20 FOOT AQUARIUM! On a Budget

This time we install 20 feet of aquarium inside Chilos, a popular Houston Mexican seafood restaurant. This project came to us through one of our primary subcontractors– Clan Rayo Construction– who we have worked closely with for years for the majority of our custom cabinetry builds. The owner of Chilos is a close personal friend of Clan Rayo Construction’s owner, Oscar Rayo, and he asked us rather late into a full remodel of one of the Chilos locations if we could do a 20 foot aquarium as a sort of conceptual divider between the dining room and bar. We of course agreed but the cost for a full 20 foot tank alone ran over the available budget. So we got creative and proposed doing two separate 10 foot aquariums whose total cost was well below the cost for a single 20 foot aquarium, and the project was underway. They wanted a room divider effect but with good views through that aquariums to maintain a sense of openness with larger, colorful fish. working with a limited budget and very much waiting to help out a friend, we made the project happen to their specs, on tome and on budget.
Now we had proposed a hardscape-only African cichlid type layout, but the client really wanted a touch of green to provide some height. The tasteful use of some premium artificial plants fulfilled this request and furthermore made a lot of sense for the both the setting and long term maintenance needs. We know, we know... live plants are "better" from almost hobbyists' perspective, and we too love an include live plants in many of our designs. But in this case, for a multitude of reasons, the choices we made fit the project and the client needs.
This video includes lots of views of our installation style and specific equipment for this type of build as well as play-by-play scaping and design insights.