4 Way Viewable Reef

[pidge]

Has anyone here implemented a 4-way viewable reef? What i mean is pehaps a 36LX36WX24H reeftank with a center overflow.

The goal here is to have the center overflow hidden, except for the very top, with liverock (i'm prepared to drill and use ties), and have no visible equipment stuck to the glass on any side.

I'm wondering if this is possible... MAIN ISSUES:

1. getting power to the damn thing, namely how do you get juice to the middle of your living room (run chord under the carpet??).

2. water circulation.... What's the feasibility of running the return back up from pvc up the center hole, and making a framework supports for the liverock that also outputs the water, and idealy doing something with an actuated 3 way valve. How much water can i push around with one center overflow? should i do some kind of closed loop thing and have 2 pumps? can anyone refer me to a well documented closed loop circulation system???

3. lighting: will having a 400 watt pendent hanging from the ceiling 10 inches from the center return punish the piping or return?

4. Can i have a tank of those dimensions (36LX36WX24H) without a center brace? Or would it be ridiculously expensive to get glass thick enough?

Thanks alot for your input. I really think a setup like that would be perfect, especially if i could get the rock hiding the nossles and piping fromt the returns, hang have it overhung, like some kind of reef pinacle. I thing it would be interesting as well to see what fish like tangs would do. i think it would give them the illusion of more space, since they can swim around and around the structure (or maybe i'm not giving their pea-brains enough credit)....

-Matt

 

[danmhippo]

I've seen them in some LFS, and yes, they run wires under the cabinet. You could embed power outlets under the carpet. It is not hard to do especially in houses with crawl spaces/basement.

One of the tank I saw has the 4x return water coming out of the center column at 45 degree angle. Thus creating circulating flow of water around the reef.

I do not remember if these tanks has center braces, but if the overflow column is at the dead center, I doubt there are any center braces. I do remember, however, that at least one has 4" hangovers around the sides.

 

[pidge]

Damnhippo,

When you said the 4x return water was coming out of the center column at 45 degree angle, you mean the 4 hosey things that come by default, right? Were they evenly distributed around the colum? Were they well hidden?

If they did what I think they did, that would be perfect, especially if i could have an actuated ball valve on half the outputs facing one direction, and half in the other direction. Then in, in theory, i could get the current going in one direction, and change the direction on a periodic basis. Thinking about how great that would be for water circulation gets me creamy. Do you see any problems achieving this, besides having the plumbing be a total pain in the ass?

Do you remember any other details that were special about the tank? Were it's dimensions comparable to what i'm thinking about?

Also, did they do a good job wrapping the center overflow with liverock? Did it look believable as a freestanding reef pinacle? I assume thats what they were intending as well...

I'm getting excited about this setup. It feels . . . elegant.

More input, please!

 

[Robin Goodfellow]

hi.
I don't have a pic, but I heard that there are some suspended tank setup without stand, and you can see the fishes from the bottom (obviously, no substrate) as well as all four sides. Pretty strong roof reinforcement, I would say!

 

[danmhippo]

The one's I've seen are (I think) 36" square and the other one is 48" square. One of them is nicely covered with LR in the center, the other is almost bare with LR stacked only half way up. Since the center column is acrylic, you could customize the out-pipe if you need to anyway.

I remembered the glass panels are pretty thick too. 3/4"????