Outside, there’s another 400-gallon tank for water changes. From there, saltwater gets filtered and pumped through six different pipelines built into the floors. Next, they retrofitted a basement space originally used as a wine closet into a filtration room with about a 300-gallon capacity.
Atkins said the crew slept at his house a couple of nights, pulling all-nighters to get the tank installed on time.įirst, a contractor had to install steel reinforcement into the floors to handle the 20,000 pounds of weight - water is heavy. “Then it was like, ‘How do we fit a tank in?’ ” “I bought this house kind of on a whim because it’s on a corner lot on an island,” said Atkins. Retrofitting the tank into an existing home was a challenge.
With many affluent Americans upsizing or relocating, aquarium designers say a good part of the demand is coming from repeat customers upgrading their sea life’s home as they upgrade the human home that surrounds it. Some of these aquariums rival installations at public aquariums in size and scale. The company is fully booked into the third quarter of 2022. In more typical times, he would install a high-end home aquarium every few months - now he’s doing multiple aquariums every month.
Clients who may have long wanted to splurge on a home aquarium were stuck at home and were finally willing to take the plunge, he said. He said demand has grown by about 400 percent since the start of the pandemic and is still going strong. “We’ve seen a tremendous boom in business,” said Nic Tiemens, of Infinity Aquarium Design in Los Angeles. Something of a cross between home decor, entertainment, wildlife and pet shelter, these custom aquariums can weigh more than 75,000 pounds and cost as much as $750,000 at the top end.
Others took up a more elaborate pet hobby: luxury home aquariums. 8 feet is perfectly fine for what I want to do, and yes, there's cats in this room.Stuck at home during the pandemic, many Americans took in dogs or cats. Ultimately, I wanted to go for a 10-foot tank, but that's okay. It might be perfect for you." When they told me about what it was - 8 feet long, 3 feet deep, and 2 feet tall, I said, "You know what, that is perfect." It's just kind of sitting in our warehouse. We have a tank that we used at the aquatic experience back in 2018. I want that Arowana and stingray tank, and we talked back and forth for a couple of weeks, and they said, "Hey, we have this one tank. I want something big, I want to make a statement. I said to them, "Hey, this is what I want. But, for me, it was a little bit different, because I had to talk to my contacts up there, and we went back and forth for a while. We'll work together and get you exactly what you want. So if you want to get a tank like this, all you got to do is email me at, and I'll walk you through the whole process. For you, it's gonna be significantly easier than it was for me, because, I am actually a retailer for this company. It's something that I've wanted for a very long time, and we finally got it in here! It's finally ready, but not quite, we'll get into that in a minute.įirst, I want to talk about the process of getting this tank.
Super excited to talk to you about this tank right here.