240g In-wall Home Office Build

[scuba steve]

Since I bought my house I've always wanted to add a reef tank to my home office, I just wasn't quite sure where I wanted to try to fit it in. A couple years ago I was walking around my house and I started thinking about the interior structure and how the room lined up with each other. There are a couple walls in the living room, under the landing to the master bedroom that I just couldn't figure out how it lined up with the rest of the house. While doing some other home improvements I decided to punch a hole in the wall and see just what exactly was there since I had the materials on hand to patch it up after. What do you know, there was a roughly 11'x10' void right across from my desk! I immediately knew I had found my space.

 

[scuba steve]

Where I would place the aquarium was directly above the laundry closet and above and adjacent to the unfinished portion of my basement, which already housed my water mixing station, quarantine and frag tank. My house is on a pretty steep incline, there's a couple houses with the same floor plan as my house in my neighborhood, but they're on flat ground. I've noticed that they're not set up quite the same though. I think that since my house has such a vertical difference between the basement level and the main level that they kind of stretched out a couple of spaces to make things line up better. As a result, this void in the house was created. It's not quite tall enough to make a full room out of. My shorter friends have no issue, but I can only stand up between the floor joists.

 

[scuba steve]

The tank I decided to go with is a Planet Aquariums 240 Reef Ready. 72x30x25. Centered external overflow, starfire front panel, black background. I felt that the stand really spread the weight out over the floor joists but I decided to add a beam and some jack stand supports into the laundry closet to be safe. I played around with the idea of having the sump and equipment in the same room but ultimately decided to drop pipes into the unfinished portion of the basement and house everything there.

 

[drnecropolis]

Bonus points for Molly!

 

[Rickdareefa]

This is a really cool idea! I cant wait to see the finished product

 

[DiefsReef]

Wow cant believe the void you had there. What a great place for a tank. Cant wait to see it running.

 

[scuba steve]

Next step was to place the filtration and connect the plumbing. I'm not normally a big fan of the colored pipe but I stumbled across a great deal and thought why not give it a shot. Laying under the tank to complete the plumbing put me right in the range of my girl Molly and she was so excited to get in and give me a hand with everything at her level

 

[scuba steve]

The new aquarium room is directly over the unfinished section of my basement and I was able to run the pipes down through the wall and straight into the basement. I was also able to tie a line into one of the 3" drain pipes in the house. This let me plumb a connection for my python to siphon directly down the drain. I also tied in the waste line of the dehumidifier I added to the room. At some point I'll probably add in a Neptune DOS for automatic water changes as well.View attachment 46295

 

[scuba steve]

At the same time I was "finishing" off the space. Since this was really just a room to access the back of the aquarium I don't have any plans to fully finish it off. Since the filtration is all plumbed to the basement I'm not too worried about floods up here, just dripping during maintenance but I did want to put some decent flooring in for water resistance and wear. At some point in the future I will add shelving for aquarium gear storage but that's not a priority at the moment. I did have to reroute some plumbing and electrical in the space as well so I wanted to cover that up. I added a tee and a valve in case at some point that I decide to add a utility sink back here but since I'm right next to the kitchen I probably won't, always nice to have options though!

 

[scuba steve]

I have a RO freshwater and saltwater mixing station on the other side of the room for my quarantine system, which I use Instant Ocean on. I decided to use an extra vat I had laying around and make one dedicated to the reef tank where I'm using IO Reef Crystals.

 

[scottw]

Looking good!!

 

[scuba steve]

For the filtration I went with a Bashsea Signature Series 48" sump. I decided to elevate it fairly high so that working and siphoning everything in it is a breeze. This also gave me plenty of space to mount the Apex components below with plenty of easy access to wiring and dosing etc. I turned it lengthwise into the basement which gives me easy access all the way around and also took up less wall space. It also gave me some space to mount things in between the floor joists to run direct back to the tank with fewer turns in piping.

 

[scuba steve]

I finished getting the tank plumbed up and placed the Vortechs and battery backups.

 

[scuba steve]

Alright, now that everything is plumbed up and able to run it was time to add sand, rock and water! I always try to create a variety of living spaces in my aquascaping. I wanted to have a large arch incorporated into the tank, as well as numerous other caves, swim-throughs and other structures.

 

[DiefsReef]

you've been busy, looks fantastic!

 

[Trizzino]

Great job! Love the rockscape.

 

[scuba steve]

Tank was now filled and cycling. I had a few hundred pounds of LifeRock and was doing a fish-less cycle. Gave me some time to get to work on finishing off around the tank.
I painted the walls an appropriate "Shark Fin Grey" added a cedar frame coated with Linseed Oil and put up some panels in the back room.

 

[york1]

Looks great

 

[Gabridge83]

Looks fantastic!!

 

[Steve Burton]

That looks great, and you are on a lightning pace! Can't believe how much you've gotten done, great work.!