Hi, everyone,
Horst E. Kipper and Kaspar Horst (the guys from Dupla) built a big one in Germany many years back. They called it "The Proving Ground". The tank,all 10,000 litres of it was highlighted in their book, "The Optimum Aquarium".
A few years ago, Takashi Amano of Aqua Design Amano set up one just as huge. But his tank, at 9000 litres is actually slightly smaller than the Dupla one. It sits somewhere in Nigata, Japan.
In 1995 or thereabouts, I met a fellow hobbyist through the internet. It was the start of a beautiful friendship. James Lim was a keen planted tank enthusiast then and he went on to publish the English version of the Aqua Journal in collaboration with Takashi Amano. A few years ago, he spoke to me about his dream to build a mammoth planted tank.
Now, somewhere in South-East Asia, the "Mother of all Planted Tanks" is being built. When completed, it will dwarf both the Dupla and ADA tanks. The filter chamber alone is going to be bigger than either of the 2 previous mammoth tanks. At its full capacity, the tank is designed to have a holding capacity of at least 200,000 litres of water. That would be almost 53,000 gallons, if you're an American :smile:
Beyond his dreams, James is now in the process of building what is probably the largest "planted aquarium" in the world. He does not own the aquarium; James' just the creator. Please don't ask me who the owner is as I'm not at liberties to disclose his identity. I can tell you though, he's not your average planted tank hobbyist.
James has kindly given me permission to use the pictures solely for this forum. It's the first time these pictures are made public. James has generously allowed us all to see the whole construction process as it takes place. The pictures will be released in stages 1 to 15. Yup, you read that right. It's going to take that many stages to build the tank. Currently at Stage 8, the glass wall panels aren't even up yet. All the work that has been carried out so far went into the infrastructure housing the huge aquarium.
The pictures are copyright to James Lim so I have to ask you all not to post them on other web sites or forums. By all means, save and keep them on your hard disks if you like them but if you use them any other way, we'll be there to kick ***. We don't like to sue anyone but rest assured we will take some form of action if you use the pictures without our permission. You can't see it but all the pictures have been embedded with digital watermarks. Don't say you weren't warned.
Before actual construction work can begin, a tank like this one calls for a tremendous amount of preparation work. It involves excavating many lorry-loads of earth, driving hundreds of concrete columns and steel piles into the ground to support the structure, laying thousands of steel reinforcement rebars and the pouring of tons of reinforced concreting (R.C) work. Every stage in its construction has to be meticulously planned and designed.
That is just getting started. The best is yet to come.
The Plan.
Tank enclosure Dimensions
Area A : 900cm x 770cm x 300cm = 207,900 litres
Area B : 600cm x 300cm x 300cm = 54,000 litres
Total capacity= 261,900 litres (about 69,000 galls)
Filter chamber : 750cm x 200cm x 150cm = 22,500 litres (about 5900 galls)
Water surface area estimated to be 87 sq m or 940 sq ft
Stage1A - The house under construction
Stage1B - The basement under construction
Stage1C - The house taking shape
Stage2A - The concrete piles
Stage2B - After the piling
Stage2C - Excavating
Somebody call Guinness!!!
In closing, I like to thank Kho aka Shortman for helping me with the digital watermarks. I also like to thank Choy Heng Wah for showing me how to copyright an image properly. And last but not least, I like to thank James Lim for sharing the pictures with us.
Loh K L
Moderator's Note - July 16th 2004:
Due to unexpected turn of events, I've been instructed to removed all the relevant images. Whether all the posts in this thread will be retained, or otherwise, is at Kwek Leong's discretion.
Ronnie Lee
200,000 liters of waterOriginally Posted by timebomb
When I read this, I immediate think about what plants James plan to put in such a big tank ! Most of the plants we are familiar with will look tiny in this humongous tank ! Even Val gigantea and all the giant Echinodorus, Aponogeton will look small in this tank !
Geeze, I have dreamt of stuff like this. Guess dreams
do come true for some lucky people.
Gan, I had the exact thought... where gigantea look like hairgrass and arapaima gigas look like guppies.
