600 gallon plywood in wall tank with filter room finished pics

[Niners4952]

I am going to make a detailed build on this tank and everything it took to achieve the end results, It took me about 5 months of every free second working on it to achieve. Started when I purchased a used 300 gallon glass tank, I wound up getting 3 55 gallon drums and running the pipes through the wall into a spare room. I had it running for a couple weeks when a seam split leaving me a mess. I disassembled the glass and was going to rebuild it when I found out my front or rear glass 8'X28" tall could be used for a tank 8'X4' wide. I already had the filtration to double in size and the space and my dream to build it into the wall so I went for it. As you will see in the first pics I have a 24" deep recessed spot next to my attic door the was a little over 9' deep. So after building the tank I knocked the wall down between my man cave and spare room, the tank is literally half in a spare bed room and half in my converted man cave which was a dining room. I already had half the floor reinforced so I ripped all the sub floor down, reinforced the other half. I used 4X6 and sistered existing joists. I leveled it and put new sub floor down. I then redid my stand I built for my 300 for the 600 and built the tank and stand into a wall and added drywall. I did a ton of plumbing, I have 3 2" drains that enter the bottom of barrel 1, its filtered though 3 6" thick 22" round matalya pads for mechanical filtration with a flush valve at the bottom connected to my house drain to flush out waste to minamize cleaning. Then barrel 2 has 4 cubic feet of K1 boiling for bio, then to the return barrel that has 2 Jabeo dct1500 pumps and 3 300 watt heaters and I have 2 drains, 1 about half way up and another 3/4 up as back up. I have a drip system in the tank and all waste water gets drained in barrel 3 to my house drain. Its been running for 3 months without issue, I just cleaned the filters in barrel 1 for the first time, i don't touch barrel 2 or 3.No water changes and 4 times a year a drain barrel 1 by opening the flush valve with system off and rinse out 3 pads. beside vacuuming thats all I do, I added a walking platform and stairs to easily access the tank. I built my bracing to hold my tops and give me plenty of access

 

[Niners4952]

 

[Niners4952]

stock is 22" arowana 19" RTC 14" Motoro Ray 14" Alligator Gar 16" Clown Knife, I have a 12" TSN growing out in another tank, I don't want to add any more fish, want room to grow out and have their own space

 

[Niners4952]

A few of the filter room

 

[Niners4952]

Heres what I started with, the 300 with recessed wall

 

[Niners4952]

Focusing on the wall as I built the new tank first here are pics of the wall tear or and floor reinforcement

 

[Niners4952]

The first pics are barrel 1 with the 300, I had 2 1.5" drains and only 1 3" pipe to the next barrel. Just wanted to show how I have the flush have and where the fist pad sits. I now have 3 2" drains and 3 3" pipes to the next barrel, also showing the drains and drip system

 

[Niners4952]

The top view before I fixed the crooked return in pic 3

 

[celebrist]

Living the dream, sweet

 

[CarpCharacin]

I love how it looks for the most part, but the fake coral in a freshwater tank doesn't look very good IMO.