Sometimes we go to extremes in this hobby but few go as far as Jack Heathcote. The UK resident wasn’t satisfied with a simple large aquarium and built what could be considered the largest home aquarium in the country in the basement of his five-bedroom house. The 37-year-old resident of Nottingham built the 12ft 6in x 12ft 8in x 7ft aquarium filling it with large, exotic freshwater species.
Like many of us Heathcote caught the aquarium bug early after a visit to an aquarium when he was ten and said, “My hobby’s not only taken over my life, it’s taken over my home. But I love it!”
Using three of the foundation walls lined with fiberglass to water he replaced a brick wall with a custom glass viewing wall. Upstairs he had to cut a large hole in the floor to serve as an access point for cleaning and maintenance.
“I had to do some pretty accurate calculations, especially when you consider the amount of water behind the glass,” he said. “When it’s full there’s around 4,800 gallons in the tank and I’m on a meter! Each water change sees up to 1,200 gallons being taken out and then replace and even with my high pressure hose, it takes six hours to re-fill.”
You wonder how much a custom install like this may run? He paid £700 (around $1,150 USD) for the glass panels and £800 (around $1,310 USD) for the fibreglass lining and around £5,000 (around $8,175 USD) in total to build.
Housed in the aquarium are two chainsaw doradids, three 2 ft. long Pacus, some Pangasius, a Red tail hybrid catfish, two alligator gars, eight stingrays and two Fly River turtles. Plans are to add a pair of silver arowanas to the mix.
“There’s obviously a bit of work cleaning the tank and changing the water. Then there’s feeding the fish, but that only takes about 30 minutes every two or three days. They eat anything from trout to mussels.,” he adds. “It does cost a bit for the upkeep, and most people would not want to see my electricity bill, but I make some money selling some of the fish I breed.”
A pretty impressive aquarium overall. We are wondering if any of our UK readers across the pond have had the pleasure of seeing this tank in person. The tropical freshwater species allow him to use less lighting but it would be pretty impressive to see someone put together a similar reef aquarium.
[via Daily Mail]
