3 Tank Concept

I like the concept, and with the number of years you have in the aquarium hobby you should be able to pull this off no problem. Burrito has a point with the gaps, I'd allow 4 or so inches between tanks for polishing glass. Something to consider before cutting wood for the stand...

As far as lighting goes, will this be a high tech setup with co2? Seeing the Kessils I assume you are going all out on this: high light, co2, EI dosing...
If not using co2, I would scale way down on the lights. High light without the co2 and ferts and you will have an uphill battle controlling algae. For filtration, you could go with a canister in the middle and HOBs on the ends, or go with a sump and valves to control flow. I'd do a sump to keep heaters and stuff out of sight and increase overall water volume. @691175002 has a most impressive build running multiple tanks off one sump linked here: http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/12-tank-journals/975649-bookshelf-aquariums.html


Will you have another tank setup anywhere? Reason is, I personally find it way easier to keep my display tanks looking their best by having a spare tank setup out of sight somewhere for plant trimmings, extras, grow out nursery, fish hospital or whatever would be in the way in my display tanks. Could just be a cheap 10 gallon setup in the cabinet, or going back to 691175002's design, a multi-use sump tank.

Good luck, I look forward to seeing your vision come to life!

edit: whoops, missed the canister and co2 part, thanks Freemananana

I personally would go with a more traditional rack system and not try to have symmetry between tanks or a flowing hill. Just decorate and stock them vastly different and have a real eye treat when you see diversity side by side. I would also set it up with herbie overflows on each tank and a single 1/2" locline return over the rear rim. You could probably get away with 3/4" drains without issue. I'd drain it to a large sump, if possible. Use some submerged media and filter foam. Lighting is easy for me. I'd suspend a single LED fixture like you have shown, but a bar. Those lights are going to be insane overkill for these shallow tanks. A low tech, non CO2 injected, planted tank only needs about 20-40 par depending on plant choice. Anything more is definitely asking for algae without CO2. Marine grade lights push 100-300+ Par in a spectrum that plants don't need nearly as much.


EDIT: I see you noted canisters and CO2. I think the smallest sunsun canisters for the end would be good. Then an eheim or sunsun 302 for the center would be more than enough. Get a regulator with a three way splitter. You're going to be deep into needle valves though (money wise). You'll want good needle valves for such small tanks and individual ones due to the setup. Inline atomizers might be your best bet for these since a reactor for each may prove troublesome. For Par, 40-60 would be my suggestion. That's incredibly easy at this level. Even the little tri 0.5w beamswork fixture would give you that. A simple finnex stingray would as well. 12" deep is nothing. NOTHING. hahah. For ferts, I would start with EI dosing and gentle back it off until you notice deficiencies. Then bump it up and observe. After you get CO2 and dosing dialed in, I would stock the tanks.

I see the idea but would find it way too fixed for my use. Think of how things in the reef world are never quite settles and the needs at various points in the tank seem to change. Various living, growing things tend to change over time? Plants do that but the speed of the change is much faster. Plants have a much shorter life cycle than coral.
To me, the plants and I can agree on what is needed better when I leave it flexible. Rather than do a lot of study and sweat to try to get it all planned and then find I missed what some plant will need, I like having lighting that can be changed and moved as the tank needs change.
Old fish keeper that is learning a lot about plants? I can relate to that and would mention that it has a nasty learning curve to it. My advise would be to let things stay flexible and then you can adjust far easier as you find what plants work as well as what plants you really want to keep.
In my hobby, I don't want to fight with nature but just work with the plants which agree to work with me. I do try to fill their needs when I find out what those are but much of the time, the plants and I come to mutual agreement. I give them more or less and they more or less agree to live!
I don't think lights like a Kessil will fill the needs for most of the plants in 12" tanks. Too uniform and restrictive. I like lighting that lets me unscrew a bulb and put a different one when changing.

