A mature reef tank for inspiration.
This photo is from the Reef2Reef archives, courtesy of @Cannedfish ©2019 All Rights Reserved.
Note From the Editor:
This article, below, and several future ones by the same author were originally part of several presentations made to a local aquarium club. The article is reprinted with permission from the author. Reef2Reef is grateful to the author for sharing these articles with us.
Today's article is Part 4. Part 5 will be available in a few days.
Part 1 is available here. Part 2 is available here, and Part 3 is available here.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The Basics
The Tank:
There are several considerations to take into account when you are buying an aquarium. Do you want glass or acrylic and what’s the difference? How many gallons should it be? What are the dimensions you want? In particular, how deep should it be? Do you want a tank with a trimmed rim or rimless? How about being euro-braced? Do you want to use siphon overflows or do you want it drilled? Would you like it to have an emergency drain?
By the way, if it’s at all possible, an emergency drain is an excellent feature to have!
Do you want glass or acrylic?
Most people choose glass. Glass is heavier than acrylic, and that can make bigger glass tanks harder to move. However, acrylic tanks are much easier to scratch when you are cleaning algae off the inside of the tank. And that’s something you’ll do a lot over the first 6 to 12 months. Later on it may only be a once a week or every-other-week job, but it’s a job that never goes away.
If you shop used tanks, you’ll find used glass tanks that have scratches in them, and you should pay much less for them. Glass is much harder to scratch than acrylic, but you can’t fix scratches in glass. You can with acrylic (but you need to empty the tank, and it’s still a difficult job to fix).
Most glass has a green color (tinge) to it (look at it edge on) and this does have some small effect on the colors you will see in the tank. Acrylic is absolutely clear. These days there are glass aquariums being made that are made with a specialty glass called ‘low iron’ which is very clear and a little more expensive.
There is also the matter of having a plastic rim, being rimless or being euro-braced. One-piece plastic rims are often structural; rims with mitered corners are mostly just for looks.
More and more new tanks are rimless (just polished glass edges). They look very cool and are typically made with thicker glass; consequently, they cost a bit more and can be heavier. Some rimless glass tanks and almost all acrylic tanks are euro-braced. The euro-brace is a narrow lip (1” to 3”) that is at or very near the top of the tank, parallel with the bottom of the tank and faces inside the tank. It adds structural strength so the acrylic or glass is much less likely to bow out due to the immense weight of the water inside.
A beautiful rimless tank.
This photo is from the Reef2Reef archives, courtesy of @StikHedRon ©2019 All Rights Reserved.
Remember, one gallon of saltwater weighs over 8.5 pounds. And while we are thinking about numbers, one cubic foot of water equals 7.5 gallons which is 63 pounds! One more point: large acrylic tanks (always rimless and almost always euro-braced) and large rimless glass tanks should have some kind of cushion or foam under the tank.
The bottoms of these tanks sit flush against the top of the stand. The foam is used to protect the tank from small imperfections in the stand that could create pressure points that can break the glass, pressure that could cause a seam failure, or that could start a crack in the acrylic at some point. Glass tanks with rims are designed to have the weight of the tank sit on the rim and foam is not required, but it’s still not a bad idea, especially with bigger and therefore heavier tanks of 75g and up.
What shape box do you want your water to be held in? Fish-only tanks tend to be long, tall and thin (12”-18”) so the fish show off well swimming around. Reef tanks with fish and corals tend to be bigger from front to back (18”-30”) and shorter (20” to 24”). The bigger front-to-back dimension gives the bottom a bigger footprint and therefore more room for LR (Live Rock) and coral.
The shorter height in some tanks makes it easier to reach in the tank and work on things at the bottom. Most tanks of a certain capacity come in one configuration. Like a typical 75g tank is 4’L x 2’W x 2’T. If, for example, you want a taller tank, you’ll end up with a 90g which is 4’L x 2’W x 30”T.
Another standard is a 180g tank is normally 6’L x 2’W x 2’T. If you want a taller tank, you’ll end up with a 225g which is 6’L x 2’W x 30”T. The extra 6” in height makes up the additional 15 and 45 gallon difference.
There are other shapes like cubes and hexagons, but they tend to be used for special reasons and can be harder to resell, although cubes are really becoming more popular now than they were in the past. Most smaller nano tanks (under 30 gallons) are cubes. Since about 2010, more companies have been making more tanks in more sizes. And some companies will even custom make you a tank to your specifications, but they get quite expensive.
Stay tuned.
If you have questions, feel free to ask me here in the accompanying thread or send me a private message.
~~~~~~~~~~~
We encourage all our readers to join the Reef2Reef forum. It’s easy to register, free, and reefkeeping is much easier and more fun in a community of fellow aquarists. We pride ourselves on a warm and family-friendly forum where everyone is welcome. You will also find lots of contests and giveaways with our sponsors.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Author Profile: @Ron Reefman
@Ron Reefman has been keeping saltwater aquariums for almost 20 years. Some time ago, there was a profile of him. He lives in Florida and is happy to share his ocean and aquarium adventures with us all.
This photo is from the Reef2Reef archives, courtesy of @Cannedfish ©2019 All Rights Reserved.
Note From the Editor:
This article, below, and several future ones by the same author were originally part of several presentations made to a local aquarium club. The article is reprinted with permission from the author. Reef2Reef is grateful to the author for sharing these articles with us.
Today's article is Part 4. Part 5 will be available in a few days.
