Setting up a new fish room and finally gonna have a bunch of space to work with. One priority is the luxury of being able to build a couple really big grow out tanks. My thought was, just how deep does it make sense to build to?

I have a fairly simple means of getting fish up off of the bottom to remove them, and I've got a pretty high ceiling so I could reasonable go as high/deep as 6 or 7 feet and still be able to reasonably service the tanks and access the fish. The issue is will my domesticated angel lines even know what to do with all of that water. Might sound stupid but I've seen some monster tanks that were loaded with small angels for growing out and they never seemed to leave the top foot or two of the water column. Is there any chance that fish that have spent generations in nothing deeper than 2' have adapted to shallow water only? For that matter, I'm not even sure what the scalare's natural habitat preference is or if it's even still relevant.

As an example I can build a 1,200 gallon tank for about a buck a gallon, including filtration, and adding to the height is actually cheaper per gallon than adding to the surface area. Again though, other than increasing the potential carrying capacity of the water am I going to just be adding useless depth? Any experience or insite would be greatly appreciated.

I don't keep angels, so I honestly don't know how they would act. I have some Pacu that are on their third pond now. They went from a 150g livestock tub, to a 300g livestock tub to a 850g pond.

Every time I've moved them, they've acted weird and didn't know what to do with the added depth for about the first month or so. Then all of a sudden they'll just figure it out and be all over the place.

Obviously pacu and angels are *NOTHING* alike, so that may be useless for you.

What kind of tank are you building? Buck a gallon with filtration seems fairly cheap if your gonna use glass.

Nah, no such luck. These are more like stock tanks. The building is dry stacked CMU's that are filled with self consolidating concrete and vertical rebar every 4'. That ties into the slab and footing as well as a bond beam around the top. Then everything gets a waterproofing coat of fiber reinforced Surface Bonding Concrete (SBC) on both sides. Topped with a fish safe coating it all works out pretty cheap. Since I convinced the county to certify the methodology now I plan on using it where ever I can, including the stock tanks. The tank would actually be an insulated slab tied into 6" block that gets filled and coated.

I buy recycled Iso board insulation by the truck load for other building projects so it's pretty cheap, ($10/4'x8'x3" R-24). The home centers aren't doing squat for business and they both have national accounts with local block plants. They also guarantee to beat each others best price so I include the tank block with the rest of the building order and end up paying less than $1 a block for 8"x8"x16" CMU's, and the 6" are a little cheaper still. The SBC is $17 a bag off of the shelf but I buy pallets so again, by the time Lowes, Home Depot and 84 Lumber finish slitting each others throats I end up paying about $12 per bag, which covers 50 sq. ft. A 5'4"x10'8"x4'h. tank requires (30) block per course X (6) courses = (180) x $.80 ea. = $144. It'll take (5) bags to coat both sides with 1/8" of the SBC so that's another $60. The base slab is sitting on another slab separated by insulation, so it need not be structural beyond tying the walls together so 3" should work but I'll use 6" in this example; 46 sq. ft. 6" thick means the slab will require 23 cu. ft. of concrete (a little over 80% of a single cubic yard). Again ordering with part of another load 6,000 psi self consolidating ready-mix costs me about $90 a cubic yard. The rubberized or acrylic coatings available run about $50 a gallon and this would require about (3) gallons so there's another $150. (10) pcs. 1/2"x 20' rebar, about $90. Another yard of concrete or grout for filling the reinforcement cells and we're close to $700 including tax.

For a 1200 gallon tank that would leave about $500 to buy a pump and build a sump while still coming in at about $1 per gallon. The economy of scale that you realize by building bigger and bigger tanks is pretty significant as well. Once the slab is complete I can go higher without having to add anything to that part of the cost. That would include the cost of coating the floor as well as filtration and pumping so more gallons actually starts to get a lot cheaper as you go.

To build this same vessel out doors would require either a structural slab (maybe 12" thick with a dbl. mat of 5/8"-3/4" rebar tied 12" on center both ways & 5,000psi concrete or better), or a structure where the slab sat on 6" of pea gravel and the walls were built on frost proof footings. Of course if you stuck it in the ground you're able to utilize the earth as a form and you might just as well use a pond liner or shot-crete.

