770 Gallon Monster Setup

[insanity0x1]

i love how your sump is bigger then my tank lol. looks great.
in my opinion, id just insulate the room..or even just wrap the tank with 3 sides of insulation, and run a couple space heaters when you notice a drop in temp every once in a while. a body of water that large, with that thick acrylic would surely hold heat in for some time at least.

 

[tomojsg]

Goodness! The walls of your tank are as clear as Scarlet Johansson's cleavage in a spaghetti strap top! Absolutely brilliant man!

mmm scarlet johansson... sexyyy +100 couldnt have said it better! lol

 

[Iwhoopedbatman]

Just a few thoughts

1) do you shut down the pool through winter? If so you might not see a spike from the heaters (more of a lack of drop off)

2) How well insulated is the building/room you have the tank in? I would think keeping it warm wouldn't be that expensive if it is well insulated.

3) If you are going cold this winter, try a school of blue gill. They actually look pretty good when taken care of. They also have more personality than some might expect and once comfortable are not afraid to be around people. Plus, you can still test the heating since they will tolerate 80 degrees like it was nothing.

4)That tank and setup looks awesome.

 

[doviiman]

With a tank that large you can do a great monster cichlid setup, a few red devils, green and red terrors, JD, oscar's, Jags black belts, Buttikofri , maybe a dovii and umbee and then add about 8 blk bar silver door to mix up the confusion with there constant back and forward swimming and there you have it, a full color spectrum of fish, they will eats pellets and are pretty hardy when it comes to tempatures and won't out grow the tank but grow just large enough to look great in the tank. Besides the cooler the water get's the less aggression you will have if any with a tank that size. There is plenty of space for every fish to have his own space.

 

[aldiaz33]

The room the tank is in is separate from the rest of your house right? Why don't you just insulate the room very well and keep it at a constant temp with a space heater or two, I believe you said that you could easily run a gas line into there, so a small heater might be the way to go. My ex's sister did this when she was breeding reptiles and it was much cheaper than heating all their tanks individually through Wisconsin winters.

i love how your sump is bigger then my tank lol. looks great.
in my opinion, id just insulate the room..or even just wrap the tank with 3 sides of insulation, and run a couple space heaters when you notice a drop in temp every once in a while. a body of water that large, with that thick acrylic would surely hold heat in for some time at least.

Yup, the room is separate from the house. I will eventually run a gas line to the room and get a wall heater unit, but I've put myself on a spending freeze for the time being. According to a utility company representative, heating via gas would be 1/4 the cost of using electricity. I considered using electric space heaters in the meantime, but the models I have looked at draw upwards of 1,500W, so I might as well just heat the water directly at that wattage. I've heard conflicting information on this, but I tend to think that using 1,500 watts to heat the water directly would be more efficient than using 1,500W to heat the air enough to get to my desired water temps.

The good news is that the room is well insulated and the tank does not appear to lose very much heat overnight...

I conducted a little experiment: Last night I left all 3 windows open to see how much the water temps would drop. I was surprised to see that the room temp stayed at 70F (even though outside air temps fell down to a low of 58F). I believe that having such a huge body of water at 85F kept the room at 70 (even with all the windows wide open). In any case, the good news is that the water temps fell by only 2.8 degrees, from 85.5F to 82.7F. Tonight I will keep all windows closed and see how much heat loss I find in the morning.

Goodness! The walls of your tank are as clear as Scarlet Johansson's cleavage in a spaghetti strap top! Absolutely brilliant man!

lol- Virgin acrylic is a beatiful thing.

Just a few thoughts

1) do you shut down the pool through winter? If so you might not see a spike from the heaters (more of a lack of drop off) - Excellent point. I wouldn't entirely shut the pool down, but I probably will not have to run it as often as I do now. I have heard that once the water gets down below 55, I don't need to worry as much about killing bacteria, so I won't need to run my salt water chlorine generator. I'm new to pools (first time maintaining one) so I'm still learning. I may very well be trading one energy hog for another, but they won't be piggin out during the same season. =)

2) How well insulated is the building/room you have the tank in? I would think keeping it warm wouldn't be that expensive if it is well insulated. It has R13 (I think) insulation on all the walls, but none on the ceiling.

