The FrankenReefer 450

[That Crusso Kid]

The perimeter inlet vent hood is indeed working quite well! The smell of vinegar came down to a dull roar as soon as I dropped it down over the tank rim…

I’m using Momentive RTV100 series (RTV108 [translucent], specifically) wherever I can these days! It’s got roughly twice the working time of ASI, and is rated for over 400PSI in tension… It’s also a zero slump formula which behaves nearly identically to ASI, albeit with slightly less viscosity! (The latter allows you to get a bit more haptic feedback when seating glass into a silicone bead, inevitably leading to me doing away with seam thickness shims for general work!)

My building tank days are probably over but I will store this info. Thanks.

 

[UncommonSense]

My building tank days are probably over but I will store this info. Thanks.

It’s never too late to baffle out a sump, though!

 

[UncommonSense]

Bottom bracing is complete!

The remaining ~7.5ft of 1.25” bottom bracing took around 1.5 tubes of silicone with significant excess, and could probably be reduced to one tube… though, I was using my electric caulking gun, and didn’t want any silicone starved joints, so I took the bigger gob approach!

Now I just wait and let it cure for two months, switching gears to other projects, and rotating back to this within 4-5 weeks once I’ve hopefully got a ~58”x3” bar of glass for the front pane eurobrace!


Next up?

— Stand repair for a 95G acrylic bowfront so I can get it out of the garage (it’s way too nice to salvage, if anyone’s looking for a reef ready 60”x18”x24” bowfront w/custom 45g acrylic sump?

— FrankenReefer stand construction… undecided on lumber, plywood, metal, or hybrid still…

— scratch-building project Clarity (right frustum shaped aquarium) for my LFS; that’s going to be a lot of wet saw time, and one very complex compound miter joint in glass!

 

[UncommonSense]

I decided to check the fume hood’s fitment on the tank by seeing if the bulkhead holes in the assembly table were pulling an appreciable amount of air…

Yep, working like a charm, drawing continuous fresh air over my slab lamination 24/7… perfect!

 

[UncommonSense]

Well, I’ve had another highly productive day around here!

namely, coming up with a method to repeatably drill Red Sea bulkhead doubler plates in glass to a tolerance that matches the factory hole pattern on all ~300-600L Reefer aquariums!

Here’s the result:

As you can see, this plate of true 1/2” (.497”) glass is rough cut slightly oversized, but will be trimmed down to final dimensions so it fits directly inside a Red Sea overflow box.

That said, I ended up nailing hole spacing, and did the entire physical drilling process of 3X 50mm (~1-7/8”) holes in 25 mins flat!

So, if anyone else is planning on rebuilding a Reefer, and wants to beef up the very thin bottom glass pane cross-section between bulkhead hole rims and bottom pane edge, feel free to reach out! — I’ve got a process worked out now to manufacture these repeatably!


( also, I think I found a lens to Professor Farnsworth’s glasses!)

 

[UncommonSense]

I had an interesting afternoon… breaking down a G2 Reefer XL525 to glass panes, and hauling it home! (Identical to my reefer 450, aside from an extra 2.6” front to back, all ~5/8” glass, and a fourth bulkhead hole for dual returns!)

Here’s the worst seam I’ve ever seen, it unzipped catastrophically at ~3AM one morning, apparently…

This is obviously the front right vertical seam, front left was barely hanging on by a thread, and the front bottom seam was noticeably much easier to cut through at the center point, despite not showing visible signs of failure (Silicone was tearing, vs. peeling away from the glass)

In any case, I broke this tank down to five panes plus overflow box, and loading it onto a impromptu glass rack, then loaded up sump, cabinet, and everything else in around 2.5hrs!

So, now I need to decide… do I rebuild the R525XL alongside the R450? Or do I cannibalize it for its ~5/8” thick glass, making the R450’s 58” long eurobrace from one of the R525XL’s panes?

 

[UncommonSense]

Finally, I’m one month into curing on the bottom seam reinforcements!

