I have a nightclub built into my home and deal a lot with sound issues. Keep in mind, we owned a very large light and sound show here in IA for 25 years so we have a lot of professional grade equipment and can put out a lot of sound.
When we wanted to retire from that business (keeping our other business) we sold it and wanted to build a nightclub into our home so we could play when we wanted to.
Our in home nightclub basically shares the wall the with the display tank (each on opposite sides). The nightclub shares the same wall, but is on the lower level of the house.
Normally docile fish can begin swimming erratically. Water movement changes due to vibration from the low end can also create problems.
I would think if you have tangs in the tank, this type of change plus the loud music they can hear has the potential to create stress - with the potential for tangs to wind up with ich at the very least.
One can also deal with the potential issue of vibrations disturbing the integrity of the tank itself - thus resulting in a possible leakage or breakage of the tank.
Because water pipes are in the ceiling of the lower level (bringing up water to the upper levels to faucets and to the heating pipework in Munchkin boiler sytem for heat), I could remove what is the ceiling and line it with accoustic foam and then replace the ceiling. This also allowed me to retain the hot water temperature in the pipes bringing water to the various parts of the house. Keep in mind, the plywood and joists for what was the floor the tank sat on was still there so I didn't have to tear down the tank to do this. This would help buffer some of the vibration, thus reducing the potential for tank integrity problems.
As for sound, we all know that they will still hear it. However, when we run the sound and light system in the room, I have found that it is best to turn off the lights to the tank itself and just keep the moonlights on the lowest setting possible so fish don't injure themselves. I also keep the room itself darker in the area and they seem to experience less stress.
On our sound and light show we took on the road, we had the capabilities to run over well 10K watts of power, as worked with a lot of major bands that toured. While the business set up we had is impractical for any home, we have the capabilities of running more than the average home system by a long shot. That room has it's own own box to handle the electrical needs. The electrical issues were issues that were handled by my husband and his friend and I'm going strictly from memory.
More than likely, tank integrity issues are something I too may have a problem with down the road however, I believe I did everything I could possibly do to prevent the problem.
Denise M.
