Constructing the perfect reef aquarium
When we decided to build a new home I knew I wanted a big reef tank built
into the wall, with a room behind for all my equipment (and to hide my mess!)
After looking at the floor plan and considering the placement, I decided on a
tank that is 30 inches high, 33 inches deep, and goes 7 feet, makes a 45-degree
bend, then goes 6 more feet. It works out to nearly 650 gallons. Compared to my
75 gallon tank, that's a huge tank.
The key to building a great reef is patience, planning,
more patience, and more planning. This tank was years in planning in a
general sense, but the active planning and building took less than a year. And
what a year! My home was in the Parade of Homes, so we had a firm date by which
it had to be done, July 12th, 2000. This made planning and execution critical -
of course Murphy's Law held true and all kinds of things went wrong, so I ended up improvising a lot on my
plans and working crazy hours to get everything ready in time. I know I never
would have gotten it done without all the planning I had done up front. I feel good about
the fact that I didn't compromise what I wanted, and I did everything well -
although I had to spend some extra money to meet the time schedule.
My guiding principles in design and construction were:
- Ensure no accidents can possibly occur that would hurt the reef or the
rest of the house (such as spills, leaks, and flooding).
- Assume spills, leaks, and flooding will happen anyway and plan to handle them gracefully
without damage to the reef or the house.
There are three main parts to the construction, which you can read about
by following the links to the left; the room, the tank installation, and the
aquascaping.
You are vistor number: 
