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I knew for starters that I wanted to have a much larger tank. It seems that any tank starts to look small after a while. I had pretty much settled on a 180 gallon tank, but after seeing a 180 gallon reef tank at a local reefers house, I realized I wanted something deeper. I understand that some corals need to be as close to the water surface as possible, but I am not enamored with look of a tank with corals crammed into the top six inches of the tank. I had a staghorn in my last tank that would have easily grown a foot tall if it had not reached the surface. I also wanted plenty of swimming room for fish. I don’t see fish as a decorative afterthought in a reef tank.
I had read much about the use of closed loop circulation and it seemed like a good idea until I looked at the compromises it would take to implement. The compromises were mostly financial. AGA will not custom-drill a tank and I did not want a standard Oceanic tank because of the center glass brace. I did not want to have a tank drilled by anyone but the manufacturer because nobody would guarantee that the tank would not break. The only way to eliminate the center brace with Oceanic is to get a “brick” style tank, which is basically a perimeter-braced tank with no cross-bracing. The cost of this would have put me over-budget for this project. I also looked at acrylic tanks, which were more expensive than glass tanks, but still less than the Oceanic tank. I decided against this because of the ease with which acrylic gets scratched. A custom-built tank, such as those built by Interamerican and Aquarium Obsessed were also out of my price range.
In the end, I settled on an AGA 210 gallon tank. I still could have done a closed loop by running the returns over the back of the tank, but decided instead to use Tunze Streams for added circulation. The Tunze pumps are expensive, but the tank was cheaper and I did not need an actuated ball valve that would have been necessary for the closed loop.
Another goal with this tank was to make maintenance of the equipment as painless as possible. With my last tank, the equipment was all crammed into stand or hung on the wall behind the tank. Noise was also an issue with my previous tank. I wanted the pumps, fans, and chiller outside the room. Fortunately, the garage is on the other side of the room where the tank lives. The garage is not heated, so I needed to build a room for the equipment that could be insulated and heated.
Based on the scars from prior disasters, I wanted more redundancy and automation with this tank. This was accomplished by doubling up on heaters and pumps. A second chiller would be a budget buster, but loss of a chiller can be dealt with using fans and turning lights off. Automation comes in the form of an AquaController II, which runs lights, pumps, heaters, chillers, fans, and more. It can be programmed, for example, to shut of the metal halide lights if the temperature of the tnak gets too high. It can also set off audible alarms and page me if something is wrong.
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