Gotcha thanks for the clarification. I certainly think harsh flow can be a contributing factor to seam integrity. Should it be? No, there should be stress test studies done by the manufacturer to see if there is a limit to how often a wave can bounce off the side panel.
I’ve got a Red Sea Max E 260. You’ve got me wanting to switch out before the problem arises.
Can you provide some data to prove/suggest what you're saying? Yes - they put in a brace for the larger tanks - thats true
Highly doubtful that RedSea has sold 10 of thousands of tanks world wide. A few thousand maybe. I built and sold reef tanks and represented for other companies for more than 20 years. That volume is very unlikely given the size of the aquarium industry. Aqueon, LeeMar, All Glass, Tenecor, Clear For Life, TruVue, Planet Aquariums and other manufacturers likely run circles around RedSea for volume over the years. Yet these high end tanks seem to have a large failure rate given the high cost. I love the way they look but I will never place one in my house...cause I can build my own acrylic!
One thing that I did not know - is that the 'expectation' is that many tanks fail after x years. (in general) - However - I think you're incorrect - if you look at large tanks - especially reef systems - my comment would be redsea is the leading manufacturer. Of course - there are 100 10 gallon tanks sold for every 1 100 gallon tank. I do not think Planet Aquariums 'run circles around Redsea'. https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/content/post/brs360-episode-9-tank-manufacturer
Yet 90% of the new build threads here are Red Sea....go figure....things that make you go hhmmm...
And the same few detractors too
Saltwater 2 years, freshwater 5 decades off and on.
I know you are data driven so you should not trust the manufacturer to provide accurate data. That is akin to trusting the tobacco industry to tell you smoking is healthful! Does the manufacturer give numbers of systems sold worldwide? If so you could extrapolate some data just from the incident of failure on R2R alone. Just seems unreasonably high. I saw one fail at a local pet store years ago when they were first available. The store was a good customer of mine and sold more acrylic than Red Sea by a long shot. SeaClear, TruVue, Tenecor, All Glass, and Lee Mar ran the board on the west coast for more than 20 years. My company was more regional to the Northwest and we delivered way less than 10,000 tanks in more than 20 years. I was active in national trade shows each year for more than a decade so I was exposed to the majority of product mafacturers and distributors both nationally and internationally through those shows.
I have ordered from them - I like them as a company - I will say there are multiple unhappy people on this (older) thread: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/advanced-acrylics-whats-going-on.652712/. I.e. every company has people with positive and negative 'reviews'. I own 2 RedSea large tanks. I have never had a problem with either one - and I retrofitted my stand with their recommended 'fix'. Over the years I've been doing this, I think I've seen every brand of tank have issues. There are at least 5 LFS in our area - and all of them have a RedSea tank set up as their 'display tank'. I'm also not sure what percent of the market share they have - BUT - when I recently looked for a new tank, many companies do not make the sizes that RedSea does. So - I wonder if Redsea has more of the 'large tank' market.
Actually - I don't have a dog in the race, per se. I own a tank, and have had no problems. If it had had a problem - I would have reported it. You're right, it's hard to get hard data - but that goes both ways. However, I do trust when the company says they have 100K+ tanks sold worldwide, and I also believe it when they say they have 79K members on their Facebook page and 75K likes. Waterbox has 22K members on their page, and Planet Aquariums has about 12K likes. I would assume that most of the people who are followers or liked the company(ies) are positive on the company.