Chong, "Happy are those who dream dreams and willing to pay the price to make them come true".
Kwek Leong, such undertakings are not for the faint hearted or anyone less dedicated but then again, there's nothing small with what James touches and if he's reading this... James, way to go man! Best wishes with your project and I'll be looking forward to the 'progress installments'.
Guys... and you thought your weekly water changes was bad...
I'm back & keeping 'em fingers wet,
Ronnie Lee
All I can think about is being able to scubadive prune etc *L*
I am more interested to know how does the CO2 chamber works.
BTW, which country is the tank located. Is it a neighboring country?
Regards,
Ong Poh San
Wow! I am thoroughly impressed!
I hope the final result with plants/fish is eventually shown.
Carlos
Wow, that is absolutely huge. I can't wait to see how he plans to aquascape this monster tank!
-Mark Mendoza
I am actually surprised by the depth. At 300cm (10ft) it is already deeper than most medium-sized streams. Even a river such as Sungei Tahan is around 3ft deep for most parts. I wonder what kind of aquascape is being planned. If you looked at the underwaterscape of the Amazonian system, a lot of the flooded forest areas actually do not have aquatic vegetation. Only in some stretches of open waters when the sun can shine all the way through would you find "meadows" of aquatic plants, and even those are around man-height which means about 6ft deep only.
So the next question would be: how is illumination provided. Is it an open area of the garden when sunlight shines directly? Or perhaps a skylight but then it would not provide enough hours of illumination.
why I don't do garden hybrids and aquarium strains: natural species is a history of Nature, while hybrids are just the whims of Man.
hexazona · crumenatum · Galleria Botanica
that place look like a private housing estate .... if mr loh and other can take picture i guess its should be in singapore .... but its seem to be a private tank ? i mean it wont be showcase like sentose or others right ?
But still a very big thumb up for james. A tank like that will surely be a dream come true for many, just that we dont own the tank
alan aka zai jin
I've snorkeled in lakes where plants were growing fine well deeper than 10ft. It's mostly an issue of water clarity, those lakes were fed from underground springs with crystal clear (and cold!) water. There were many potamogeton and limnophilia species that easilly reached the surface from 10ft down.
Looks like a private tank .. probably own by a rich Indonesian or Chinese tycoon ?
That was the 2nd thing that crossed my mind. At that depth, very little light will reach the bottom and if it is just a flat bottom without terracing, the plants available for scaping will be rather limited :-( I am really curious what type of aquascape James has in mind for this tank.
That tank will be behemoth in size! I hope they hire a professional like
Deuce Bigelow to clean it!
Bill
farang9
I would plant a Sea almond tree in there!
Hey altum, that's the kind of "filthy rich" hobbyist I was referring to when we met elsewhere in cyberspace.
Wow. Mind boggling! That's bigger than 1000 4-6ft tanks. Imagine the amount of lighting needed for this. Probably floodlights and underwater lights. Very curious about the CO2 reactor and fert dosing.
You have to respect the sheer guts needed to embark on something like this. So many issues to get around. Waterchange, de-chlorine/chloramine, dosing, CO2...
On closer look, you can make out the country called "SINGAPORE".
If I were a lfs owner, I would hunt whoever this guy down and offer him a lifelong contract for fish, plts, equipment supplies he can't refuse
Whew this is one huge mother!
Guys, better stock up on plants you need much before this guy starts planting, there's going to be famine for a while once that begins.
I am going to follow this thread clsoely... much to learn here for the novice me.
Thanks to KL and James Lim for the online classes.
Madan Subramanian
Bangalore, India.
Moderators, everytime I edit a post, it shows up as a new post in quotes. Is anything that I'm doing wrong?
Hey Mike,I would plant a Sea almond tree in there!
Hey altum, that's the kind of "filthy rich" hobbyist I was referring to when we met elsewhere in cyberspace.
That's filthy rich alright. I got the "filthy" right already, now I just need to get the second part of the equation right, "rich".
Hopefully its some one who would invite us to his house for the tank-warming. It should be a sight to behold. I am sure I will see all you guys there.
Its things like these that debunks the myth "money cannot buy happiness" :wink:
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