I decided that I should probably start getting going on the remaining parts for this tank, and have not had any luck sourcing a ~58”X2” strip of 12-19mm glass for anything resembling a sane price…

So, I’ve decided to pull the trigger on breaking down the R525XL’s panes to what’s needed:

— the 14.7mm short side panes will yield right pentagon profile seam reinforcement rods, center braces, eurobrace sides, and possibly stacked glass around overflow box base…

— the 15mm bottom pane is identical in width to the R450, so it will work beautifully for that long euro bar; it’s already at the target length! This will be by far the heaviest pane, the longest cut, and the thickest glass I’ve cut on this saw…

I plan to part 1/4-1/3 of the bottom pane off as a long strip, then cut that down as a significantly lighter strip to make several eurobrace bars for 5’ (technically 59”) wide Red Sea tanks… (if anyone with a 5’ rimless G1-G2+ Reefer is able to do local pickup, I’ve got a much-need front eurobrace strip for you!)

14.7mm symmetrical right pentagon profile rods, profile view:

14.7mm, 12.7mm, 8mm rods, profile view for bulk comparison:

I ended up cutting two rods today, and will likely cut a handful more so I can pick my best set to install…

I then turned my attention back to edge finishing; getting rid of micro fractures in my ground edges… a dedicated lapping machine for long straight glass pane edges is not only thousands of dollars, but would consume a sizable chunk of garage space…

So, I decided to get creative… technically, I already have a rather powerful, precise grinding assembly in my wet saw… what if I adapt a lapping disc onto it?

I had to machine out the 1/4” arbor hole on this Covington Engineering 325 grit diamond lapping disc to 5/8”, then mated it to an existing continuous rim blade on the wet saw’s arbor…

The results are honestly quite impressive! — I think I need a bit more water flow for the raw surface area being ground to avoid excessively “milky” slurry, but that’s an easy fix!

This is not something I’d recommend a hobbyist try to cobble together unless they’ve really thought things through and double checked all the safety specs… this lapping disc would happily explode in every direction if one managed to catch a glass corner on the rim of the disc! (Or, if it wasn’t rated for the RPM your saw is spinning)

In fact, if I use this setup for more than the occasional, carefully set up sliding bed grind, or hand-grind; I’d look into actually toeing out the blade by a fraction of a degree via eccentric alignment dowels, making the blade’s trailing face half be the only part contacting the glass edge… this would reduce the risk of accidentally catching a pane corner on the disc rim when using the sliding bed repeatedly for production, but would also create a minute concave in the glass edge being lapped…

I’ll call it a tentative success… it will work for my needs, and tell me if it’s actually worth pursuing the tedious multi-step process required to bring a ground edge back to optically clear via coldworking!



Next up? More pentagonal rods, euro bars, center braces, and assembly of the laminated, stepped seam overflow box glass!

 

[UncommonSense]

Stand design:
I’ve been waffling around with ideas to build a stand for this thing for a while now, and essentially have too many options which aren’t ideal… so, I figured I’d crowdsource!

Requirements:

— At least 59” wide, 20” deep, 30” tall…
— cannot have a lumber rear header beam, Red Sea bulkhead hole placement leaves hole rims <1.25” from rear exterior of tank.

— ideally, has space for my 60g 48”x18.25”x17” tall sump (24” total clearance to get skimmer cup out, and obviously means no center brace…


My options:

— scratch built plywood/lumber hybrid, 3/4” rear plywood sheet for load bearing, notched for bulkhead holes… 2x6 or very well aged 4x6 lumber front header… Possibly removable front center brace…

— I have a complete Red Sea R525XL stand and sump… it is 2.6” deeper than the R450, but identical width… I could add a reinforcing header beam of 2x4-2x6 behind the factory front header to catch the front of the tank, leaving ~2” of exposed stand in front of the tank (ugly, but easy)… this would mean I’m stuck using the 47g Red Sea sump (after reinforcement/redesign), vs. my own 60g rimmed acrylic Glass Cages sump…

— I could steal the R525XL stand’s neoprene padded top plate, and possibly its rear plate to build into my own lumber and plywood hybrid… probably cutting the top plate to the correct depth, and sealing the cut edge…


Thoughts?

 

[That Crusso Kid]

Stand design:
I’ve been waffling around with ideas to build a stand for this thing for a while now, and essentially have too many options which aren’t ideal… so, I figured I’d crowdsource!

