My "Un-Reef-Ready" RedSea 300 XL "Mini-Peninsula"

Schpample · Oct 8, 2020

Brand newbie here! Just getting started in the hobby, and already biting off a pretty heavy tank customization. My girlfriend and I are super excited about getting into reefing, watching ALL of the BRS 160 vids and soaking up info.

We picked out a RedSea 300 XL setup they had in stock at our LFS after hunting around a bit and deciding it was the right size for a room-divider type spot in our basement. The spot lends itself really well to a look-through tank, but the RS Peninsula 500 is way to big for the space, so... we decided to go with the 300 XL and just pull off the black liner. The overflow tower would be in the way, but it would be better than nothing.

We brought the tank home, set it in place and pretty much immediately pulled off the black background film. We were thrilled with the result! The tank looked awesome in its new position and the look-through style fit super well in the room. But... I'm a relentless tinkerer, and the tank looked so good I already that I couldn't fight off the the thought that fully converting it to a custom peninsula tank was something that just HAD to happen.

I got started the other night, and spent a few hours VERY carefully cutting the overflow tower out of the tank armed with a razor blade, and a healthy dose of moxy. Went really well overall, and the glass cleaned up very nicely with the razor and some patience.

Plan from here is to drill the glass on the wall end for overflow, return, and a half-depth strainer drain for easy water changes. Been waiting a few days now to hear back from RS to verify that the glass is not tempered, and is therefore drillable. If it turns out to be tempered, we'll just have to settle for a hang-on pumped syphon overflow despite the drawbacks, we're just too in love with the look through peninsula at this point to consider turning back.

I've got all the plumbing parts picked out in schedule 80 for that nice dark grey professional look, and either purchased or en-route. Found the pipe and most of the fittings at a local Lowe's, but they were pretty hit or miss on which locations stocked the materials, so you may have to search around. Gate valve and bulk-head fittings I got from another LFS, along with the Eshopps Prodigy overflow.

Next steps are to plug the plumbing holes in the bottom left over from the original tower, and drill the back wall once my new drill guide and an (at-your-risk) go-ahead from RedSea arrive. Then we'll apply some blackout film to the new back of the tank and plumb it all down to the sump from there!

A couple of thoughts and discoveries from this process so far in case anyone else decides they want their own custom RS "Mini-Pen":

- It did feel a bit heinous to cut into the beautiful work that RS did building this system, but when you want what you want bad enough... lol

- The pre-built plumbing from RS will end up being totally useless. This is a bit of a bummer, but from what I've read the plumbing hardware was a pretty low point in the design of these systems anyway, so this will probably not be something I cry over at the end of the day.

-All the new plumbing is pretty cheap compared to the start-up cost of the rest of this system, certainly less than the protein skimmer I'll be picking up in the next few days.

- The Reefer tanks use different qualities of glass between the front, sides, and back of the tank. This makes absolutely perfect sense given the use-case the tank is designed for. Why waste expensive optical glass on a tank wall destined to be blacked out anyway? That said, all of the glass on this aquarium is beautifully made and assembled, and for the money, I suspect it would be tough to get as nice of a peninsula tank, cabinet, and sump system combo for anywhere near this price-point any other way. One side of this system will end up a little prettier than the other, but I think that's an overall worthy trade, and I'm not sure a casual observer would even notice.

- Extracting the overflow tower was not terribly difficult, but it was a bit nerve-wracking to cut anywhere near the tank seals at the bottom. Take your time, and be patient. I was able to work the razor blade down between the aquarium glass and the tower walls with a bit of care, and from there it was fairly easy to push the razor along smoothly down the seam. With the tower out, cleaning up the glass was just a matter of patient razoring, and the results look pretty good IMHO

That's all for now! Fingers crossed that the glass isn't tempered, I'll post an update back here either way.

ScubaFish802 · Oct 8, 2020

Awesome, great setup!

harley32907 · Oct 8, 2020

Welcome to R2R!

fishguy242 · Oct 8, 2020

hi,fingers crossed,along for the journey

Schpample · Nov 6, 2020

My RedSea 300 XL mini-pen conversion is complete, and the tank is up and a few days into cycling! Here come a slew of updates! I'll break 'em down a bit to keep from making a monolithic mega-post

So, rewinding a bit... let's talk about the plumbing plan and drilling. I picked up an EShopps Prodigy overflow at my LFS and built the plumbing plan around it. At this point, I have mixed feelings about the Prodigy, but I'll cover that in another post. Here's the plumbing layout with lots of Unions for maintenance and reconfiguration. Spoiler alert: I do not regret using all those unions! This setup ends up being a Herbie style overflow with a nice gate valve on the main drain and an ungated emergency overflow line. The return line uses a flapper style check valve with true unions and a 3D printed random flow generator in the tank. All tank wall penetrations are gasketed bulkhead fittings to avoid glue and keep things simple.

At the top right of the plumbing pile is one additional line with a 90-deg ball valve, this is a quick-drain pipe plumbed in about 1/3 of the way up the wall of the tank with a low-profile drain strainer. The idea here is that we intend to do weekly water changes, and the quicker and easier that is to do, the more likely we are to stick with the program. Hook up a drain line from the quick drain in the sump to our nearby sink, open the valve, drain off 5-10%, pump back in new water and we're done. We'll use a more traditional syphon approach to clean rocks and sand as needed. Putting the drain up a ways from the bottom of the tank will ensure that we have a safety margin of water still in the tank should we ever go completely brain-dead and walk away while its draining.

On to drilling! We got confirmation from RedSea that the glass was not tempered and set about drilling on the back patio. Used a cordless drill, 90 degree drill guide, and diamond tipped hole saws to put all our new holes in the side-wall of the tank. Ran a garden hose over the drill bit throughout the process to prevent heat build up. A patch of blue masking tape on the inside catches the glass plug when we break through, and thats all there is to it! Overall, very slow process, took about 6 minutes of continuous drilling per hole which feels like an eternity while you're at it, but pretty easy to do with the right tools.

And here's all the plumbing during dry-fit!

One quick note about dry-fitting schedule-80. Its a PITA. The dry joints won't insert beyond about 1/2 inch without getting almost hopelessly stuck together. Once you add the cement though, they'll bottom all the way out and its easy to find yourself with pipes that fit perfectly in dry-fit coming up 1/2 inch short ;Facepalm Don't know what the best solution is here. I went with marking insertion depths in dry-fit so that everything lines up, and deliberately NOT BOTTOMING out the fittings while gluing. I can't recommend this approach since its against the manufacturer's instructions... but its working out for me fine so far.

Last but not least I pulled off all the dry-fitted plumbing and applied a black vinyl window film to the new peninsula end of the tank. This stuff had a pretty steep learning curve. Any dust or animal hair wafting about the room will make little bubbles underneath it, which will make you want to pull your hair out... which will then waft about the room, get stuck, and cause another bubble. Plan on doing this whole thing twice, once to figure out how to get it done right, then rip off the ugly learning attempt (don't worry its not adhered, and comes off very cleanly) and do it again with your new found skills. Assuming from the get-go that you'll have one to several throw-away attempts will reduce your frustration levels significantly. In the end though, I think the results speak for themselves.

One last note on this film: It looks VERY translucent when installed, and I was pretty concerned about seeing the plumbing through the back of the tank. SPOILER ALERT: As soon as you add water to the tank, the internal reflection of light from the inside of the tank will make it appear completely opaque black.