120g In Wall Build

So we bought a house 2 years ago and came up with a "brilliant" plan to put our 120g reef tank in the living room wall. We started construction on this project before we even moved in to avoid the demo mess being on our furniture. This is our 2 year long project. Hope you guys enjoy it. This build was done with a lot of experimentation, and we learned a lot.


Our house had a big empty wall with built in closet space on the other side.........PERFECT!!!








After the demo and clean up we built the stand and put the tank up and filled it to make sure there were no leaks from moving it and to make sure the floor would hold, there is a block wall in the basement right under that wall, but the house was build in 1904 so you never really know.





This is what our wall looked like for over a year.





Finally some progress started to show.








Now for plumbing and lights. I had originally designed an internal circulation but we ended up using it instead for the return so we have 12, 1/2 inch pvc pipes that the water pumps back into the tank from the basement (i had taken pictures of this and now can't find them).





Our overflows drain to the basement were we have 3 55 gallon drums.





They are all plumbed together so the water equalizes and still has enough room in case the tank back flows, we don't overflow. One drum is the refugium, another is RO for auto top off and water changes.





We also have a pipe that goes straight to a drain in our basement from the return pump for water changes.


For lighting we chose to use LED bulbs we put 4 up but we are going to be adding 2 more because the center of the tank if dim where the glass brace is at.





For the inside of the tank we decided to try something new and instead of doing the traditional rock piles we lined the back of the tank with egg crate and covered the back and sides in foam. This allowed the return pipes and overflow boxes to be hidden. We incorporated some rocks and coral skeletons to weigh the foam down. On one side we didn't get enough weight and the foam started to rise once we put water in but it just made another little cave so we left it alone. I got a seed rock from Anemones Clowns and Corals, it didn't take long to start seeing coraline on the foam and glass. We also got the new tank algea, which is finally starting to die off. We haven't added any corals yets and we only have 3 fish. But this is the finished product.








We are waiting on the new wp40 wave maker we just ordered and then we will start adding corals. I will post more pictures as the tank grows.

 

We started it in July of 2012. We are still working through the "new tank" issues and getting the flow and lighting just right.

 

I did take pics of the foam process and I have no clue what happened to them /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default//emoticons/sad.gif As for the electronics we have glass covering the top of the front half of the tank to protect any splashing.