Requirements:

— At least 59” wide, 20” deep, 30” tall…
— cannot have a lumber rear header beam, Red Sea bulkhead hole placement leaves hole rims <1.25” from rear exterior of tank.

— ideally, has space for my 60g 48”x18.25”x17” tall sump (24” total clearance to get skimmer cup out, and obviously means no center brace…


My options:

— scratch built plywood/lumber hybrid, 3/4” rear plywood sheet for load bearing, notched for bulkhead holes… 2x6 or very well aged 4x6 lumber front header… Possibly removable front center brace…

— I have a complete Red Sea R525XL stand and sump… it is 2.6” deeper than the R450, but identical width… I could add a reinforcing header beam of 2x4-2x6 behind the factory front header to catch the front of the tank, leaving ~2” of exposed stand in front of the tank (ugly, but easy)… this would mean I’m stuck using the 47g Red Sea sump (after reinforcement/redesign), vs. my own 60g rimmed acrylic Glass Cages sump…

— I could steal the R525XL stand’s neoprene padded top plate, and possibly its rear plate to build into my own lumber and plywood hybrid… probably cutting the top plate to the correct depth, and sealing the cut edge…


Thoughts?

Not great options but I believe #1 to be the best solution.

 

[UncommonSense]

Not great options but I believe #1 to be the best solution.

I concur… well, so the build begins!

— After re-measuring, I’m seeing that I’ve actually got roughly 1.5” of disparity in concrete height from side to side… and it isn’t a consistent slope! that said, the lumber leveling plate is going to be a bit iffy here…

— The concrete slope is there as part of a drainage plan that predates my time, so putting a concrete leveling pad in this specific location would cause all sorts of drainage related problems whenever I spill on the floor…

That said, I think I’ll go get a 10’ redwood heart 2x6 to split in two, temporarily frame out to width, and scribe to the floor’s slope…

The idea being to omit the leveling plate, and use the stands bottom frame to conform to the concrete floor in that location by trimming the high spots out of it (hence the x6, vs. x4)… effectively leveling the stand out by subtracting from the bottom of it!

this should save me several precious inches of stand height, while having significantly less point pressure on any one section of the bottom frame… also, redwood heart is incredibly rot resistant (ground contact), and easier to work!


Once the bottom frame is all finished, the rest of stand construction will be fairly straightforward, less the 3/4” plywood rear load bearing panel (rests on top of bottom frame)…

 

[That Crusso Kid]

I concur… well, so the build begins!

— After re-measuring, I’m seeing that I’ve actually got roughly 1.5” of disparity in concrete height from side to side… and it isn’t a consistent slope! that said, the lumber leveling plate is going to be a bit iffy here…

— The concrete slope is there as part of a drainage plan that predates my time, so putting a concrete leveling pad in this specific location would cause all sorts of drainage related problems whenever I spill on the floor…

That said, I think I’ll go get a 10’ redwood heart 2x6 to split in two, temporarily frame out to width, and scribe to the floor’s slope…

The idea being to omit the leveling plate, and use the stands bottom frame to conform to the concrete floor in that location by trimming the high spots out of it (hence the x6, vs. x4)… effectively leveling the stand out by subtracting from the bottom of it!

this should save me several precious inches of stand height, while having significantly less point pressure on any one section of the bottom frame… also, redwood heart is incredibly rot resistant (ground contact), and easier to work!


Once the bottom frame is all finished, the rest of stand construction will be fairly straightforward, less the 3/4” plywood rear load bearing panel (rests on top of bottom frame)…

1.5" difference in that short of a span? That's a pretty hefty slope.

Redwood is an amazing wood. I haven't worked with it in about 20 years when I built a redwood fence for a client. This was in Chicago. I don't even know where to buy redwood now-a-days.

 

[UncommonSense]

1.5" difference in that short of a span? That's a pretty hefty slope.

Oh yeah… I just leveled out a 4ft stand in the same room that took a 2x4 plus actual shims on one side today, in fact! It’s atrocious concrete work… thankfully I can blame someone else for it! (And, I suspect more than a few adult beverages were involved in that initial concrete pour!)