just get one large tank. visually, I do not see the appeal of 3 tanks side by side unless drastically different / doing something very creative. IMO a single, fluid, long tank with a nice scape and large school of small fish will look far superior. more options for stocking fauna with a single larger system is enough reason alone IMO to avoid the 3 tank system. with multiple kessils I am assuming you are going 'all-out' here so you could make a stunning tank given your equipment choice.

keep in mind that maintaining 3 is also going to be 3x more difficult... especially if you have never done plants before... easier to maintain one filtration system, one point of CO2 diffusion, etc... you WILL run into problems. every amazing planted tank usually comes with a myriad of issues and long hours of time put in to maintain. dealing with those situation in THREE separate environments will suck and take a lot of time to handle.

not sure what you are trying to accomplish for plant layout but I will assume since you are going with CO2 and kessils you are aiming for high light / high tech style tank. kessils will give you more than enough light to serve this purpose and they are adjustable so obviously they are a great choice / will produce amazing results when done right. I will say that you definitely do not NEED kessils for tanks that are 12" deep... even if you wanted to run the highest light manageable, 3x kessil fixtures over a 20 gallon tank is an INSANE amount of power and IMO totally unnecessary. at a total length of 48" of length I would use 2-3 kessils hung fairly high above the tank. anything longer you will need 3+. 5 is probably way more than you need given you do not have a large setup (~40g total). It is all about the spread here to cover the footprint of the tank... like I said you will have more than enough power with only 12" of water to penetrate.

as to PAR i would say 60-80 PAR at substrate level is as high as you will ever need to go. I would run less than that. I personally run lighting on the low end because it is easier to maintain / avoid algae.

I'm not being a 'troll' by suggesting alternatives... I just think you are setting yourself up for a lot more work and hassle by starting out with THREE tanks before ever trying planted style. Sure, if you nail it and know what you're doing then you will be fine. I would bet that 95% of the time this does not happen. I can just see you set up these 3 tanks, NUKE them with light from 5x kessils and then tear the whole thing down after a month because of algae disaster. certainly not what you want to deal with on your first go-around...

Thanks for the replies everyone!

The concept I presented here is just that, a concept. Will it be easy to implement? Probably not but that's what makes it fun at least from my perspective anyway. Anyone can throw some fish and plants in a tank so lets discuss the unique. For example, could the three tanks be connected with glass/acrylic siphon tubes allowing for a single canister filter to run all the tanks simultaneously? What would the plumbing look like for that? To make this setup appear as "clean" possible, how would the plumbing be run? Maybe through the top of the stand with grommets? What about hanging the lighting? (the ceiling in my house is vaulted so it's not an option) Is a single mounting bar cleaner or individual mounting posts? How are the chords concealed? Maybe rewiring the lights will be required to create longer runs of thinner wire for better concealment. (yes the wire needs to be properly rated) What about the CO2? I have a larger CO2 bottle (5 or 10lbs I can't remember). Instead of running the CO2 lines directly to the tank, can it be injected into the canister return lines? I am just throwing some stuff out there to get the ideas flowing.

Prior to posting this thread I sent e-mails out to a couple tank manufactures inquiring about a 60" x 16" x 12" Starphire glass tank. It's going to run about $650. Obviously this will provide a completely different look and feel than the 3 tank layout would. The top down perspective will be amazing! This is my inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRxbErSngJE

On another note, I find people interesting... They always seem project their own ideals onto others. If they don't like something, it's to challenging for them, it creates to much work, then they automatically assume nobody else likes it, can do it, or that they just won't do it etc.. Essentially, its because that's what they would do. Yes, I am guilty of this too.

Again, this is just a concept... I have NOT committed to a 3 tank setup. I have other more traditional (dare I say boring) options in mind such as a single tank.

Cheers,
Greg

Hey Guys!

So to obtain a little validation and provide some inspiration I thought I should post the plans I created for my 375 reef tank. This was what I used to plan the system. (It was months of research and design changes before the build began in early 2006) The tank, sump, protein skimmer, calcium reactor, and kalk reactor were all built by yours truly (with help of a friend). I know this is completely off topic (reef tank) but I figured it would be a good example of what can be done when we think outside the box a bit...