For side viewing ports or a window to be added is pretty simply. A silicone gasket and some means of pre-pressurizing the compression of the gasket before adding the water would allow an acrylic window to be applied with little chance of leakage. I haven't checked the material capabilities as yet but a 4'x8' sheet of 1" thick commie Chinese acrylic is $500, 1 1/4" is about double the price. Since my tanks are more utilitarian than for public viewing, any inspection windows would likely be set as small ports where the thinner material could be utilized. Maybe as small as 12" x 12" at the bottom and possibly 2'x4' closer to the top. Glass would also be an option for that purpose, but as I said, I'm just looking at being able to provide the highest volume of quality water at the best price. A more public friendly version would doubtless double the cost, but that would still be reasonably cheap compared to the available alternatives. Pacu's are undoubtedly easier to view from overhead than angels, but it still isn't really the same.

A local store that does salt water fish rescues has a shark pool that gave me some ideas about a moat and how to keep dog walkers from utilizing my rose bushes. Maybe a few Tigers or a Hammerhead on sentry duty...

For filtration I'd install regular swimming pool components and adapt their intakes and returns for a fish friendlier capacity. A main drain in the bottom with the slab finished to slope toward the drain, a skimmer in the wall and directional jets at different depths and locations to maintain good circulation. D.E. filters can filter down to just a couple of microns, like the Vortex type used in aquariums. Sand filters are good to about 20-50 microns and the big cartridge filters are good to about 50-100. A plastic or block sump could be added cheap, a DIY fluidized bed sand filter and or a DIY ozone generator. I can get food grade 55 gallon plastic drums for about $30 a piece and use them for filters on most of our ponds with great results (filled with floor scrubber pads and chopped up washable furnace filters). Filtration is obviously more to taste but you can do a lot with $5-600 and a little imagination.

The building's heat is radiant H/W in the slab so the same is being run through thinner slabs under the glass and block tanks for heat (different circuit and controls but same heat inputs). If I want to go real deep I just use thicker block and a little more concrete to fill the cells, and of course more rebar, but the continuous reinforced bond beam around the top adds ridiculous strength.

Since the structure is purpose built by me I can do pretty much what I want. I've also been toying with the idea of dropping coated and insulated tanks into the slab for my sumps to save floor space, and then just covering them with some deck plate.

The stock tanks will run continuously down one wall and probably be 4' across on the interior. At 4' height every linear foot of tank yields 120 gallons, 10' long is 1200 gallons, etc. If I can use a 6' water column then the floor space will give me 50% more capacity; 180 gallons per foot, 1800/10' and so on.

Now all I have to do is finish building it all. Lookin' like a long hot summer.

We're supposed to video the process for the suppliers so there'll be some pics as things move along.

Alternative construction methods and government involvement create a project momentum akin to herding turtles, so I'll probably be spending a lot of evenings self medicating with homebrew to keep from killin' them.

Here is a site that may help in a project like this. Used a very different construction methods in building my fish houses but your design most surely as its merits

Rick

Rick thanks a million. Spoke with several of their aquaculturists down there today and they are tremendous. Gave me some great insights and ideas and might possibly have kept me from wasting a lot of dough on the wrong ozone system.

Now about those miniature poodles in the vids that you taught to swim (where's their air line)...I was kind of vacillating between amazement and horror, till I showed my wife and she admitted to being a fish molester as well. Apparently she likes to pet some of our older plecos.

That was really cool. We keep a bunch of goldies too, mainly da wife, but none of ours do tricks. Have some barking loaches and koi that love to give pedicures though.

I'll second that thanks. That's a pretty big collection of hard to come by stuff all in one spot.

I use a minimum of a 40g tall tank so 24+" of depth for my angels and discus grow out tanks.

Ive seen em in shallow and deep water environments and the deeper the water the better fin growth in pec,ventrals and dorsal.
Ive got some 4 week old angel fry now that are over 4" from pec fin tip to dorsal fin tip.