CommanderInReef
Community Member
Bow front tanks are the bane of my existence. I started my first reef tank in fall 2020. It felt like the perfect time during lockdown. I bought a bow-front 24 gallon cube AIO. the lighting was an ai prime hd and the internal filter. However, the bow-front and cubed dank caused the return pump to blast corals even on the lowest setting. I also jerry rigged an ATO to maintain salinity and it worked surprisingly well. I bought corals and started to populate my tank and let them grow. However, being a senior in highschool I didn't have much money so I added few corals once every couple months. You can see the tank at its peak with corals thriving, except for a bad species gonoporia I bought. I struggled with light spectrum setting since the single puck light system brought too much of a peak at the center while barely hitting the corners. However, I couldn't expand my tank far. After hundreds of dollars put into the tank. I could not get over the hurdle of flow. The tank was small and cubed. So pumps had to be on the back wall, or back sides of the wall. But the cube was too small causing the pump to blast corals and bounce off the opposing wall and blast the other side. Further, the bow-front caused the flow to perfectly curve along the front glass and blast the other sides. This made placing the pump on the back impossible. Even the return pump would curve along the front and cause too much flow. I bought a special return pump with very low flow but this slowed filtration and barely solved the problem. Finally I bought a wavemaker hoping to solve my problems but even that didnt work. I ended up getting into a college and left a few months ago and tore the tank down. I took all fish out and the corals that werent cemented to the rock from overusing coral glue. I learned alot from my first tank and plan to get back into it with a proper budget and experience. I do believe that no one should use a bow tank AIO unless its atleast a 36 or above. I couldnt imagine a 36 would be much better however since the design of the return pump and bow-front dont mix. Also the ai prime hd was pretty good but I think purchasing a set of bulbs and researching a spectrum would work better. The light adjustments create too many variables for fine tuning and unless you use presets of k spectrums you really arent sure what youre doing. If you have any thoughts or issues with a bow front let me know!
