770 Gallon Monster Setup

[gmalone]

I live in New England and have a very small outdoor pond (~180 gallons) with one Koi and eight comets. They wouldn't survive our winters without a heater so I decided to put them in a rubbermaid stock tank in my basement which gets down to about 55 degrees. The fish are extemely happy at this temperature and they are also beautiful. This has made me wish I could buy a large enough fish tank to keep them inside year round. Actually, two of my comets are Sarasa (spelling?) comets thet are white with red/orange blotches.
I guess my point is that if you decide to go with goldfish, comets, or Koi, you won't be disappointed.
On a final note; Koi do get big. I got mine when he was about six inches long three years ago, now he's over twelve inches and getting to be too big for his pond/stocktank.
Good luck with your awesome tank.

 

[aldiaz33]

awesome setup! hope you solve the heating issue soon would love to see some predatory fishes in it! aha!

Thanks. Me too.

I learned a lesson from this topic, never put goldfish in a 770 Gal..
Have you tried heating the air? I'm going to heat my fishroom and as soon as I know a method I'll tell you, no way I'm letting you keep a monster like that with goldfish..

If the aquarium stayed on the ground you should of had heated the tiles beneath it. But no way now..

I haven't tried heating the air. I think heating the water directly would be more efficient. A guy that lives just a few miles from me who has a 600 gallon reef tank said he was paying $200 a month just to keep his tank at 80. He was running 2 1,000 watt heaters which he said would cycle on for 7.5hrs a day. That's 15KWhrs every day (most households don't use that much electricity in a day). He ended up buying a tankless water heater and runs pex tubing through his sump- running a heat exchange system. He said his heating costs are now 1/10 of what they used to be. But I'm not ready to run a gas line to the room right now...perhaps someday.

i love acrylic but seem to me that singapore doesn't have such tanks available readily

yea! tell me about it tried searching for a few companies and the prices they quoted me were insane you'll just end up sourcing for a glass tank.

I had heard that acrylic tanks overseas were very expensive. I wonder why that is. Most large tanks overseas seem to be made of glass, which kinda scares me. If you don't mind me asking, what dimensions did you get estimates for and what were the estimates?

The SF Bay Area is quite cold. Today was 28 degrees in the morning. Aquarium heaters are always on which will turn lead to a very high electricity bill.

Finally, someone who feels my pain The lowest my tank has gotten was 53F. Most people hear California and they think warm sunny beaches, but it gets chilly here in the Bay.

I live in New England and have a very small outdoor pond (~180 gallons) with one Koi and eight comets. They wouldn't survive our winters without a heater so I decided to put them in a rubbermaid stock tank in my basement which gets down to about 55 degrees. The fish are extemely happy at this temperature and they are also beautiful. This has made me wish I could buy a large enough fish tank to keep them inside year round. Actually, two of my comets are Sarasa (spelling?) comets thet are white with red/orange blotches.
I guess my point is that if you decide to go with goldfish, comets, or Koi, you won't be disappointed.
On a final note; Koi do get big. I got mine when he was about six inches long three years ago, now he's over twelve inches and getting to be too big for his pond/stocktank.
Good luck with your awesome tank.

Nice! I would love to see some pix of your fish. I have somehow managed to avoid buying koi...they look so cool, but they grow to be the size of a medium sized dog (and have appetites to match). I enjoy the goldfish, although I must admit, I miss having tropical fish.

Here are a few more pix:
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Side shot:

 

[thechief]

wow what an amazing tank! i dont care what you have in there it looks incredible! nice craigslist find thats where i get most my tanks if you wouldnt mind could you send me a pm about the cost i would really appreciate it thanks!

 

[NOLAGT]

I don't know if it's been said but what about a soler style heater. Something with a bunch of zig zagging pipes painted black and in the sun. I did that for a science project back in the day when I was a kid and I remember it working quite well. Then heaters for night time only.

Great tank regardless!

 

[tigrinus_808]

Nice tank!

 

[warman98]

not yet moved to the monsters...

 

[HULON]

Property Tax, Home Insurance, DMV registration, Christmas and a cold spell that has forced me to run my pool pumps in order to prevent tham from freezing have hit my pocketbook pretty hard this month. How many watts are you running to heat your tank? You still have it setup in the garage, right?