The stand in question is temporary, to move my 40B freshwater QT tank off the old R450 stand… a necessary evil to unpaint myself from the corner of impulse buying those elusive knifefish!


Now, I can:

— Get the 60g sump out to work on rearranging some baffles in it… (I stuck lumber uprights between the old R450’s upper and lower framing at front/rear of stand at the 3’ mark to safely stick the 40B there, trapping the sump in, not expecting QT to drag on so long)

— get the old R450 stand, and leveling plate out to start scribing new redwood heart lower framing to mirror terrible concrete slope… (it’s that, or go nuts with probably 8-12x leveling feet on a standard unmodified 2x4 bottom frame to get an extra 2” of in-stand height to get my skimmer out with ease…)

— pop the 4’x8’ wall panel behind the stand off to relocate some outlets, and add multiple additional GFCI receptacles… (initial planning from years ago had the four-gang dedicated tank power a bit too low, three receptacles in series off a single GFCI receptacle, and conveniently landing dead-center right behind my plumbing in the stand… I think I’ll relocate it above the water splash radius, or off to one side of the tank to keep outlets away from the sump area…)



On the tank side; I have a roller stand, and am more or less just procrastinating on cutting into that 14.7mm (~9/16”) R525XL bottom pane, plus probably another few hours of cutting vertical seam reinforcement rods at this point! I’d love to install my laminated, stepped seam overflow box to expedite the final stage of silicone curing… but, I really should wait the full 60 days and confirm my whiteness lamination is truly cured through before I add any more silicone to that general overflow area!

 

[UncommonSense]

Redwood is an amazing wood. I haven't worked with it in about 20 years when I built a redwood fence for a client. This was in Chicago. I don't even know where to buy redwood now-a-days.

It really is some incredible stuff… soft and forgiving to work, while having incredible rot resistance, and being about twice as dimensionally stable as Douglas fir!

Also, holy moly! If that fence was all CA coast redwood heartwood, it must have cost a fortune in materials alone! (I did an 80 foot, 36” tall dog fence last year, it was over $2k in lumber alone, in the heart of redwood logging territory!!)

 

[That Crusso Kid]

It really is some incredible stuff… soft and forgiving to work, while having incredible rot resistance, and being about twice as dimensionally stable as Douglas fir!

Also, holy moly! If that fence was all CA coast redwood heartwood, it must have cost a fortune in materials alone! (I did an 80 foot, 36” tall dog fence last year, it was over $2k in lumber alone, in the heart of redwood logging territory!!)

I didn't do a lot of fences as I didn't pursue them. It was difficult to be competitive with all the fencing companies. It was the only redwood fence I did as the other ones were all cedar. And I cannot recall what the exact cost was but it was stupid expensive. However, price was never a concern for this particular client who lived in Kenilworth, IL.

 

[UncommonSense]

I had another busy evening here, back to glass cutting!

I decided to just rip off the band-aid and get the R525XL bottom pane cut… it was probably 1.5-2hrs of glass prep, and saw setup (including getting distracted playing with Red Sea’s garbage silicone)…

This cut was indeed right at the ragged edges of what this tile saw is capable of…

— the outfeed roller stand was crucial, as ~50% of the pane had to be slid off the back end of the saw’s bed to complete the 58” cut, but the pane only needs to be slid to this extreme once I was 2/3 through it already, making the feed roller bear the weight of the back half of the pane… notably, it supported both segments of the pane once I did my final full depth parting cut, preventing 2+ ft of glass from vibrating in open air like a tuning fork…

— I made the cut in 5 passes, ~2mm per-pass, cutting through the last ~5-6mm in one final full depth parting pass… this meant a lot of shifting the pane and locking/unlocking the sliding bed’s position, plus raising/lowering the saw head as-needed when starting/stopping specific components of each pass…

— I cobbled up some plumbing to run a second water feed pump, which helped immensely beyond pass 2, as the groove in the glass got deeper, and harder to evacuate glass dust from.. this worked great, but I definitely should have just used a smaller aquarium or a bin as a reservoir vs. a 3.5 gal bucket which needed refilling 1-2 times per-pass…

— I only actually saw any benefit from having a helper for both the final parting pass, and when my outfeed roller stand managed to tip over backwards in the middle of pass # 3! (Because this dummy forgot to tie it to the saw’s frame! Rookie mistake…)

I’m quitting while I’m ahead for the day, with this very nice 58”x8”x.575” thick strip made… though, I’ll probably set back up tomorrow to cut this down to two 3”x58” eurobraces, and a 2”x58” eurobrace!



