Artfully Acrylic signature aio 50

[Akida17th]

Can't really "build" an aio but since I never got around to starting a build thread on my 93 cube I figured I'd do one for this 50. Purchased tank from Artfully Acrylic and went with their largest version which is the AIO signature 50 gallon in Ferrari red, yep you RED and I love it. Needed a stand for this uncommon dimensions which is 28x24x18 so I decided to buy the Marineland 30x30 stand and place a nice piece of 3/4" birch on top for support since it's acrylic. Decided on the Tunze 9004 skimmer but may upgrade to the 9012 depending on the results which have been good thus far on the 93. The tank will house nems and a few corals here and there. So far I have large green gig which my Maine Mocha clowns host with a juvenile oscellaris they allowed in a few months ago during an experiment. He's about 14" when fully open so he'll take up a nice amount of area. I also have rare bta's that will be transferred over such as my colorado sunburst super bright orange like an inferno(a), colorado sunburst (b) yellow tip, coral collection inferno and a sherman rose that recently split (sold). Hoping to add a few more but the tank isn't that large so I really have to aquascape the heck out of it and that is one thing I'm not good at. I'll be running Radion g2 light (upgrading to g3 pro clusters soon) with RMS mount and an MP40QD for flow with a battery backup and reeflink. I have to say the clarity without water is amazing lol I am worried about zippers though! Other then that my fish besides the clowns will be a yellow coris wrasse and pink spotted goby with his pistol shrimp. I'm doing only 20lbs of sand ,debated a bare bottom but want to house some more wrasses and will transfer my 4 year old live rock probably only a third of it so around 35 pounds as I don't want to go heavy with rock again as I prefer a more open aquascape this time. I'd like to do a BTA island and maybe a rock flower garden if I have enough room in the end. Here are some photos of the progress. Hoping to have water in there by tonight. I have 30 gallon of 0 ppm water (red sea coral plus salt) and another 15 gallons of nutrisea water ready to go.

 

[ClearView Lids Verified Sponsor]

Love it Tim! Looks like your chosen location will give you a better view of the tank than even the TV while sitting back in your chair there...Perfect ;).

Also looking forward to your intended stocking. Will look great! We have, on the polar opposite, another customer doing a mini rock nem garden with our smallest Reef Crest Dropoff AIO. We look forward to seeing your Signature Series RED AIO50 as it takes shape.

 

[Jlobes]

heck yeah! my 16AIO ships today! ill be following along on this thread

 

[Akida17th]

Everything is up and running and looking great. Still some things to work out, I want to see how this Tunze 9004 skimmer holds up int he middle chamber since the overflow water comes in there and the Tunze skims from the top of the water it hasn't been working well so far. I had it running on my 93 in my sump where the water was calm and it skimmer like a champ. I may have raise the water in the middle chamber more which means raising the water in both return chambers or change skimmers. In order to achieve this I will need an ATO since the water in all chambers will be evaporating now. As far as the tank goes, I couldn't be more excited. I really liked my aquascaping for my nems, not focusing on corals anymore and it came out great for my liking, more of an open aquascape this time. My green gig is super happy however I lost my sexy shrimp and my pistol shrimp so I added a tiger pistol for my pink spot goby and he bit it (guess he misses his randalls pistol AKA mr.frank :( ). All livestock looks healthy and great. The clarity is superb as expected, though I am worried about scratching it since it's acrylic an only 1/4", not much room for error. I'm high dissapointed in the Ecotech RMS mount AGAIN. It leans dramatically and doesn't seem to support itself the way it should so I'll be changing that and probably bend some conduit and mount it to the stand and hang the lights. This lean occurred on my 93 also but I thought it was my tank at the time. Very dissapointed in the construction and design of these mounts, especially for the price tag they command. Anyways here are some pics of the tank rockin' out! I'll be adding a flower garden on the right side away from the gig who already lost a tentacle to my sherman rose bta so I want to make sure they won't be near him as I want to give him his own space.

 

[Jlobes]

I told agree with you about the RMS mount!! they were junk!! Sagging/leaning many degrees beyond horizontal… This sagging then put stress on the clamp and caused stress cracks. I got two for the 120, and was so disappointed I sent them back.
Swapped them out for the multi light mount with a span across tank, This works much better, but isn't the clean/sleek look I was going for. But better than my lights falling in the tank.

 

[WilRams]

Looking good!

And yeah def much nicer higher quality mounts out there like reeflightmounts.com

 

[ClearView Lids Verified Sponsor]

Everything is up and running and looking great. Still some things to work out, I want to see how this Tunze 9004 skimmer holds up int he middle chamber since the overflow water comes in there and the Tunze skims from the top of the water it hasn't been working well so far. I had it running on my 93 in my sump where the water was calm and it skimmer like a champ. I may have raise the water in the middle chamber more which means raising the water in both return chambers or change skimmers. In order to achieve this I will need an ATO since the water in all chambers will be evaporating now. As far as the tank goes, I couldn't be more excited. I really liked my aquascaping for my nems, not focusing on corals anymore and it came out great for my liking, more of an open aquascape this time. My green gig is super happy however I lost my sexy shrimp and my pistol shrimp so I added a tiger pistol for my pink spot goby and he bit it (guess he misses his randalls pistol AKA mr.frank :( ). All livestock looks healthy and great. The clarity is superb as expected, though I am worried about scratching it since it's acrylic an only 1/4", not much room for error.

