1700 Gallon Saltwater Reef Aquarium

this 1,700 gallon aquarium is over 15 feet long and five feet from the front to the back we're gonna cover the cost and construction of a system like wondering what is dirt monkey University well I'm a landscaper by trade and I need something to do in the winter when the grass is dead this 1700 gallon aquarium is my outlet this aquarium was specially designed to be on the main floor of our house it weighs over 14 tons when fully filled to do this the floor had to be specially reinforced in a filtration room like you see here had to be designed just to support the main system we're gonna talk about some of those details next the skimmer on this aquarium held over 100 gallons and to incorporate this aquarium into the house we had to build a 2,500 square foot addition now there's some really cool things about this aquarium that you probably won't see anywhere else a lot of the rock work that you see in these pictures is actually styrofoam yes the main aquarium only had between 700 to a thousand pounds of live rock in it most of the rock was actually fabricated made out of great stuff styrofoam in a can and PVC pipes a framework was built out of the pipes to allow caves and crevices and water flow once the framework was in place great stuff styrofoam in a can was sprayed over the top of it and then modeled to create a rough texture once that was cured fiberglass resin and Auriga night just plain-old Quarian sand was thrown on top of that which allowed coralline algae and the corals themselves to grow it's basically an artificial reef right here it's an example you can see the caves in the middle of that mommy that was all made out of PVC this brief aquarium cost approximately $700 per month in electricity it was powered by 14 metal halide bulbs plus 12 eh-oh bulbs on a tynix to gain access to the aquarium the light canopy was actually installed on a garage door system so it allowed the entire canopy to be slid back with two fingers allowing and complete access to the front and back side of the aquarium the support room for this aquarium was wired with over a hundred and forty-four plugins to support the lights skimmers and pumps for this filtration system this is the hundred gallon skimmer it was the main center of the filtration along with a hundred and forty gallon refugium instead of heating and cooling the aquarium itself the support room behind the aquarium had its own climate controlled system in-floor radiant heat controlled the temperature of the aquarium as well as the separate air conditioning unit to eric exchange systems controlled the humidity in the room one air exchange system would recycle the air into the house during the cold winter months a separate system would circulate the air outside during the hot summer months the front and back viewing panel are inch and a half thick seamless acrylic construction was done on-site with a master acrylic handler plus 12 of my guys from my landscaping company the cost of the acrylic and a system like this was about $10,000 this aquarium had monthly 400 gallon water changes to keep it alive and thriving if you guys and gals out there like videos like this let me know by hitting the subscribe button and sharing this you can find more aquarium related videos in my video library as well as an update of what this system currently looks like today I'll give you a sneak peak at the end of this video of what the aquarium looks like today and then you can find an entire another video on the reconstruction of this system so make sure you check that one out all right the next shot you're gonna see the bank of metal halides and you can see where it's on a garage door system you can easily slide in and out over the tank allowing full access [Music] alright next you're gonna see what it looks like now when I change things I don't do it a little bit this is a stream bank cutout it has gold cars snow alligator gars and freshwater stingrays so make sure you look for that video