also, you can drill the rocks with a drill bit and use those fiberglass rods (the one used for culvert reflectors) those will hold the piles from falling over. (did that on my wife's tank, and it works great. plus everything is sturdy and wont fall over during misc maintenance)
one thing i would change would be the rocks that are against the glass..... i have done that and figured i would be fine with it, but it always bothers me and you cant clean the coraline algae and the regular algae either. slide those far enough away to get a mag float away from it and to get a razor blade there.
Thanks for the comments guys! I thought that taking the pics from a top down view would give a better look at how everything came together. My goal is to have all three set ups (180, 245, and the Breeding setup) going by New Years.
quite similar to what I went with on mine. I used the e-marco putty (read quick set concrete) to kinda make my islands a bit more slender... I wanted them tall but not really wide to give me lots of negative space in the tank. Get some water and lights over that thing and lets see what ya got.
Taking pictures from above was a great idea. We don't see that enough.
I think it's cool that you put an island in front of another in a way, it makes for a dimensional look. I found it's harder to take pictures that capture it well though. Bravo!
Gloss might hold up better than flat in the long run.
I basically used flat white paint. I didn't use marine paint or anything like that. I have never had any issues with it.
I'm curious as to what you painted your stands with.
Thanks! The updates will keep coming as I get stuff done.
Awesome man.. keep with the updates!! I want to eventually do something like this so when I see someone do it, its nice to see.
Looks great Mike! I want a basement.
Are you a member of MBI ? Would be good place to start there if your not.
Mostly clownfish. I also have a pair of Banggai that are spawning regularly. They are currently in a different part of the basement and will be relocated once I have everything set up
What are you going to breed ?
Unfortunately, the 180 gallon sump for the 245G dispaly gets in the way of the third shelf.
Cool! You could make the second rack with three shelves and use the third for supplies and if you ever upgrade with more tanks you will have the shelve space for more tanks. ;-). Just an idea.
Thanks Hat! The second rack is going to be a little bit less involved, only 2 shelves. My goals is try and run the system off of three circuits. I didn't do any initial planning the electrical until I saw where everything landed. Now that I have a pretty good idea where everything is , I can start doing some planning with the electrical.
You're making progress and that's good. You have to make another breding rack like that one? Man, you do have a whole lot of plumbing to do with all those tanks. Do you have to run dedicated electrical outlets for the setup? I can't remember if you had talked about that with your plans. ;-)
I believe it code here. When I tore some of plaster out of the bathroom I remember it being staggered also. That was 1940 when the house was built