Waterbox Infinia 165.4 - My First Large Tank

[chrisriker]

Hi all,

I got into fish keeping about a year ago or so, started with freshwater planted tanks. I am a renter, so I've been somewhat limited in the size of tanks I can keep. Roughly 6 months ago I set up my first reef tank, a Waterbox Cube 25 Peninsula with a pair of gorgeous clowns, a gaggle of sexy shrimp, some easy corals, and an ultra rock flower anemone.

Just last week, my partner and I closed on our first home together, and there is a very nice spot in the basement that looks like it was specifically crafted for a tank to be there. I went back and forth on a bunch of tanks, and ultimately just found myself trying to find something that would make me stop thinking about the Infinia. I pulled the trigger on the 165.4 2 days ago; unfortunately this particular model is backordered, so it won't ship for another 6-8 weeks.

In the mean time, we're moving, finishing up the fall semester (both of us work full time and are in grad school), and doing holiday stuff, so unfortunately it'll probably be a while before this thing gets wet...

So far, the build is not well defined, but here it is.

Creatures:

• Mixed reef, probably starting with softies/easy LPS first and maybe dabbling in SPS down the road. Ultimately the goal is for this system to be one that I grow into as I advance.
• A pair of clowns, either the pair I have now in my peninsula 25 or a different pair, but clowns are my favorite fish so they will definitely be present
• Longer term goal is to be able to support mandarin(s) - we friggin love em

Equipment

• Lights - A pair of Apex Neptune Sky's. They were on a fairly steep discount at BRS for black November save-a-thon, so I jumped on them while I had the chance. Not sure if I'll end up sticking with these long term, but based on community feedback and various reviews they seem like well-liked lights. Luckily BRS has a 1-year return policy for store credit, so I can always swap them out down the line if they aren't working for me
• Return pump - Not sure on this one yet. Thinking DC so I can control with an app, but not sure. I also need to figure out the flow rate I need.
• Skimmer - I will probably not run a skimmer off the bat. I plan to just watch my nutrients and overall ecosystem health and go from there
• Powerheads - Not sure on this one either. Kind of conflicted because I've read some not-so-great things about the MP40s, but they also seem to be the benchmark against which others are measured.
• Heater(s) - I run an Aquael heater on my nano reef so they fit nicely into my return pump chamber, but they are pretty pricy for the size/number I'll need for a tank of this size. Since I don't really have to see them in the display or fit them anywhere tight, I am open to some of the, erm, uglier options on the market.

I am open to any suggestions/insights y'all have on the equipment - plenty of time to stew and research!

I don't have pictures of anything other than the space right now, so here it is. I taped off the dimensions of the 125 gallon model and 165 gallon model. My mom and partner both agreed that the 125 felt a little small for the space, so it was actually pretty easy to get approval for the 165

 

[Naturalreef]

Congrats on your new home and soon to be new tank! You couldn’t pick a better place for a tank….

 

[chrisriker]

Thank you thank you! Luckily it's in the basement, so no need to do any work to make the first floor suitable for the weight of this thing. We will have to contend with the temperature down there, as it is finished but not climate controlled. So far it's stayed relatively warm just from the heat radiated by the boiler, but this will be my office, so we are considering installing a ductless mini split system down there that heats and cools if the space needs it. Upshot there is we'll get some square footage out of the install on paper

 

[reaper93]

Congrats on the new tank! Look forward to seeing this tank progress.

 

[chrisriker]

Lights came a few days ago and I've just got around to checking them out. Current plan is 2x Apex Neptune Sky fixtures. I got these lights on sale for $650 per fixture, $1300 delivered total cost for the lighting for this tank. I jumped on them with the BF sales ending soon, but BRS has a pretty great return policy that I may leverage.

Currently, I'm trying to decide if I stick with these lights or swap them with 3x Radion XR15 gen 6 fixtures. From what I've read, 3 of them with the upgrade in spread/distribution on the gen 6s should be sufficient for the tank for pretty much anything but the hardest SPS, and I can simply add a 4th down the road if it's not enough. I'm not sure if it's a better option than what I've got right now considering the negative talk surrounding Mobius in its current state. Open to any feedback here.

 

[chrisriker]

Well it's been ages. which is pretty on par for the experience I've had so far with this thing.

I ended up switching the lighting to Radion Gen 6 fixtures. Still playing with Pro vs Blue - I have both in my house but can't quite decide which spectrum I like the best in testing with my nano. The blue is definitely not as blue as I was initially expecting, so it might be acceptable for my desire to not completely wash out any fish that go in the tank while still giving me the crazy color pop you get out of the blue fixtures. I did some testing on my nano and the pros still produce great color but the blues are a different beast entirely. Shout out to BRS here for letting me return the Skys and waiving the restocking fee - I did not realize there would be one if the box was open in this day and age, but they were great to work with and lesson learned.

Some trouble is afoot though. After several months of this thing sitting in my garage, I finally managed to get enough muscle over and get the tank inside around mid-march. Unfortunately, we are new to our area and our family is about an hour away, so it's a whole process to be able to do anything regarding moving this thing, and requires multiple family members to be available and willing to make the trip. I think we ultimately got a pretty nice spot for it, it fits the space nicely.

