learned some things from the disasters though, which I will pass along to the forum at some point.

Regardng tanks...
My thinking has been that 30" is about as deep as I'd be comfortable with. My arm is just over 30" armpit to finger tips. Add a sandbed to the tank, and I could reach the bottom on all those occassions when one needs to move rocks around, move free-living corals, pick up frags that have fallen, attack Aiptasia, etc. If the tank is really deep (front to back dimension) that would complicate things too of course (I'd almost have to have a platform to lay on over the tank to reach the back from the front, or vice versa), but yes, I absolutely agree that a lot of depth could make this really spectacular even without a huge amount of height.

Regarding the tank itself, I am REALLY leery of going with an acrylic tank, especially given the fact that I will have a series of student workers (likely a new one every 1 - 3 years) helping with maintenace...one well-meaning and otherwise very competent student helper even managed to put big scratches in one of our glass tanks a few years ago. With rampant coralline algae growth on the walls of the tank, I think terrible scratches will be inevitable if the tank is acrylic. I realize that glass is super heavy, and that glass will limit what we can do in some ways, but I think glass is going to have to be what we go with. As I recall, the biggest tank made by Oceanic is 500 gallons or so (a 3ft x 10 ft footprint maybe???)

Are there any other good sources/builders of large glass tanks???

[reeftanktime]

I recall hearing that Dirk has a few large tanks for sale. Good luck with the project.
Dennis

[capman]

Thanks Mercedes for all your support and suggestions (I didn't see your post until after I posted my last post). This tank (or tank system really) will be a mixed blessing (lots of work and commitment...just like our current tanks), but yes, if it all becomes reality (funding being a possible issue... we will probably need a generous donor or set of donors to help make this reality) it should be *very* cool, and a wonderful teaching/learning resource for Augsburg students and also for visiting grammar school and high school groups (I have hosted visits by quite a few groups of school kids over the years). I should also be able to set up some really nice research tanks, where I'll be able to replicate experimental treatments properly and have some nice research projects going on with students. And, the new building will have great features such as (a) good temperature control (which is lacking in our current building...one of the things that happened this summer was that the tanks reached at least 95 degrees one day, though this was not the worst of what happened this summer), and (b) backup power generators that will keep critical things in the building (including aquaria) operating in the case of power failures.

As far as the diasasters are concerned, the temperature disaster back in June only killed a few things...the orange tube anemone (the purple is still fine), and a few small SPS corals. Other problems (roughly a month later) had to do with excessive pH (like 9.2!!!). the main pH disaster resulted from a circulation pump failure coupled with a stupid flaw in overall system design that allowed the 220 to be dosed with far too much calcium hydroxide (I'll explain further in another post...there are lessons that can be learned from my disaster)...this mostly affected the 220 in the animal room. Killed virtually all SPS corals in that tank in one day, all Xenia in that system died the next day (rotting Xenia made matters worse of course), and some other things died. The LPS corals mostly came through OK, (the slipper coral seemed almost completely unfazed by the whole event) as did some of the leathers, etc. The clams at first seemed OK, but then there was a loss in that area, and not getting all the rotting flesh out promptly enough took out a few more corals. The six-line wrasse disappeared the first day of the pH disaster, but all the other fish came through this just fine (though they seemed pretty freaked out by the low visibililty of the cloudy water). My student's research project involving Larry Jackson's Purple-tipped Monster Acropora colonies came through just fine (I was really keeping my fingers crossed for about a week on that)...these are in separate tanks on that same system, but the circulation pump failure disconnected them from the 220 during the main part of the disaster. I lost all the big mother colonies that my student started her research colonies from though...in some ways, death of these big mother colonies is the biggest loss.

I also had some stupid problems in the other system (the system with the rose anemone), ironically also due to pH control going out of whack but for a different reason, but the anemone tank pretty much came through unscathed, and the anemone and clowns are fine.

Needless to say, this was awfully depressing and hard to talk about. Still is. The corals in the 220 were really beautiful (and huge) before all this happened.

Things are not totally back to normal in the tanks, but they are finally starting to regain that sparkling healthy look of good reef tanks again.

Bill

[lfish]

Bill, good to meet you! I feel like I know you, this group certainly throws a few compliments your way every now and again.

I am sorry to hear about your losses. I think about that happening and I know I would have to walk away from it for awhile if I was faced with something like that. It must have been so discouraging. It is so nice that you can bring forth some tips for members and spin it into a learning positive. To see you still in it and rebuilding is very cool. Best of luck to you.

[David Grigor]

Like others have pointed out. 28-30" would be my max......... I believe mine ended up 24" above the sand level and it was fine.....

[ReefSitter]

Bill,

I agree also, 30" inch is pushing it, and you will probably be taking your shirt off.
36" you will probably need a snorkel!

I do have some of your frags, gained some way or other, and would be happy to donate some frags back when you're ready.

[Energy]

Bill - I have 3 tanks of corals just begging to get fragged with your name on them! My tanks really could use some pruning so I would be glad to send a bunch of SPS your way. Sorry to hear about your loss but on the bright side you get to start over which is always fun! Every now and then I lose a coral to RTN which bums me out until I realize I have a new spot for an even cooler coral!

[marm64]

Bill sorry to hear about your tank problems.

I have a 90 gallon tank that is 24" deep and I only have a shallow sand bed and I do not think that I would want to have to reach into a tank that was 6" deeper. Also depending how wide the tank is you might have be quit high up reach to the back bottom of the tank.

[capman]

Thanks again everyone for your offers to help me restock (and nice to "meet" you, Ifish). I'll be more than happy to take you folks up on these offers when things seem more safely stable and when I have a bit of time. Things are still not quite completely right in the tanks after having so much decomposition of coral flesh (the skimmer on the 220 sywtem still foams like crazy and the waste has to be emptied frequently), but they are getting much better. Some of the corals in the tanks are looking just fine now, but others (like the small surviving Pocillopora remnants) are still not looking quite right yet.

Unfortunately, the Anemonia were NOT knocked back by the pH disaster, and have lots of open turf (as in, dead coral skeletons!) for them to spread on now. I'll have to do something about them before adding too many new things.

Again, when I have a bit more time I'll explain more fully how and why this disaster happened, since there are useful lessons that come out of all this. It was also interesting to see how different species responded to the high pH.

[polskp]

Bill-

Sorry to hear about the 220. What a nightmare. I am sure, however that you and your students will nurture your reefs back to health. I've got two different poncilloporas from you last winter... I can bring you a frag if and when needed.

So you're going to build the dream tank. That's really exciting! When's the meeting at Augsburg?!?!?!?!?!? (LoL) We have a wonderful little reef community here, and we all know that TCMAS is a great place to go for advice.... but I think you'll have to beat-off the vicarious reefers with a stick.

It's really good to see you posting, your expertise has been missed.

Pete