About a month ago I moved from Pullman, Washington all the way across the country to Durham, North Carolina for Grad school. Considering the average time to get a PhD in my field is ~6 years, my fiance and I bought our first house. As if this wasn't enough already I decided it would be a good idea to upgrade to the six foot tank I've always wanted, especially since the house we ended up with had a perfect location for a "fish closet".
I initially planned on upgrading to a standard 180 gallon, but due to the planned location of the tank I wanted to have an internal overflow and 24" wide did not seem large enough when ~6" of it would be taken up by an overflow box. I looked for a long time at the Marineland Deep Dimension 300, but decided that 36" front to back would overpower the room and make maintenance a real problem. After shopping around at a few of the custom tank manufacturers I decided to splurge and go with a Miracles in Glass tank from Canada. Derek was amazing to work with and I got exactly what I wanted: 72" long x 30" wide x 24" tall with three sides Starfire glass and an internal 30"x6" overflow drilled for three 1.5" bulkheads for a BeanAnimal style overflow!
Quick Specs:
Light: 360 watts of DIY LED goodness
Flow: 2x Vortech MP40w, 2x Koralia Evo 1050 (I'm already thinking I should have gone with a pair of tunze streams for more directional flow)
Skimmer: MSX250A
Misc:
2x ViaAqua 300w Titanium heaters
ReeFlo Dart Return pump
Neptune APEX controller
20 gallon frag tank
38 gallon dedicated QT tank
Water change station
Portable Air Conditioner
Here are some links for any who are interested in my past experiences:
Original 120 gallon build thread. Almost made it to 40 pages, I wonder if this one will be as active.
DIY LED prototype build. ThOTM nominee and my current plan for lighting of the big system.