Cheers,
Greg

The 3 tank system looks nice on paper, but you will be creating a maintenance nightmare. On a 350 gal reef system the complexity is somewhat necessary. Your going to need a lot of flow, and you want to keep as much as possible out of sight. The system your constructing is only about 40 gal. This smaller size doesn't really justify the elaborate plumbing, lighting and money your going to need for three tanks.

On the tank your using for inspiration. This is a fantastic looking tank, but it was set up by an expert with many years of experience. This would be a difficult tank for most of the people on this forum, even the experts here, to replicate. This doesn't mean you can't get a similar feel to your own tank, but don't try to copy this the first time out.

You have a lot of experience with reef systems. Now think back. When you set up your first reef system, how may times did you have just about wipe out the tank because you made a beginner mistake? I'd guess it was several times. It's going to be similar here. Most people don't do their first planted tank too well. It's not until they do several that things really start to gel for most people.

On a personal note, I have had SW systems, and old style planted tanks for many years before I set up a high tech planted tank. Even so, there were a lot of "mental gearshift changes" I had to make for planted tanks. Here are a couple of examples. In lighting, you usually use "as much as you can get" for lighting. You need it for corals. For a high light planted tank, the lighting is going to seem like nothing, but adding much more light would create massive algae issues. Also, in reef systems you want to keep nutrients down, to avoid algae. In a planted tank you need to add nitrates and phosphates to the system to feed the plants. That was quite a shift for me.

I suggest you do your first planted tank on a bit more modest scale. Build your first tank as a pilot project, and learning experience. Make all your beginner mistakes here. Then design the larger system when you have the experience. Get yourself something like a 20 gal long tank and set that up as your first tank. Keep it simple, use a canister filter or hang on tank filter, and suspend the lighting over the tank. Don't drill it or use rigid plumbing. You want to be able to easily tear it down if things really go bad.

Then once you see how all this comes together, you'll be able to do a much more elaborate system and have few issues. You will likely to be able to do it at a lot less total cost too.

I agree with Dave...

i get the feel you are naive to the difficulty of growing out a successful planted tank... you should really take a few months with an experiment tank to see if you can produce a clean, healthy setup like the one in the video you posted. many people's first run-in with planted tanks end up in total disasters and a few total system tear-downs and restarts. this will be extremely painful to do with a complex system your first time. go take a look at some of the topics in the 'algae' section for references

If you go all out with the 3 tank approach i would either use 3 different canisters and separate the tanks completely OR have all 3 tanks overflow into a single sump system with independent returns. Overflows are basically the only way to share water systems between tanks because you need to make sure the water level cannot spill out of the tanks. single canister with 3 outputs will not keep a constant water level throughout the 3 tanks. the overflow option is the best option IMO (but much more work to implement)

also i would read through this thread... this guy did somethng like what you are thinking (but easier to implement vs 3 tanks on the same level): http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/12-tank-journals/975649-bookshelf-aquariums.html

Thanks for the incite everyone...

I have seen the water bridge video before. I have been watching his videos for a while now.

At this point I am still chasing the large 60x16x12 tank idea instead of the 3 tank design. The openness will provide a great visual appeal. But with $400 shipping I am looking at about $850 from glasscages.com. I am not sure I want to shell that much out for just the tank. I am working on getting a quote from another tank manufacture though.

So with cost being prohibitive on the single tank, I may be back to the 3 tank design. I may do away with the difficulty and just set up them up as three individual systems with a continuous theme. Why? Well, I have started working on my 20 gallon wall tank and a 65 gallon paludarium. So I have decided with all these systems running minimizing failure and ease of maintenance may be a better option. If I wasn't implementing the other systems it wouldn't be an issue. I am also currently running a 100 gallon Rubbermaid with tilapia that's feeding two plant towers.