3) If you are going cold this winter, try a school of blue gill. They actually look pretty good when taken care of. They also have more personality than some might expect and once comfortable are not afraid to be around people. Plus, you can still test the heating since they will tolerate 80 degrees like it was nothing. I hear you. When I was 10 years old I kept blue gill, Green Sunfish, LMB and a bullhead cat. Awesome tank, until the LMB started outgrowing everything and my sunfish started to mysteriously disappear.

4)That tank and setup looks awesome.

Thanks!

With a tank that large you can do a great monster cichlid setup, a few red devils, green and red terrors, JD, oscar's, Jags black belts, Buttikofri , maybe a dovii and umbee and then add about 8 blk bar silver door to mix up the confusion with there constant back and forward swimming and there you have it, a full color spectrum of fish, they will eats pellets and are pretty hardy when it comes to tempatures and won't out grow the tank but grow just large enough to look great in the tank. Besides the cooler the water get's the less aggression you will have if any with a tank that size. There is plenty of space for every fish to have his own space.

I've never attempted a cichlid community. I've only ever done one or two cichlids with a bunch of dithers. My fear would be having to try to net out some poor little guy that was getting his butt whooped by some of the brutes you mention, but I like that stock list.

 

[doviiman]

Yup, the room is separate from the house. I will eventually run a gas line to the room and get a wall heater unit, but I've put myself on a spending freeze for the time being. According to a utility company representative, heating via gas would be 1/4 the cost of using electricity. I considered using electric space heaters in the meantime, but the models I have looked at draw upwards of 1,500W, so I might as well just heat the water directly at that wattage. I've heard conflicting information on this, but I tend to think that using 1,500 watts to heat the water directly would be more efficient than using 1,500W to heat the air enough to get to my desired water temps.

The good news is that the room is well insulated and the tank does not appear to lose very much heat overnight...

I conducted a little experiment: Last night I left all 3 windows open to see how much the water temps would drop. I was surprised to see that the room temp stayed at 70F (even though outside air temps fell down to a low of 58F). I believe that having such a huge body of water at 85F kept the room at 70 (even with all the windows wide open). In any case, the good news is that the water temps fell by only 2.8 degrees, from 85.5F to 82.7F. Tonight I will keep all windows closed and see how much heat loss I find in the morning.



lol- Virgin acrylic is a beatiful thing.


Thanks!



I've never attempted a cichlid community. I've only ever done one or two cichlids with a bunch of dithers. My fear would be having to try to net out some poor little guy that was getting his butt whooped by some of the brutes you mention, but I like that stock list.

I have done it numerous times with only a 300 gallon and it worked out fine. First thing you will find is that when the fish are raised together they tend to do well together in the long run. Yes there migvht be a dominate one at some point but what i find funny with cichlids is that it varies. meaning I have had 12 butti, that was a beast, but 9in dovii would give it a challenge and the butti seemed scared, but yet the butti would run the red devil, but same red devill would get after the dovii, so they kind of police themself, it was like someone had a dominate member in the tank they would not mes with. Plus that made is a blast to watch. I say go for it, you have the perfect tank for iit. no sense in having a monster tank at least have fish with monster attitude. Maybe even throw a nice flower horn in there as well. The only draw back to doing cichlids as with other monster (but cichlids mostly) is that if for some reason some of the first group die for what ever reason, its hard to introduce new fish to the community, but that can be the case with any type fish. That's the reason i had to sell my Indo dat, blk arro,and large bass before I set up the new tank, they were nasty to new members.

 

[kendragon]

What are you feeding them? Will they do ok on a pellet only diet? I don't mind feeding some market shrimp from time to time, but I definitely want to stay away from anything that requires live food.

All my mahseers are on pellets only.

 

[aldiaz33]

@Kendragon: cold water tolerant and they eat pellets...they sound perfect, until I pulled up all these youtube videos of 30lbs+ fish...they get too huge for my little tank! I think if I were going to get a coldwater fish that got that big, I might as well get an awesome looking koi.

I hate to disappoint (actually, I find it hilarious how bad some of you want me to keep tropicals) but I picked up 6 large pond comets from a very nice lady that is trying to thin out the stock in her pond. She had about 40 comets ranging from 4" to 10" and about 8 Koi from 16" to 30".

They look really healthy from the top, but some of them have cloudy eyes. For those of you that are not completly disgusted, I'll get some pix of them in the tank tonight when there's not so much glare.

Bring on the flames...=)

~5-6"

The big orange and white one is about 10"

 

[Egon]

LOL This is your dream............. At least you don't have cats

 

[aldiaz33]

Monster (gold)Fish Keeper!