d2mini's "Essential Focus" Mixed Reef Build

d2mini · Apr 2, 2016

Well this is an interesting turn of events.
The tank wasn't supposed to arrive until sometime later this week.

The problem is, this morning I have family in from out of town and we are going to the zoo. o_O

EDIT:
Just talked to Fedex and it ends up it's not REALLY out for delivery today.
But will be Monday! :cool:

urbaneks · Apr 2, 2016

Dennis,
The house looks awesome. You will love and hate having the tank out in the main living area. It's great to eliminate the feeling of being a hermit until you want to go be a hermit. [emoji1]

Looking forward to Monday's delivery.

300bowler · Apr 4, 2016

The house is stunning and I'm sure the tank will fit in perfectly and be held to the same standards as the rest of the house is. Following along.

Diesel · Apr 4, 2016

Family?!? Plumb that sweet puppy already.
Splash is looking forward to his new home :rolleyes:

Matze · Apr 4, 2016

I do smell saltwater out of the D2 mansion ;)

d2mini · Apr 4, 2016

UPDATE 4-4-16

Exciting day! The tank is here!
So here is a little backstory, because you know I can't just post photos and leave it at that. ;)
Back in January sometime, things started to calm down and I started thinking about a new tank. I really wasn't sure which direction I wanted to go. All I knew was that I was severely limited on space compared to the previous build. It was also pretty recently that I had to go through the whole tear down affair, including trying to sell the house with the tank in place. It wasn't literally built into the wall, but it might as well have been, with all that cabinetry built around it. Luckily we found a buyer fairly quickly and they decided to leave the cabinetry, I just had to remove the tank, patch the holes in the wall, create a wood top for the cabinet where the tank was sitting, and paint everything. Not too bad, but a pain in the butt nonetheless, and additional stress. With that fresh in my mind, I wasn't too keen on doing that again. So this time I was leaning towards keeping things a bit more on the traditional/simple side as far as choosing a tank and stand. Even the stand I wasn't sure if I really wanted to go custom with it... not if I didn't have to. So i began to look at my options. One thing is for sure... compared to even just 5 years ago, there has been a MASSIVE improvement the different kinds of all-in-one kits that are available, especially in larger tanks. IM has a 120 long, Red Sea has several large tanks, etc. I was looking at these but I was having a difficult time finding something I truly liked because I was dealing with having to find a tank with a max length of around 48". As much as I like the Red Sea Reefer series, I really wished they had something with a deeper dimension front to back for the extra space/volume. I contemplated getting a custom tank again, maybe a cube like I used to have, but wasn't sure that I had THAT much space to come out into the room without interfering with other furniture. I could have gone with another Planet Aquariums custom tank. That wouldn't have taken too long. But again, I would have also had to have a custom stand made. I could have built one but my finishing abilities aren't up to what I would have considered necessary. I also briefly considered a Reef Savvy tank but I really didn't want to have to wait 6 months to get it. Then during my research I came across Elos. I've known about Elos but never considered them before due to the price. But taking a look at their current line of tanks, from what I could gather (informations is sparse), the price didn't really seem much different than a Reef Savvy tank. Then I saw that there was a brand new line of tanks coming out from Elos called The Diamond Line. The more I looked, the more I liked what I saw. And the clincher... they had a couple tanks that had a deeper dimension. Looking at the specs, the Elos 120XL would be perfect for the space I had in mind. Dims were 47.24″ x 31.5 ″ x 19.7″ which is about 125g. Awesome. But woah... price of the tank, plus price of their Classic stand was a bit... nutty. But since I had a fat paypal account from selling off all my old equipment and live stock, plus the fact that I had to go smaller and more contained with no fish room or anything like that, I figured what the heck. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right. ;)

So decision made, I began the search for a 120XL Diamond Line setup. Well, it's a brand new line, so Elos wasn't shipping yet. I checked in with Coralvue who is distributing Elos now. They said sometime in the spring we should start seeing product here in the states. A few weeks later I checked back in and was told that the Elos Aqua Studio in NY (Actually, Jersey), had some coming in, so give them a call. This is where the frustration started. I can't even tell you how many times I called and emailed trying to get information. I would talk to someone, and then they would never get back to me. It would take several more calls/emails to get a response. This went on for several weeks. Even got to the point where I finally got an estimate for the tank/stand combo (I didn't want the complete system with the sump and all that) and they asked if I wanted a formal purchase order quote or whatever they called it. I said yes, and shipping would be to Houston. Never heard back. Called and left a message with one of the employees and the manager still didn't call me back. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. You have someone willing to spend THAT kind of scratch on an AQUARIUM of all things, and you don't have the common decency to at least make a phone call or shoot out a quick email? And apparently I am not the only one having problems with this store. In fact, someone else on the forums has also ordered from this store, way before I ordered, and they are still waiting. So if anyone else out there is considering an Elos purchase, I do not recommend Elos NY at all. Take your hard earned money elsewhere.

So I was googling one day and realized that Aquarium Specialty had Elos tanks on their website. It was the "old" line, but figured it was worth contacting them. I used their web contact form and just asked if they had any info on the new Diamond Line. Within an hour or two I had an email back from Scott Groseclose. Within another 5 minutes my phone was ringing. It was Scott. Long story short, he was in the middle of getting updated pricing info from Elos Italy and would be carrying the new Diamond Line. He was about to start getting that info on the website. He said he would contact Elos that day and get me the info on the 120XL. The next business day I get another call. He got the info, put the 120xl ordering information on his website, and I was able to go online and place the order. Boom. Now that my friends is customer service! So the order was placed that evening. I will never know for sure, but I think the total cost with shipping (which ended up being direct from Italy via Fedex Internation Freight) was a little more. I had to pay extra since it was going to a residence and then I needed a truck with a lift gate. But it was worth it. Because now I actually had a tank ordered. Then about two weeks later it shipped, and it took only 4 days to get to Houston. Since Scott was so awesome, I also placed the order for the other items that have been coming in. The ATI Powermodule, the Vectra L1, and the GHL Doser 2. Talk about a night and day difference in service! And they were rewarded for it. Thanks again, Scott!

