New Tank Build - Advice Needed

[highveldreef]

Good day Fellow Reefers of the world from South Africa. I have dreamt a long time of building my own all glass aquarium. I am at long last now drawing up plans and need to draw on your input and experience. Main display tank will be 3m lenght x 1m width and 1.2 meters in height.

First question:
With 19 mm thick glass will I need to use top braces to keep buldging of glass in check?

Question 2:

Back of the tank will be flush with the wall and I will have to build an overflow box on the one side of the tank, leading to a sump that will stand in a room next to the tank room. How do I build this overflow without falling prey to a noisy gurgle of water in my display room? I want all noise generating devices in the sump room and the noise level close to zero.

Question 3:

How big must i build my sump? Taking in mind, I want to culture pods later in a refugium to sustain a pair of dragonfish.
Equipment list will be skimmer, deep sand bed refugium various probes live rock pool and management system. Any person up for drawing me a design?

That is all for now. I promise i will start a build thread once i start the build.

Thanks.

 

[sbash]

Okay, here we go:

Question 1: To test this, you can fill the tank up with water and us a (very long) straight edge to see how much the tank bulges. That said, this tank holds a lot of water, time and money, why risk it? For reference, I put a euro-brace on my 2M long tank with 16mm glass.

Question 2: Look into herbie and bean-animal style overflows. They can both be very silent.

Question 3: Ideally, as big as you can get. If you are limited by space, fill the space. If you are limited by budget, fill the budget. Aside from factoring what you mentioned (which will barely fit into a 55 gallon sump), you should also make sure the water level in the sump is low enough to handle the volume of water in the pipes for when the power goes out, or you have to shut things down for maintenance. There are many ways to do this, for example a single tank with baffles, or multiple tanks plumbed together... How big is your sump room?