Ideas on what to do with this large acrylic tank??

[Fitz19d]

Friend of mine from work got this from a house he bought and was left behind.Owed me a favor of sorts so I said why not. It's a 48x18x30 110?gallon acrlyic tank. Peninsula? style with the overflow at one end and 2 holes drilled.

It is kinda rough, I havn't looked closely for scratches, but it certainly has a ton of ancient coraline on it and dusty and debris from storage for what looks like a year or two probably.

I was looking at other ideas or which of the options I did think of otherwise. (To support my 300g build)

1: Sell it, I never messed with acrylic so I don't know what kind of price? I need to clean it up but don't think I'm keen on buffing it if needed myself, so certainly at a big discount.

2: Keep water volume below overflow and use it as a big QT tank?

3: Get an extra pump in sump, and run this as a remote fuge? Use the overflow already in it to return to main 125g sump? Then can just turn off pump to seperate it for QT? Other reasons to maybe use it is I'm starting to research trying to keep live food culture if I do attempt a cuttlefish tank.

4: ???

 

[CRW Reef]

I vote #3

 

[Fitz19d]

Here's the pic. Back side seems to be scratch free, was probably the back.

 

[Fitz19d]

The only concern with #3 is just that much extra water to heat and making my water changes larger. (And if it's recirculating off the sump, I'd wonder if it would mess up distributing heated water to the main tank at all.)

If I took it offline from system for QT. Would have to get draind and cleaned before reconnecting if I used meds, or it would have to stay separate. So for QT purposes if I get a decent sized fish, I imagine a 40b or something better?

Think it could be workable as just some kind of brine shrimp/big amphipod/isopod/mysis hatchery? I havn't researched it yet, kinda recall you gotta dump the water constantly though? Ergo more of a small tank or even buckets operation?

 

[MuralReef]

Go with option 3. Yes it increases your volume to heat but if you're running with macros and live rock it will also help with nutrient export.
I wouldn't go with it as a temp QT and back to fuge since there would be no guarantee you got all the meds out and you could nuke your tank.
I don't know that I would worry too much about increasing the size of your water changes unless you add a lot of livestock to it. You could also look at running a DSB to help with nutrients too.

 

[Fitz19d]

I personally hate DSB. The tank is up in the air between if i can make cuttles work, be a big angry fowlr or just a heavy stocked reef. Was for the 125g sump already planning maybe 2 of the big 8x8x4 marine pure blocks. Then probably a rubble chamber or houses for promoting pods. More the merrier in the 110 I suppose. Unsure how well macro will work since I planned on doing a Algae Turf Scrubber. Being such a huge system I am buying into what others have said and probably shift a little more into nutrient control and dosing rather than trying to be doing 25% water changes biweekly.

 

[Dr.DiSilicate]

I do 10 gallon water changes every other week in my 175 with another 100 gallons in the sump. With the turf scrubber or remote fuge you'll just need to replenish some nutrients and not control phosphates and such. Get a really good skimmer or two smaller ones. Remote display fuge could be a cool idea. Or maybe a cryptic fuge. Mike and Cindy ran both with the 300 DD they had. Worked wonders.

 

[Fitz19d]

I think this tank is too ugly/scratched to make much of a display in the house. Though If I actually have enough nutrients for macros who knows maybe it will be a time out refugium for a bunch of macro, fish, killer crabs, etc I can enjoy while doing stuff in the basement fish room.

 

[SynDen]

I say Large planted or cryptic fuge

 

[Fitz19d]

As far as crpytic. That might be easy. But might be almost over large? Paint the thing black or leave it since not that much light in basement. But having a hard time imagining that much of the microfauna in the low flow actually making it over flow and into the standpipes of the thing back to the sump?

Actually rethinking DSB. Never do it for display, but I suppose a seperate tank doing refugium or cryptek with a very deep sand bed. I can also offline it if I ever needed to mess with anything without stirring up stuff.


I'd imagine it would still be best to run a pump from sump to it and overflow back. Trying to plumb it into the herbie I think would cause more complications. (including just on placement.)

 

[tomtom2245]

DSB with a fuge is my vote. With the amount of macro you could get in there, I think it would offset the increase in water change volume with the amount of nutrient export it would be taking up. Plus I'm a big fan of having a fuge. It's the one thing I hate about my current setup right now is not having a nice fuge.

 

[jda123]

I don't have any opinions about what to do with it, but fill it with water to see how bad it looks before you make up your mind. Acrylic tanks can look awful when dry, but scratches a lot better with water in the tank. They aren't hard to buff, but it might not be worth it.