Part 1 is available here. Part 2 is available here, and Part 3 is available here.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The Basics
The Tank:
There are several considerations to take into account when you are buying an aquarium. Do you want glass or acrylic and what’s the difference? How many gallons should it be? What are the dimensions you want? In particular, how deep should it be? Do you want a tank with a trimmed rim or rimless? How about being euro-braced? Do you want to use siphon overflows or do you want it drilled? Would you like it to have an emergency drain?
By the way, if it’s at all possible, an emergency drain is an excellent feature to have!
Do you want glass or acrylic?
Most people choose glass. Glass is heavier than acrylic, and that can make bigger glass tanks harder to move. However, acrylic tanks are much easier to scratch when you are cleaning algae off the inside of the tank. And that’s something you’ll do a lot over the first 6 to 12 months. Later on it may only be a once a week or every-other-week job, but it’s a job that never goes away.
If you shop used tanks, you’ll find used glass tanks that have scratches in them, and you should pay much less for them. Glass is much harder to scratch than acrylic, but you can’t fix scratches in glass. You can with acrylic (but you need to empty the tank, and it’s still a difficult job to fix).
Most glass has a green color (tinge) to it (look at it edge on) and this does have some small effect on the colors you will see in the tank. Acrylic is absolutely clear. These days there are glass aquariums being made that are made with a specialty glass called ‘low iron’ which is very clear and a little more expensive.
There is also the matter of having a plastic rim, being rimless or being euro-braced. One-piece plastic rims are often structural; rims with mitered corners are mostly just for looks.
More and more new tanks are rimless (just polished glass edges). They look very cool and are typically made with thicker glass; consequently, they cost a bit more and can be heavier. Some rimless glass tanks and almost all acrylic tanks are euro-braced. The euro-brace is a narrow lip (1” to 3”) that is at or very near the top of the tank, parallel with the bottom of the tank and faces inside the tank. It adds structural strength so the acrylic or glass is much less likely to bow out due to the immense weight of the water inside.
A beautiful rimless tank.
This photo is from the Reef2Reef archives, courtesy of @StikHedRon ©2019 All Rights Reserved.
Remember, one gallon of saltwater weighs over 8.5 pounds. And while we are thinking about numbers, one cubic foot of water equals 7.5 gallons which is 63 pounds! One more point: large acrylic tanks (always rimless and almost always euro-braced) and large rimless glass tanks should have some kind of cushion or foam under the tank.
The bottoms of these tanks sit flush against the top of the stand. The foam is used to protect the tank from small imperfections in the stand that could create pressure points that can break the glass, pressure that could cause a seam failure, or that could start a crack in the acrylic at some point. Glass tanks with rims are designed to have the weight of the tank sit on the rim and foam is not required, but it’s still not a bad idea, especially with bigger and therefore heavier tanks of 75g and up.
What shape box do you want your water to be held in? Fish-only tanks tend to be long, tall and thin (12”-18”) so the fish show off well swimming around. Reef tanks with fish and corals tend to be bigger from front to back (18”-30”) and shorter (20” to 24”). The bigger front-to-back dimension gives the bottom a bigger footprint and therefore more room for LR (Live Rock) and coral.
The shorter height in some tanks makes it easier to reach in the tank and work on things at the bottom. Most tanks of a certain capacity come in one configuration. Like a typical 75g tank is 4’L x 2’W x 2’T. If, for example, you want a taller tank, you’ll end up with a 90g which is 4’L x 2’W x 30”T.
Another standard is a 180g tank is normally 6’L x 2’W x 2’T. If you want a taller tank, you’ll end up with a 225g which is 6’L x 2’W x 30”T. The extra 6” in height makes up the additional 15 and 45 gallon difference.
There are other shapes like cubes and hexagons, but they tend to be used for special reasons and can be harder to resell, although cubes are really becoming more popular now than they were in the past. Most smaller nano tanks (under 30 gallons) are cubes. Since about 2010, more companies have been making more tanks in more sizes. And some companies will even custom make you a tank to your specifications, but they get quite expensive.
A newly set up hexagon tank.
This photo is from the Reef2Reef archives, courtesy of @12gallonsofhex ©2019 All Rights Reserved.
Let's talk about what a basic starter system should include and what all the parts are and what they do. First you need a budget. How much are you going to spend for hardware at the front end of this project? If extra spending money is tight, this is a hobby you might want to avoid until you have more spendable cash. And no, I’m not just joking, this hobby can get quite expensive. Even very small systems cost hundreds of dollars in the end. And in the first article in this series you saw the cost of a 30g system where only the tank was bought used and everything else was bought new from a LFS. It was almost $1500 without fish or coral. So let’s try a good basic system and discuss costs and what the various pieces of equipment do.This photo is from the Reef2Reef archives, courtesy of @12gallonsofhex ©2019 All Rights Reserved.
Stay tuned.
If you have questions, feel free to ask me here in the accompanying thread or send me a private message.
~~~~~~~~~~~
We encourage all our readers to join the Reef2Reef forum. It’s easy to register, free, and reefkeeping is much easier and more fun in a community of fellow aquarists. We pride ourselves on a warm and family-friendly forum where everyone is welcome. You will also find lots of contests and giveaways with our sponsors.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Author Profile: @Ron Reefman
@Ron Reefman has been keeping saltwater aquariums for almost 20 years. Some time ago, there was a profile of him. He lives in Florida and is happy to share his ocean and aquarium adventures with us all.