So here we are! Fedex arrived this morning.
Hopefully that wasn't too boring of a story. But enough of that, here is a few pics.
Now I'm back at work, with this beauty sitting at home, partially unpacked.

A big old fedex truck backing up to my house...

There's my pallet. The last delivery.
There is a tank AND stand in there.
The stand I have to put together. Maybe I should have just gone to Ikea? ;)

MURICA!

I thought this was neat.
All clear! But I asked Mr Fedex man to hang out for a minute while I opened it up and inspected the glass.

And we are good to go!
Everything intact, no damage.

The bundles of stand parts were sitting on top of the tank.
I'll be assembling that this week (pics to come) and then getting the tank in position.

That's all for now! :)

revhtree · Apr 4, 2016

Is it in!!?!?!?

d2mini · Apr 4, 2016

revhtree said:
Is it in!!?!?!?

Sniper post! LOL! One second too late, Rev. ;)

revhtree · Apr 4, 2016

Whoa we posted at the same time! HA!

Flipside · Apr 4, 2016

Wow! Welcome back to urban life bro!

Nice home and great work so far! Loving the footprint of that tank!!! You'll have to 'splain how the overflow works, though (when you get a chance).

TighTT · Apr 4, 2016

Nice!!!

Txdragonslayer · Apr 4, 2016

Very nice Dennis, I also considered them too, but thought the shipping was a little steep, I am curious to see what you think as you build it, because i may re-consider them again for an upgrade.

d2mini · Apr 5, 2016

Flipside said:
Wow! Welcome back to urban life bro!

Nice home and great work so far! Loving the footprint of that tank!!! You'll have to 'splain how the overflow works, though (when you get a chance).

Thanks! And yeah, I gotta figure that out.
Had a hard enough time last night trying to figure out how the stand goes together! :confused: :D
The instructions were a vague guide at best.

TighTT said:
Nice!!!

Thanks! :)

Sheldon Jessup said:
Very nice Dennis, I also considered them too, but thought the shipping was a little steep, I am curious to see what you think as you build it, because i may re-consider them again for an upgrade.

Yeah, shipping isn't cheap but really no tank is cheap to ship. So unless you find a local shop, it's going to be a bit pricey. My last tank was from Planet outside of Dallas so it didn't cost much to get it to Houston.
FWIW, I was talking to someone last night who was looking at a custom tank with almost identical dims, made by Coast to Coast Aquariums and with shipping and starphire glass the cost was just about identical to my costs with shipping, and that was just the tank. My cost included the stand as well. :)

gerards_reef · Apr 5, 2016

Dude those are some sweet dimensions on the new tank!

Zack33 · Apr 5, 2016

Looks awesome so far! I've always liked the look of ELOS tanks, just never spent the money on one before.
Tagging along for sure!

PS. AWESOME OFFICE!!

Reefrookie220 · Apr 5, 2016

@d2mini , are you going with Tampa Bay's rock this go around? I feel like it'd be a sweet fit with the triton method.

d2mini · Apr 5, 2016

iamgant said:
Dude those are some sweet dimensions on the new tank!

Thanks! My 25g Lagoon is basically the same exact proportions and I love it. :)

Zack33 said:
Looks awesome so far! I've always liked the look of ELOS tanks, just never spent the money on one before.
Tagging along for sure!

PS. AWESOME OFFICE!!

haha, thanks!
I'm loving the office. We were basically living out of boxes in there up till now. I was tired of hitting my head on that chandelier. :p

Reefrookie220 said:
@d2mini , are you going with Tampa Bay's rock this go around? I feel like it'd be a sweet fit with the triton method.

You betcha. More on that later this month. ;)

d2mini · Apr 6, 2016

UPDATE 4-6-16

Ok, the stand is built. It's a beast.
Took me several hours to build. A lot of that was head scratching in the beginning because the instructions were a vague guide at best. There seems to have been some minor changes in the design.
When I was looking at the illustrations in the instructions, they didn't seem to be matching up with the pieces I had. And nothing was labeled. So just trying to even figure out what was the back panel and what was the top panel took me a while.
And another piece seems to be completely absent in the new design.
But that said, it turned out well and like I said above, it's a beast. It's marine great MDF inside which weighs a ton. It goes together much like Ikea furniture with the same kind of hardware, but it ends up very sturdy and the panels are quite thick.
What's interesting though is how little of the tank is supported. Basically the sides, along the back about 3/4 of the way back, and the very front corners.

Now that it's built and I have a better sense of the actual and visual space that it takes up, I'm second guessing the placement, and thinking my second choice might be the better of the two.
The one thing I didn't like about where I was originally placing it was that it would really only be viewable form two sides. It's such a nice tank that is seems a shame to tuck it in the corner like that and lose that much viewing area.
So now I'm thinking of pulling it out and putting it against the adjacent wall, directly across from the kitchen island. Even with the 31" depth of the tank, there is still a ton of room between it and the island so that's a non-issue.
The bathroom sink is directly behind it if I ever wanted to utilize the drain. And now we would have unobstructed views of all three sides.
The downside is that it's more out in front of the TV which may produce more glare. I guess I could always dim the lights if I needed to watch a movie or something when it mattered.
And the overall scale of the tank is large for the space which is more pronounced in this location. Again... it's a beast. lol :D I'm so used to my tank being more built in and in a room that's more off to the side rather than front and center.

Here's some pics.
What do you think?