planning to build a 4,000 gallon pondarium..need advices.

[giar]

im planing to make an outdoor pondarium on my backyard. the pond dimension would be 5m long x 3m wide x 1m tall, it is approximately 3,960 gallon. right left and back side will be built by concrete wall, the front side will be a glass. for filtration im goin for a huge sump.

there are many things that i gotta research more, but to get it started, if i may ask

1- how thick the front glass need to be?
2- how do i filter a huge tank? im hoping to get at least 10x turnover rate. it is goin to be 40,000 gph. how do i achieve this?
3- how many filter intake(s) i need to have?.
4- how big the uv sterilizer i need to have?. it wont be pleasant to have a huge pond with green water.

for the filtration flow, i am thinking something like this
- mechanical -> biological -> plants to absorb nitrate -> pond -> and repeat.

for the auto drip it is going to be something like this..
- well water -> container with some filter floss + aeration + some crushed corals -> uv sterilizer -> pond -> overflow ( U tube over flow, one side inside the pond, another at the outside of the pond, with the height of 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% Water level, incase i need to do water change or drain the pond) -> sink.. since it is an outdoor pondarium.

i need advices since everything is still all over the place, i need to get my **** together... but at least this will get me started..thanks!!

the pondarium i am planing to make is something like this.

 

[giar]

this is still the planning step. i need to know how it is going to work in detail, then i can calculate how much this is going to cost me. so i need advices from the pros so i dont mess it up.. thanks in advance.

 

[giar]

the stock will be everything in my current 285 gal.
- 1x 40cm super red aro
- 2x oscar 25cm
- 3x peacock bass 20-25cm
- 1x albino clown knife fish 20cm
- 3x motoro rays 15-20cm

in the future, im planing to get some more arowanas, stingrays and maybe some other fishes, but it is still undecided.

 

[Drstrangelove]

The math says that the glass will need to be around 27mm thick, but if you don't brace it along the front, I would make it thicker. (The math normally assumes some sort of bracing.)

How much thicker? I don't know. But I'd rather do some type of bracing along a front that long, like reinforced steel posts for example, on the outside of the glass, set in the concrete, perhaps every meter. It might not have to be too wide or thick, but I have no doubt that it will be much cheaper to brace the glass at strategic places than to make it so thick it doesn't need bracing.

Internal bracing would work, but that isn't the picture you displayed.

Anyway, that's how I see it. An engineer or someone who has built something like what you indicated would be a good source.


A traditional WC will not work on that size, afaik, unless you have a commercial size water heater so, without that, a WC of even 50%-75% isn't likely ever going to be an option.

Home water heaters don't hold enough hot water or convert it fast enough for amounts like 3,000 gallons (75% WC) or such. In effect, you'll be mostly left swapping 56 F water with 86 F tank water, and seeing if your fish can handle the shock of a roughly 20 degree temperature drop in 30-45 minutes.

Also keep in mind that heating that much water will be an enormous task, so unless you have that option, you will be left with medicating 4,000 gallons (extremely expensive) or using salt for something as simple as ich. Make sure all your fish are salt tolerant.

Needless to say chilling the tank will be even more challenging if the tank is outdoors.