On a potentially more important note; I went through every square inch of the silicone work on that G2 Reefer 525XL bottom pane, and documented more than enough horrors for a subsequent “aquarium autopsy” thread on G2 Reefer tanks…

Seam “armor”, as peeled off one-handed from bottom pane:

right bottom seam, peeling invisible with tank assembled:

Bulkhead hole silicone doesn’t stick to glass (I took a video of scraping what’s left on the glass off via fingernail…):

What does everyone think? Should I do a dedicated G2 autopsy thread? (including videos of me peeling bottom seam silicone cleanly off bottom glass by sliding a thumb over it, scraping silicone off with a thumbnail, and tearing chunks off with two fingers?)

 

[smitten with ocean life]

its up to you! i sure find it interesting! maybe it would help someone. i have to wonder if anyone from red sea watches your threads to learn!

 

[That Crusso Kid]

I had another busy evening here, back to glass cutting!

I decided to just rip off the band-aid and get the R525XL bottom pane cut… it was probably 1.5-2hrs of glass prep, and saw setup (including getting distracted playing with Red Sea’s garbage silicone)…

This cut was indeed right at the ragged edges of what this tile saw is capable of…

— the outfeed roller stand was crucial, as ~50% of the pane had to be slid off the back end of the saw’s bed to complete the 58” cut, but the pane only needs to be slid to this extreme once I was 2/3 through it already, making the feed roller bear the weight of the back half of the pane… notably, it supported both segments of the pane once I did my final full depth parting cut, preventing 2+ ft of glass from vibrating in open air like a tuning fork…

— I made the cut in 5 passes, ~2mm per-pass, cutting through the last ~5-6mm in one final full depth parting pass… this meant a lot of shifting the pane and locking/unlocking the sliding bed’s position, plus raising/lowering the saw head as-needed when starting/stopping specific components of each pass…

— I cobbled up some plumbing to run a second water feed pump, which helped immensely beyond pass 2, as the groove in the glass got deeper, and harder to evacuate glass dust from.. this worked great, but I definitely should have just used a smaller aquarium or a bin as a reservoir vs. a 3.5 gal bucket which needed refilling 1-2 times per-pass…

— I only actually saw any benefit from having a helper for both the final parting pass, and when my outfeed roller stand managed to tip over backwards in the middle of pass # 3! (Because this dummy forgot to tie it to the saw’s frame! Rookie mistake…)

I’m quitting while I’m ahead for the day, with this very nice 58”x8”x.575” thick strip made… though, I’ll probably set back up tomorrow to cut this down to two 3”x58” eurobraces, and a 2”x58” eurobrace!



On a potentially more important note; I went through every square inch of the silicone work on that G2 Reefer 525XL bottom pane, and documented more than enough horrors for a subsequent “aquarium autopsy” thread on G2 Reefer tanks…

Seam “armor”, as peeled off one-handed from bottom pane:

right bottom seam, peeling invisible with tank assembled:

Bulkhead hole silicone doesn’t stick to glass (I took a video of scraping what’s left on the glass off via fingernail…):

What does everyone think? Should I do a dedicated G2 autopsy thread? (including videos of me peeling bottom seam silicone cleanly off bottom glass by sliding a thumb over it, scraping silicone off with a thumbnail, and tearing chunks off with two fingers?)

Nice job on the glass! Happy nothing bad happened when the roller stand tipped. That could have ended badly.

I vote to make the G2 autopsy thread with videos. I am sure it will be informative, educational and beneficial in any number of ways.

 

[UncommonSense]

Nice job on the glass!

Thanks! The overall cut took just shy of a full hour… mostly because there was so much careful setup between each phase, and I was being very, very delicate!

Happy nothing bad happened when the roller stand tipped. That could have ended badly.

