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After keeping fish for over three years and keeping reef aquarium for over two year, I have finally started my dream build. This is something I have planned for over a year and been actively preparing since last June. But I didn’t really know if or when it was going to happen until my wife gave the green light a month ago. Cheers!
Brief introduction: I have been keeping fish for a little over three years. First year was just fresh water tropical fish. Then in February of 2016 I started trying out saltwater fish and I thought I would never get into reefing because all corals seem so boring to me: they don’t move or even eat. However after merely 2 months I started to realize that a tank with just fish and rocks were even more boring. Sigh…
My first salt water tank was a 40G breeder and it quickly escalated to a 125G which I am still running.
Overall everything is doing pretty good in this tank but the dimension is far from ideal. It is only 18” deep (front to back) which made it really hard to aquascape. There is very little room at the front of tank for coral placement. In addition, since this is my first real reef tank, I didn’t plan everything very well. From the pics you can see the stand is basically bare-bone and the wires are all tangled. And to make things worse, everything is in the living room so needless to say the wife hates it. As a matter of fact she hates it so much that she granted me the funds for this 300G build, as long as I take down the 125G and keep everything in my home office. Score!!!
Now let’s get into the new build. Below is my home office/fish room. The tank you see in this room is my quarantine setup, another 125G which I am going to be using to quarantine everything that goes into the 300G. Obviously the room needs some cleaning. The wife and the kids are going to stay with grandpa and grandma for 40 days in the summer so I have plenty of time to reorganize everything. The room is next to the garage and the dimension 12’ X 10’. I plan to set the tank next to the window where the computer table is now. One problem I am facing is the room is on the west side of the house and it gets really hot in the summer afternoon. My plan is to setup a chiller in the garage and run 1" PVC through the wall. Then I realized since I am going to run water into the garage, why not keep the skimmer in the garage as well. That way the skimmer will always draw air from outside while keep the noise out of the room. And I don’t ever have to worry about the skimmer overflow on the floor!
With the location determined, next is the tank. I went with Custom Aquariums after doing research for about eight months. I basically searched all reviews for all aquarium builders available online and some of them go back to 2006 I think. I was going to go with Glass Cages at the beginning due to their low prices but after reading some pretty negative reviews I moved on. While I want to save as much money as I can, the aquarium is simply the most important part of the build and the one thing I can’t start over with.
Then after a few months I stumped into Custom Aquariums website. It got my attention because it had a tool to let me custom build the tank I wanted and gave me a pretty accurate quote. I probably built hundreds of tanks using this tool just to see what prices I would get. The price was pretty reasonable compared to other builders. Plus they offer some innovative designs for overflow and return nozzle. I certainly had some doubt when I first found them since there were very few reviews available. What helped me make up my mind was in late 2017, a guy on Youtube called Travis with a channel called Fishofhex shared his experience with Custom Aquariums and posted multiple videos of the 300 gallon tank he received. Photos and videos are worth more than a thousand words when it comes to aquariums. The tank he received just looked awesome!
So as soon as my wife said yes I sent Custom Aquarium an email asking for a quote. And within 24 hours I received a reply from Bob Pontow with a quote in the attachment. Then after emailing back and forth for about three days fine tuning the details I found myself speaking with Bob telling him my credit card number. Something worth mentioning in this process is I had never had to wait for more than 24 hours to hear back from Custom Aquarium. They even replied on Saturday!
The tank I ordered is 96” long, 30” deep, and 24” high with ultra-clear front and side panels and tempered bottom. All glasses are ½” thick and the frames are made of anodized aluminum like all other tanks they make. I also purchased one of the H2Overflow kit with a capacity of 2400GHP and two Siphone Stopper return nozzles (I actually bought them a while ago). To make moving the tank easy, Bob suggested I rent 8 industrial standard suction cups which cost like $40. The tank is about 400 lbs and these suction cups should make getting the tank into the room and on the stand much easier. I was told the lead time is about two months so I should be able to receive it some time late July or early August.
Brief introduction: I have been keeping fish for a little over three years. First year was just fresh water tropical fish. Then in February of 2016 I started trying out saltwater fish and I thought I would never get into reefing because all corals seem so boring to me: they don’t move or even eat. However after merely 2 months I started to realize that a tank with just fish and rocks were even more boring. Sigh…
My first salt water tank was a 40G breeder and it quickly escalated to a 125G which I am still running.
Overall everything is doing pretty good in this tank but the dimension is far from ideal. It is only 18” deep (front to back) which made it really hard to aquascape. There is very little room at the front of tank for coral placement. In addition, since this is my first real reef tank, I didn’t plan everything very well. From the pics you can see the stand is basically bare-bone and the wires are all tangled. And to make things worse, everything is in the living room so needless to say the wife hates it. As a matter of fact she hates it so much that she granted me the funds for this 300G build, as long as I take down the 125G and keep everything in my home office. Score!!!
Now let’s get into the new build. Below is my home office/fish room. The tank you see in this room is my quarantine setup, another 125G which I am going to be using to quarantine everything that goes into the 300G. Obviously the room needs some cleaning. The wife and the kids are going to stay with grandpa and grandma for 40 days in the summer so I have plenty of time to reorganize everything. The room is next to the garage and the dimension 12’ X 10’. I plan to set the tank next to the window where the computer table is now. One problem I am facing is the room is on the west side of the house and it gets really hot in the summer afternoon. My plan is to setup a chiller in the garage and run 1" PVC through the wall. Then I realized since I am going to run water into the garage, why not keep the skimmer in the garage as well. That way the skimmer will always draw air from outside while keep the noise out of the room. And I don’t ever have to worry about the skimmer overflow on the floor!
With the location determined, next is the tank. I went with Custom Aquariums after doing research for about eight months. I basically searched all reviews for all aquarium builders available online and some of them go back to 2006 I think. I was going to go with Glass Cages at the beginning due to their low prices but after reading some pretty negative reviews I moved on. While I want to save as much money as I can, the aquarium is simply the most important part of the build and the one thing I can’t start over with.
Then after a few months I stumped into Custom Aquariums website. It got my attention because it had a tool to let me custom build the tank I wanted and gave me a pretty accurate quote. I probably built hundreds of tanks using this tool just to see what prices I would get. The price was pretty reasonable compared to other builders. Plus they offer some innovative designs for overflow and return nozzle. I certainly had some doubt when I first found them since there were very few reviews available. What helped me make up my mind was in late 2017, a guy on Youtube called Travis with a channel called Fishofhex shared his experience with Custom Aquariums and posted multiple videos of the 300 gallon tank he received. Photos and videos are worth more than a thousand words when it comes to aquariums. The tank he received just looked awesome!
So as soon as my wife said yes I sent Custom Aquarium an email asking for a quote. And within 24 hours I received a reply from Bob Pontow with a quote in the attachment. Then after emailing back and forth for about three days fine tuning the details I found myself speaking with Bob telling him my credit card number. Something worth mentioning in this process is I had never had to wait for more than 24 hours to hear back from Custom Aquarium. They even replied on Saturday!
The tank I ordered is 96” long, 30” deep, and 24” high with ultra-clear front and side panels and tempered bottom. All glasses are ½” thick and the frames are made of anodized aluminum like all other tanks they make. I also purchased one of the H2Overflow kit with a capacity of 2400GHP and two Siphone Stopper return nozzles (I actually bought them a while ago). To make moving the tank easy, Bob suggested I rent 8 industrial standard suction cups which cost like $40. The tank is about 400 lbs and these suction cups should make getting the tank into the room and on the stand much easier. I was told the lead time is about two months so I should be able to receive it some time late July or early August.
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