At this point we're ready to level - but come to find out that 4 (confirmed) out of the 10 leveling feet on the stand for this tank do not work. The threaded inserts in the cabinet somehow broke free under relatively little force, so they no longer go in or out when turned. Some of them also turn freely on the bolt that goes through them. This is an easy fix... if you're able to lay the stand down on its face and get a socket wrench under the feet. Effectively, this means that I can't level the tank with the leveling feet as-is. Considering the fact that a large part of my choosing this particular tank was the stand, this came as a pretty huge disappointment to me. Luckily, Waterbox was pretty quick to send out a new cabinet after I sent them some videos of the issues. Credit where credit is due, they were helpful in troubleshooting and very responsive to my requests throughout the process.

Fast forward a couple weeks - this is April 1 at this point. New stand shows up with a bonus sump - unfortunately, they didn't book in-garage service for the new cabinet, which is pretty frustrating because they told me they did, but the FedEx freight guy was the same one who delivered the tank in the first place, so he brought it up my long winding driveway and into the garage for me. Dodged a bullet there..

Unfortunately, this stand is black because the Infinia 165 is evidently discontinued and they cleared out pretty much all of the inventory, and also looks like it was shipped through a warzone. Pretty much every foot on the thing is bent way out of wack, including the frame itself. Frustrating is putting it lightly here. The one reason the stand was replaced is not only not resolved, it's somehow much worse. I contacted Waterbox less than 24 hours after receipt as is my duty, and the response was more or less "try bending them back?" I pushed back a little here, because putting 1500 lbs of glass and water on a previously bent aluminum frame is, for lack of a better phrase, incredibly sketchy. My best guess is WB is giving me the runaround here because they don't make this tank or stand anymore. I agreed to try and bend it back, but once again I need to cart the family out here to help me do it. If we're being honest here, I'm not even sure I'm comfortable putting a tank on that stand anyway unless the leveling feet are completely removed and the stand sits flat on the ground. For that reason I will try to bend them back into place, but there is pretty much a 0% chance that I ever put this tank on it. My best guess is WB is giving me a bit of the runaround because they're gutting their product line with a machete and replacing it, and this tank is no longer being produced. I'm not really sure what I want to do at this point, because I don't really want a third cabinet and sump in my house, as the replacement is already just sitting in my garage taking up valuable car space.

This is now my 3rd Waterbox - I have a Cube 10 and Cube 25 and so far have been really happy with the quality. At this point though, I don't really know what to feel other than regret that I didn't go with the IM 150 Lagoon, a tank which has dimensions that I like way better and at the very least has a stand that's way easier to replace in the event of damage or manufacturing defects. This has been and continues to be a complete and utter nightmare that seems to have no end in sight, and I'm not really sure how to even resolve this with Waterbox.

On the bright side, I have family coming up this weekend to help get the tank off the stand and try to fix the leveling feet on the first stand, so with any luck maybe we can get this thing wet soon.

 

[chrisriker]

Great news! The fix for the original cabinet turned out to be fairly trivial. Once we got the tank back off the stand, my FIL recognized the part being used to provide threads for the leveling feet to screw into pretty much immediately. They are standard, run of the mill rivet nuts - something I didn't even know existed. One $50 tool from harbor freight later and all of the nuts were secured enough to allow the leveling feet to move in and out freely. Just in case anyone else runs into the same issue with the leveling feet as I did with this cabinet - which seems likely since Waterbox has ditched pretty much all of their previous designs for this one - this is the tool you'll need: https://www.harborfreight.com/10-in-professional-rivet-nut-setter-kit-58078.html

We initially tried leveling the stand with no weight on it, but with the rigidity of the cabinet that proved pretty futile. One minor adjustment anywhere threw it off level everywhere else, so we decided to bail on that idea and just level with the glass on. The cabinet with sump was pretty well bang on all around, and that held true once the tank went on as well.

The tank is FINALLY WET! It's currently completely full of tap water. I'm hoping to let it settle and compress the foam and address any minor leveling changes that need to be made then. I can already tell the front left corner is a millimeter or so high, if even that. I ran the return pump for about an hour last night and dialed in the gate valve. One leak in one of the pieces of plumbing but nothing major, just had to screw a cap in a bit and that resolved it. So far so good on that front.

As far as equipment goes, I've made some final choices there and obtained most of it.

• Powerheads - A pair of Maxspect XF330 Gyres. The old non-cloud versions went on clearance and I jumped on a pair for a pretty decent price. I like the idea of gyre flows, and I'll set them up with out-of-phase sine waves to create that nice side to side flow.
• Return Pump - Went with the Reef Breeders Nautilus DC3200. Probably oversized for the tank but I didn't want to go too small while they were on sale. Running at 40% speed seems to be plenty fine for the tank as-is. I'll look into cranking it up if there's any value in that, the gate valve can definitely handle way more flow than I'm using at the moment.
• Monitoring & Control - Snagged an A3 Apex Pro around Christmas time while they were on sale. This'll act as my temperature controller and possibly ATO. No salinity probe yet, but it's on the list.
• Heaters - A pair of BRS Titanium elements. They have some not great reviews but I get the sense that pretty much all heaters are crap that die as a matter of time, so we'll see what happens. I'll either run both simultaneously for redundancy or set one as a failover. Not sure how I'd mech that but it could be an interesting experiment to try and get the second heater to turn on if the temp drops to 75F or something like that and send a notification to my phone.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Following along!

 

[Bob Boblaw]

Looks like you have space for a bigger tank there

 

[chrisriker]

Looks like you have space for a bigger tank there

Oh yeah, I could have fit a 6 footer there with the left side butted directly up into the wall. I like to view from all sides though and have a utility room to the right of the tank so the 4 footer made more sense. I do have a back wall that can easily fit a 6 foot tank or bigger, so maybe some day