Picture from Kenosha News Just when you thought you’re 300-gallon beast of a reef tank was something to be proud of, some dude goes and builds a tank large enough to rival the display reefs of your local public aquarium. A recent Kenosha News story highlights the 20,000-gallon living room reef of Bill Wann, a local entrepreneur who may have never been diving, but has expressed his love for marine life in a very bold way. In terms of size, to say this aquarium is massive is almost an understatement. It measures 24-foot-long, 10-foot-wide and 10-foot-deep. Holding the water back are 12″ thick concrete walls and 2.5″ thick acrylic viewing windows that measue 6 feet by 10 feet. The 20,000 pounds of live rock was sourced from a mine in Montana, with almost a ton of sand coming from the Bahamas. The 20,000 gallon reef tank, which is the largest privately owned residential aquarium in North America according to the news story, was started back in 2006 when Mr. Wann started to build his home. Like most aquarists, he had to design the house with the aquarium in mind, but obviously the planning for this tank had to be a bit more intensive. He literally built the house around the tank, making sure to include a very elaborate and nearly self sufficient filtration system. The entire system is controlled by a computer system that Wann built himself, and it features redundancies and backups in the form of huge backup generators to make sure the aquarium never stops functioning. Below is a video from the news story. It isn’t of the best quality, but it does give some behind the scenes footage of the tank’s filtration system.
0 Comments