Agreed, on both accounts! I had the pane pretty well clamped down to the bed by-hand, so the biggest noticeable change was the entire saw stand shifting when the glass weight redistributed! (If not well supported, it could have easily tried to tip off the back of the bed, raising the portion being cut up into the blade forcibly!)

— I’ll also note that the saw’s bed rollers seemed slightly less unhappy when I actually pressed down on the front of the bed, clamping the glass down and adding even more weight to the rollers… but, that gave the bed a more reasonable center of gravity/made it slide smoother!

I vote to make the G2 autopsy thread with videos. I am sure it will be informative, educational and beneficial in any number of ways.

I concur… I’ll try to get that written up before bed, while it’s still fresh in memory!

 

[UncommonSense]

I vote to make the G2 autopsy thread with videos. I am sure it will be informative, educational and beneficial in any number of ways.

Only 11 mins behind schedule:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/red-sea-aquarium-autopsy-reefer-xl525-g2.1167386/

 

[UncommonSense]

Sump plans:

As many of you may have seen on page 1, I have a rather unusual 48”x18”x17” rimmed acrylic Glass Cages sump tank lined up for this build, which I finally extricated from the old stand today to seriously scrutinize…

Based on the previous owner’s labels, and the fact that it was on an external pump or two before, I’m almost 100% confident that this sump was set up for a dual overflow tank, to drain into both sides, and return in the center…

That said, the right side has a toothed weir from 12-14” (probably a refugium), and the left side has a triple baffle bubble trap with 8” smooth weirs… then there’s a 9-10” wide return chamber in the middle…

— obviously, I don’t want this exact layout anymore, and would prefer a more conventional side-to-side flow layout! though, the obvious changes would entail gutting the triple baffle bubble trap, and installing new baffles further along to create a smaller return chamber on the left side… a lot of butchery of a really nice sump, basically..

— I have a pair of nice classic series Reef Octopus skimmers, one with a 6” diameter body, one with an 8” diameter body (new in box)… I’m unsure which I’ll end up liking the performance of more on this ~130-140g system, so I’d prefer to have space in a dedicated skimmer chamber for either one! (So minimum skimmer chamber width is ~8.5-9”)


these layout desires led me to seriously scrutinize that old center return chamber, and the general tank structural design… namely, that old center return chamber is conveniently exactly the right size to be my skimmer chamber, and already has a bubble trap after… the only thing in my way is the sump’s center brace…

— so, I got to examining this center brace, and the surrounding sump baffles… my conclusion? The center brace on this sump appears to actually be redundant! That is to say, there are welded 6mm acrylic baffles running basically top to bottom of the tank immediately on each side of the top rim’s center brace! (So the tank has two more acrylic braces ~10-11” apart spanning essentially the entire tank height…)


That said, I decided to test my theory…

I laid a strip of glass across the top of the tank, and measured via calipers between it and the slightly bowed-down center brace with the tank empty, then filled it and measured again… tentative conclusion? The center brace did not straighten out measurably.

There was some margin for error in my measurement when I discovered that I could actually get the 6mm glass to flex, and due to the meniscus of water that ended up on the center brace during filling…

To verify my measurements, I’ve swapped the 6mm thick glass straight edge strip to a 14.7mm thick glass strip (negating glass deflection), and thoroughly dried the center brace before getting a baseline “full” measurement of .944” on center (taken by tapping repeated on the glass face with the caliper’s shoulder to let the depth gauge drop a few thousand at a time until it touched the center brace, creating a ripple in the water partially submerging it)… this said, I’m leaving the sump full overnight to leak test, but will measure that same gap again tomorrow while full, then once all the water is pumped out, and see if the center brace is indeed completely unloaded when filled, thus redundant!


(Assuming I can literally cut the center brace out without any consequences to use this sump as-is, with just a adjustable skimmer chamber water height baffle… I’ll still be reinforcing the refugium’s slotted weir with a ~1” wide strip of 6-10mm acrylic, welded perpendicular on top of the weir slots, plus probably a 10mm beveled “ramp” of acrylic on the waterfall side of that slotted weir [trickling water silencer, doubles as a structural acrylic beam], right below the slots, or 1/2-1” up their 2” height to increase refugium operating water height…)