12 Foot Tank

[mercedesvaughn]

Here are some of the first pictures of me and my fiance's new 12 foot tank setup. We moved our fish and most of our rock and coral from our 6' tank to this tank. Fish are happy :) Just the first day, but everything is looking pretty good. We took pictures from the beginning of set-up 'til now, but I just wanted to show todays newest pics. Enjoy :)

[roscozman]

Wow, that is big. Looks great so far...

[Big_Pun]

nice details on tank is it braced, how thick is the glass, oh also wow that is one nice setup

[mercedesvaughn]

Thanks, just starting out with this tank. It'll be fun and interesting trying to fill this thing up. Need to fix the pvc pipe in the back and add some more powerheads. Its a work in progress...

[mercedesvaughn]

Tank is 12 foot long, 13.5" wide, 24" tall. I think the glass is 1/2" thick. It is braced with 1" thick glass on the bottom and the top has four 1/2" to 1" thick braces. Bullet 2 protein skimmer. Refugium on bottom. Four 150w 20k MH lights, and thinking about adding three 250w 14k MH lights. Refugium has two T-5's. Stand is a work in progress- still needs tiling detail to make it look pretty, and not just like its sitting on concrete blocks, lol :)

[BA]

wow awesome tank!! how many gallons is it? bet that was a heavy tank to move!

[carlinsa]

about 200 gallons or so?

[JimD]

144 x 13.5 x 24 = 46656 divided be 231 = 201.97 gallons based on outside dimentions... Cool tank!

[mercedesvaughn]

Thanks everyone! That sounds about right (we were told it was around 200 gallons by the people who drilled our tank- Jason from Aquarium Designs :)! We bought it as a freshwater tank and turned it into our saltwater dream :) It took 6 guys to move it in, and it took only about 10 minutes to settle it properly on the stand. I will add some more pictures here in a few...

[mercedesvaughn]

Here are first 5 pictures of the entire setup...

[mercedesvaughn]

...more pics of setup...

[mercedesvaughn]

...and the tank filling begins...

[mercedesvaughn]

...dainon making the lights...

[mercedesvaughn]

...first life in tank...almost done!

[The Butcher]

WOW!

[BA]

wow i would have never guessed those were trash cans.. awesome idea! and they look great!!

[mercedesvaughn]

Thanks! My fiance Dainon is a pretty creative guy. He came home with them and said he was going to make lights out of them. I didn't realize they were trash cans until he told me.

[SABOB]

Love the tank size!!!Couldn't figure out lights in earlier picture,would never have guessed the were trash cans.......Brillant idea,looks great.Good luck with this sweet tank.

[jdjm07]

NICE AWESOME AQUARIUM! I WONDER HOW MANY GALLONS OF WATER IT HOLD?

[BA]

144 x 13.5 x 24 = 46656 divided be 231 = 201.97 gallons based on outside dimentions... Cool tank!

looks like around 200

[mercedesvaughn]

Thanks all! Yes I think the lights make the tank a little classier. I just hope my neck won't get sunburned from sitting on the couch with those massive things behind me (I've already sunburned my eyes!). We will keep everyone updated when new fish/coral/lights etc are in. I can't wait to see what this tank is gonna turn into!

[jlh81]

awsome set up i bet the fish look all that room thay have to play, can't wait to see more

[mercedesvaughn]

Thanks! Yes, the fish <3 the big room to swim. We are currently in the process of putting up our baby 6 foot tank ;) and are going to focus on getting that one up and running. We will keep everyone updated on the growth of this 12 footer and put up pictures when more fish/rock and coral are added (we are waiting on more spare mulah to be able to do this!).

[mercedesvaughn]

...donations are welcome :D lol

[Mr Cob]

That's a long tank! Very cool! Love the lights. What type of material are they?

[Squiers007]

Props for the creativity on the lights! I cant wait to see what this tank ends up looking like with a ton of fish in it! Maybe I missed it, but are you running any kind of sump on it and if so how large?

[mercedesvaughn]

The four 150 MH lights are inside galvanized metal trash cans with copper plating on the outside (Lowes special...20 bucks a pop....we wish to thank Bud Light for the idea, lmao :P).

As for the sump, we have a 50 gallon refugium/sump. Water runs into bioballs then into live rock then into the refuge. We have a mag24 pump for return and a mag18 for the PM Bullet 2 protien skimmer (thanks to Drew "subsailor" at the Critter Shop!). We produce a lot of skim from that thing! We have a UV filter, but it is not up and running yet.

[FYI- We are in bad need for two pumps comporable to mag18's for a 6 foot tank...if anyone knows anyone selling some used, let us know!]

[msmith619]

I see corals and a racoon butterfly. What types of corals are you keeping and is the raccon picking at them?

[blindside]

This is one big tank!

[mercedesvaughn]

We currently just have a few leathers, a few mushrooms, some ricordia, a lot of gsp, a torch coral, frogspawn, a yellow scroll and some acro. We have a few sps but nothing major. I'm sure I've left some stuff out, but most of our prize corals died about a month after we moved our 6 foot tank from one side of the wall to the other while putting up our 12 footer. We are still not sure what happened and it was a major loss, but at least we get the excitement of starting all over, fresh and new with most of it. We also have 2 clams that made it :)

Our raccon butterfly doesn't pick on anything, suprisingly. We did have another raccon butterfly that it beat up so we just now have that one.

I think we are planning on making our 6 foot tank a "coral" tank only and the 12 footer our show tank with a mixed reef.

[mercedesvaughn]

Well we finally got our Koralia 8 in....its perfect! And going against what most people think- it is not the size of a football, its about the size of a softball and takes up just as much room as a Koralia 4. I am super impressed by the flow this thing puts out. We tried it out on our 6 foot tank just to see what it would do and it would be perfect for it, all you would need is just that one power head for the whole tank!

Anyways, it was a great deal at drfostersandsmith.com...they are having their summer sale and we bought it for $149.99 plus about $20 shipping and handling. That was it! Way cheaper to buy it that way than a million smaller powerheads. :applause:

[secretweapons22]

Very nice tank, cant wait to see it when its filled up with corals.