A tall tank?

[red devil]

I have a short chest of drawers stuck between 2 tall wardrobes. I want to put a tank on top of the chest, between the wardrobes because I think it will give it the tank the appearance of being a window into a cave. The tank will be 32" wide, 32" tall and about 20 " deep - about 74 gallons.

I checked two tables online to see how thick the glass should be. One suggested 16mm and the other site suggested 12. Which one do I use? There was no note about quality of glass on either.

I was originally going to put a red devil in it but am thinking that I would really like to try to make a heavily planted tank and my experience with red devils says that you don't put anything in the tank that weighs less than 20 pounds, unless you want them to move it around. It also seems to be that red devils like long tanks than tall tanks, to give them room to swim. (Has anyone else got this impression?) It is really an ideal place for a tank because there is only indirect sunlight in the room, and at that not even very much - it is very easy to control the amount of light. One of the reasons for putting the tank in this room is to have a unique source of lighting. How do the lighting requirements change for a tall tank? I will probably start with simple plants but some of the plants I ultimately want to put in there require a lot of light (sorry, forgot the names).

I will think about what to stock it with over the next week.

[rwilliams254]

That's a TALL tank. Hope you don't want it planted. :)

When in doubt, over-engineer. Go thicker.

Are you having it built or are you going to buy it?

[bacalao]

This is JMO, but you might want to build a cardboard mock-up first and try out what it's going to be like to do routine maintenance on a tank that high. I love the look of tall tanks, but my 24" high ones are the limit for me in terms of comfortable arm reach.

And I would absolutely go with the thicker glass.

[mellowvision]

yeah, even my 15 gallon tall is a pain to get my arm to the bottom.

[red devil]

Good suggestions! Is it really going to be difficult to plant such a tall tank? Because of the difficulty of getting light to the bottom?

[mellowvision]

you should think of it more like a low light tank, unless you have crazy lights.

[Rbishop]

I would not recommend a tank that holds almost 600 lbs of water, plus tank weight and decor on a piece of furniture not designed for it....

[loaches r cool]

I'd say 12mm should be plenty. 1/2" glass is used on several hundred gallon tanks, and that is 12.7mm. My 150 tall tank (31") is 1/2" and its double the gallonage of yours.

[red devil]

Thanks! When I was doing the calculations for the amount of water I miscalculated the weight of the tank! Thanks for bringing it to my attention. ...back to the drawing board.

[Rbishop]

Keep us informed of the build!

[brett_93_ex]

Just go 12 deep instead of 20. Maybe 28 tall then add canopy lighting with a HQI lighting setup. Should give plenty of light for planting.