This is my first post here, im not really into monster fish but monster tanks i love
.
I got addicted to african cichlids a few years ago and now own 3 fairly large tanks (5ft x 20in x 20in, 4ft x 2ft x 2ft and my pride and joy 5ft x 2ft x 2ft). These tanks are housed
outside in a wooden shed that i built on a 8in thick concrete slab (11ft x 7ft) a few years ago.
This summer i plan to take down the tanks remove the shed and build something bigger out of concrete blocks to keep my fish (and tools and things) in. Inside this new shed there will be an elevated (by about 4 in) level slab of concrete, the guy thats going to build the new block shed for me gave me an idea, he said "why dont you build a 2 foot high wall on the slab, seal it with something fish safe, and keep ALL your fish in there, like a small indoor pond",
now why didnt i think of that !!
The thoughts of a top down view of my fish doesnt really appeal to me, but then i got thinking, what if i could fit a window onto the front wall ? Speaking to my brother-in-law
about it, he suggested that i should take apart the 4 foot tank and he would weld me a frame for the 2 sheets of 4 x 2 (3/4 inch thick) glass out of angle iron, imagine a figure
eight laid sideways, he said, so i imagined it and i liked what i seen.
While googling for ideas and inspiration, i came across this site ...http://www.koicarp.org.uk/koi_pond1.htm , here they have built a 12 x 6 x 3 1/2 foot high pond which stands 3 feet above ground, and they havent used rebar for reinforcement, i was amazed by how easy this looked, most other sites i came across were using metal rebar and backfilling with concrete which looked like very hard work and more importantly very expensive.
What i was thinking was to build the walls on the slab using breeze (or cinder) blocks with an inside dimension of 8 ft x (roughly)4 ft and about 2 1/2 ft high, also i would build
the wall with the blocks face down not on the sides like the site above shows, this would give a wall thickness of 8 or 9 inch depending on the blocks used, would this be
strong enough to hold the volume of water do you all think ?
As for the glass, im thinking it would be held in place by 2 inch angle iron which will be predrilled to allow me to rawl-bolt the frame onto the concrete wall when built, the
reason for 2 inch angle iron is to allow room for the glass to be silliconed in place inside the frame and still have enough room for the bolts to go through the metal and into
the concrete wall.
Imagine H is the wall, L is the metal frame and - is the glass HL-----------
If not heres a pic (from the above site, hope they dont mind) that i opened in mspaint and doodled on to try to show what i mean...
,
the red bits show where the bolts would hold the window frame in place.
The water at its highest point would be 2 feet, this is pretty shallow, but it is more than enough height for the fish i keep, which are mostly tanganyikan rock dwelling species.
Tanganyikans are smallish fish but they defend big territories when spawning, a tank of 8 x 4 would be big enough for them all to claim their own territories.
My biggest concern was the walls, which i thought i would have to reinforce with rebar (too costly), but the above photo shows a much bigger and higher pond with no reinforcement, and its holding water no problems. One more thing, looks arent important in this project, the only people who will see this tank will be me, and a few friends who will help me to build it (1's a welder/fabricator and another is a bricklayer), the only thing that matters is that it doesnt leak and i can see the fish.
So what do you all think ? Could this idea work ? Anyone done anything like this before ?
Sorry about the looooong post but i want to get this right first time, so any ideas or suggestions please post here.
Thanks for listening : )
. I got addicted to african cichlids a few years ago and now own 3 fairly large tanks (5ft x 20in x 20in, 4ft x 2ft x 2ft and my pride and joy 5ft x 2ft x 2ft). These tanks are housed
outside in a wooden shed that i built on a 8in thick concrete slab (11ft x 7ft) a few years ago.
This summer i plan to take down the tanks remove the shed and build something bigger out of concrete blocks to keep my fish (and tools and things) in. Inside this new shed there will be an elevated (by about 4 in) level slab of concrete, the guy thats going to build the new block shed for me gave me an idea, he said "why dont you build a 2 foot high wall on the slab, seal it with something fish safe, and keep ALL your fish in there, like a small indoor pond",
now why didnt i think of that !!The thoughts of a top down view of my fish doesnt really appeal to me, but then i got thinking, what if i could fit a window onto the front wall ? Speaking to my brother-in-law
about it, he suggested that i should take apart the 4 foot tank and he would weld me a frame for the 2 sheets of 4 x 2 (3/4 inch thick) glass out of angle iron, imagine a figure
eight laid sideways, he said, so i imagined it and i liked what i seen.
While googling for ideas and inspiration, i came across this site ...http://www.koicarp.org.uk/koi_pond1.htm , here they have built a 12 x 6 x 3 1/2 foot high pond which stands 3 feet above ground, and they havent used rebar for reinforcement, i was amazed by how easy this looked, most other sites i came across were using metal rebar and backfilling with concrete which looked like very hard work and more importantly very expensive.
What i was thinking was to build the walls on the slab using breeze (or cinder) blocks with an inside dimension of 8 ft x (roughly)4 ft and about 2 1/2 ft high, also i would build
the wall with the blocks face down not on the sides like the site above shows, this would give a wall thickness of 8 or 9 inch depending on the blocks used, would this be
strong enough to hold the volume of water do you all think ?
As for the glass, im thinking it would be held in place by 2 inch angle iron which will be predrilled to allow me to rawl-bolt the frame onto the concrete wall when built, the
reason for 2 inch angle iron is to allow room for the glass to be silliconed in place inside the frame and still have enough room for the bolts to go through the metal and into
the concrete wall.
Imagine H is the wall, L is the metal frame and - is the glass HL-----------
If not heres a pic (from the above site, hope they dont mind) that i opened in mspaint and doodled on to try to show what i mean...
the red bits show where the bolts would hold the window frame in place.
The water at its highest point would be 2 feet, this is pretty shallow, but it is more than enough height for the fish i keep, which are mostly tanganyikan rock dwelling species.
Tanganyikans are smallish fish but they defend big territories when spawning, a tank of 8 x 4 would be big enough for them all to claim their own territories.
My biggest concern was the walls, which i thought i would have to reinforce with rebar (too costly), but the above photo shows a much bigger and higher pond with no reinforcement, and its holding water no problems. One more thing, looks arent important in this project, the only people who will see this tank will be me, and a few friends who will help me to build it (1's a welder/fabricator and another is a bricklayer), the only thing that matters is that it doesnt leak and i can see the fish.
So what do you all think ? Could this idea work ? Anyone done anything like this before ?
Sorry about the looooong post but i want to get this right first time, so any ideas or suggestions please post here.
Thanks for listening : )