Bro i got 2600 watts of heaters on my tanks what ya think 1600 on the 675 Very simply i run a propane heater in the garage in the morning when i get up at 430 am for a couple hours and believe it or not it helps greatly the garage sustaines it 's own heat pretty darn good unles i dip below 30 F .........Anything above 40 and i do not have the heaters goin crazy LOL!!!

 

[Chris360]

Lol.....at first I had no idea why you thought I took a shot at you about the cheap goldfish. I must say I've read the better part of this thread and what you have is an awesome set up my friend. All I can say is to each his own and I respect your beliefs on housing big fish in small tanks, that's why I went to Frontosa. My Mbu will out grow but I'll do the right thing and sell him or donate him to a larger aquarium

 

[aldiaz33]

wow what an amazing tank! i dont care what you have in there it looks incredible! nice craigslist find thats where i get most my tanks if you wouldnt mind could you send me a pm about the cost i would really appreciate it thanks!

Thanks. PM sent

I don't know if it's been said but what about a soler style heater. Something with a bunch of zig zagging pipes painted black and in the sun. I did that for a science project back in the day when I was a kid and I remember it working quite well. Then heaters for night time only.

Great tank regardless!

I looked into getting solar panels installed, but they are really expensive. In regards to using pool solar heating where you run black tubing onto your roof, that may help during the day, but like you mentioned, I would need to run heaters at night, when I need heat the most, so I'm not sure how much that would help.

Nice tank!

Thank you.

not yet moved to the monsters...

Cheer up! I have a 10" goldfish.

Property Tax, Home Insurance, DMV registration, Christmas and a cold spell that has forced me to run my pool pumps in order to prevent tham from freezing have hit my pocketbook pretty hard this month. How many watts are you running to heat your tank? You still have it setup in the garage, right?



Bro i got 2600 watts of heaters on my tanks what ya think 1600 on the 675 Very simply i run a propane heater in the garage in the morning when i get up at 430 am for a couple hours and believe it or not it helps greatly the garage sustaines it 's own heat pretty darn good unles i dip below 30 F .........Anything above 40 and i do not have the heaters goin crazy LOL!!!

Keeping the air temps in the room up would definitely help reduce the need for your electric heaters to run. A cold room sucks the heat right out of a tank. It's supposed to dip into the 20's tonight...the tank is at 54F right now, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it in the upper 40s early tomorrow morning. Bigalspets.com is having a sale on Eheim Jagers...$26 for a 300W...I almost pulled the trigger and bought 6 of 'em, but decided to hold off. I need to stop spending money on this stupid hobby (see below for most recent purchase).

Lol.....at first I had no idea why you thought I took a shot at you about the cheap goldfish. I must say I've read the better part of this thread and what you have is an awesome set up my friend. All I can say is to each his own and I respect your beliefs on housing big fish in small tanks, that's why I went to Frontosa. My Mbu will out grow but I'll do the right thing and sell him or donate him to a larger aquarium

haha, yeah, the goldfish weren't the original plan. Although I've had plenty of people tell me I need to heat the tank and keep tropical fish, no one seems to want to send me $200 a month to pay my electric bill. I like the Frontosa...they look really good in your tank. In regards to stocking preferences, it seems like a lot of people on here keep monster fish even though they don't have monster tanks...not a big fan of that. I don't know why I let it get to me, but it bothers me when I see big Red Tail Cats, ID Sharks, and Aros in 55 gallon tanks. I would much rather see a colony of Fronts like you have in your big tank over a 4' Pima that wouldn't even be able to turn around, but I guess like you said, to each his own. Glad there are at least a few others on here, that feel the same way I do.


Tank update:
UPS guy (AKA Santa Claus) brought me 2 pumps today.
1. Reeflo Super Dart Gold (replacement for my leaking pump)
2. Laguna Max-Flo 4200 Submersible Pond Pump

The good thing about the Laguna is that since I will be running it submerged, I have been told it will be just like running a 160W heater, 24/7. Not sure how much if any heat it will actually add to my tank, but I plan to drop it in the sump tomorrow and I'll be keeping an eye on the temps. According to the Laguna's flow chart, I should get 2092GPH at 9' head pressure. I am going to plug it into my kill-o-watt to see how much juice it pulls. If it's really just 160 watts or less I will be really happy.


As you can see the bottom of the Laguna is not flat which is kinda annoying. I plan on making a stand for it, so that it sits upright in the sump. Still haven't figured out how I'm going to do it, but I have a few ideas.

 

[LOPAKA]

your gonna luv the super dart as I did mine, great pump