Welcome to my reef tank. I have been planning the setup for this tank for about a year. I had a standard 55g reef for about 10 years before starting this tank, so I had good knowledge of what I needed to do to make this reef tank better. I always wanted a bigger tank, but until now we had been moving around too much. My wife and I were finally able to buy a house, once we both found careers.

Our new house is a little unusual in the fact that we have very little wall space available for anything, let alone a large aquarium. Luckily for me the builder put in a ventless gas fireplace instead of real one (I say luckily for the tank, but I prefer the real thing by far). Being ventless means that there is not a chimney to contend with. The mantle was also a little high, and we decided that an aquarium would look great there. Any standard 18X72" footprint aquarium would fit.

With the somewhat unusual location of the tank, I had to be very careful with the positioning of the equipment. All of the plumbing equipment had to fit on the mantle behind the tank itself. The builder did not design the mantle to support close to a ton of weight on it. I spent 3 months adding support underneath the old mantle. To make things even more challanging, the tank would actually need to overhang the support wall in order to fit. I removed the top of the old mantle and added eight 2X4's on edge under where the aquarium would sit. I also added a 2X10 header across the fireplace opening to help redestribute the load. Under each of the 2X4's, I either added a 4X4 post or an L shaped support column made from two 2X4's. I replaced the old mantle top with a sheet of 3/4" plywood to tie it all together.

I used the old mantle top as a template for all of the plumbing and equipment. I quickly realized that I could not fit any of the light ballasts up on the mantle, so I had to come up with another solution. The only place to go was down. I ran conduit from the top of the mantle down through the floor into the crawlspace below the house. While I was at it, I ran a conduit for the automatic top-off line and a feed and return line, just in case. I have since realized the "just in case" will be necessary for a chiller, which will has been installed in the crawl space.

I have 2 power feeds for the tank. One on the mantle behind and above the tank, and the other down in the crawlspace for the lighting and the chiller.

Needless to say it has been a long and fun journey to get this far. Hope you enjoy the site.

Thanks,
G~