Tank looks awesome!! Great job on the setup!

The Signature Series AIO systems have higher flow rates than most tanks of their size so provide the option to operate without a powerhead. This does have some side effect of a bit more overflow noise when running the pumps at full tilt. The pumps are adjustable so can be turned down some, particularly with your MP10 in there, and this should have some effect on the overflow noise.

I also sent you a PM with a few other ideas to try if you are searching for a quieter experience.

As for the 1/4" acrylic not giving you room for error with scratching....nawwww. Most scratches would be a couple thousands to a couple hundredths in thickness at worst so you got plenty of room for error. That being said, don't go off adding more and more scratches to test this theory ;). But in the event you do scratch it....FEAR NOT!! Super easy to fix. Give us a call your first time, if you do scratch it, and we can walk you through it. With materials in hand, most small to medium scratches can be fixed in less than 10 minutes.

 

[Akida17th]

Update:

Here are some snaps of my AIO 50. I decided to go with a Radion gen 2, RMS mount, MP10wQD, Blueline Tsunami ATO, Tunze 9004 skimmer & the stock return pumps. So far everything has gone great and I've added some new livestock, mostly anemones, and got rid of my green gigantea carpet nem. I'll take a video of the tank later on with lights on.

Anemones include cc inferno bta cc flame tip bta original sunburst (keys island) sherman rose (2 since mother dropped a clone) insane rainbow bta (brightest rainbow ever) African red foot Ritteri yellow tip Ritteri (bright) bright green Haddoni along with SPS LPS and softies. Fish are currently 4 year old mocha clownfish pair with their Oscellaris juve they took in yellow tang flame wrasse pair pink spot goby paired with tiger pistol and yellow coris wrasse. I'll be adding some new stock I'm sure but room is getting tight with all the anemones. The flame tip is 6"+ so I expect him to split soon probably. Going to be fun to track the progression of this tank.

 

[Jlobes]

looking good! excited for my replacement to show up, sometime soon.

quite the nem collection! holla when you have some clones/babies of the inferno, sunburst, flametip. ;)

 

[Akida17th]

Replacement tank? What happened?

 

[Jlobes]

Replacement tank? What happened?

fedex broke it!
got delivered with two cracks, on on the top between filter chamber and display and one on the side, near the top. so, im still waiting, but AA took care of things and is making it right!
However, gave me a chance to upgrade/switch to the white wrap instead of black. looking forward to getting the tank and getting it up and running.

 

[Akida17th]

Sorry to hear that, fedex ground is terrible with that. Maybe it was a good thing since you changed wrap color to what you now prefer!

 

[Jlobes]

meh, hate the wait and the damaged good, and white wasnt available when i ordered. Black woulda been great, but with the issue, decided white would be banging!! oh well, stuff happens. ;)
just another test of patience

 

[ClearView Lids Verified Sponsor]

Akida, the tank is looking awesome!! Love, love, love it. Got your PM re a different light mount option for the Radion instead of the not so great RMS mount. I'll be getting back to you later this evening on that one with some options for your unique mounting needs due to the added stand width you face.

Jlobes, your replacement tank is built and ready for wrap. Will be cutting your IMPERIAL White wrap with another wrap batch tomorrow. We will have her wrapped up, boxed up, and shipped out by mid-week pickup. We are still waiting on claim resolution with Fedex for the damaged tank, but yours will go out waaayyyyyy before they take care of it on their end ;). You will LOVE the white!! I still stare out our IMPERIAL White Reef Crest 35 Live Demo Model every time I walk in the store.

 

[Jlobes]

its all good. im not stressing it, i know youre making it right and good things come to those who wait. ;)

you may consider bubble wrap and possibly double boxing(tank wrapped and in one box inside another box with peanuts).
just hoping to get an intact unit this time. lol
akida:that tank does look nice. like the red too!

 

[ClearView Lids Verified Sponsor]

its all good. im not stressing it, i know youre making it right and good things come to those who wait. ;)

you may consider bubble wrap and possibly double boxing(tank wrapped and in one box inside another box with peanuts).
just hoping to get an intact unit this time. lol
akida:that tank does look nice. like the red too!

Plastic wrap, bubble wrap, and even more peanuts. We got you covered =).

 

[Akida17th]

Yeah I tend to enjoy things most people fear, like red trim aquariums and mimic anemones :). Some new shots of some livestock. My sunburst tried moving in on my inferno's spot but held his own. I added an authentic lemondrop bta, flametip bta and new amazing plumb purple haddoni which is absolutely killer (coming Wednesday). Tank is doing really well nice and healthy however the time came and I scratched the acrylic but not worried about it. Not sure if it happened when cleaning the panel with a algae pad or maybe from my acclimation box I used. You can't see unless you have a dark background. My flame tip is really starting to color up nicely, like Mcdonalds catch phrase I'm lovin' it!

 

[ClearView Lids Verified Sponsor]

Hey Akida, the beauty of scratches like that...easy to fix. Start with some 1500 grit sandpaper lightly to see if it gets you anywhere. If not, then take the grit down to 1000, then 800 if necessary. Doubt you will need much lower than that for that scratch. Once you have the right grit to feather it away, work you way back up to 2000 through the steps. No need to drain the tank or disturb your inhabitants. Should take less than 20min for even a newb to fix that scratch =).

Where's the updates? Love you setup. Want to see more!