Dream 300g reef tank

[DanP-SD]

If you could design your dream reef tank and weren't looking to cut corners on price, where would you buy the tank, and what features would it have?

I ask because I'm finally giving in and setting up a new roughly- 300 gallon reef and, while my budget certainly is not unlimited, the tank is not someplace I intend to skimp. The tank will be built into the wall and will be appx 80 x 28 x 30. I plan to go with glass and a bean animal overflow. Other than that, I'm looking for suggestions.

Would you build a refugium into the tank? (I'm thinking about a second overflow with a return line into it from the bottom and a slightly higher weir so it would basically flow backward and could serve as a refugium but without chopping up all the pods in a pump).

Would you go euro-braced?

What else would you design in?

Most importantly where would you buy it? I'm in Southern CA.

Thanks for any input.

 

[Breakthecycle2]

At that height, you will not be able to go rimless if that's what you meant?

 

[sheldonjjessup]

Reefsavvy no questions asked

 

[805reef]

I am building my dream 300. It is an 80x36x24. I currently have a 30" tall and for me I feel it's just a little too tall to place/move stuff on the sandbed and for cleaning the inside bottom when putting my arms in (for that tough algae).

I am getting it built by precision aquariums in ventura.

It is peninsula style with a coast to coast overflow drilled for bean animal. 3 sides starphire and recessed eurobrace.

 

[zingzang911]

I would only go 24" high max, and get the depth instead. if you can get the front star fire

 

[Newb73]

I have to get a chair or ladder and take my shirt off to access the bottom of my 27.5 inch tank. What's worse is even then I can only reach the front half. With the low slung canopy I have to remove both my lights and canopy completely to access the bottom back half (a two man job). If I had done a more traditional aqua scape I probably could have built the rock work enough to avoid this issue but I wanted something different.

If I was trying to spare no expense and had it to do over I would get a custom MRC or maybe even a RE Dreambox sump.

At some point I'm probably going to sacrifice the little office next to the display tank and install one anyway .

The benifit of a deep tank, if there is one..is the ability to have both low light corals that would prefer less exposure in the same tank as light demanding corals.

The more shallow the tank, the more you are limited to a single light preference in your coral selection . ......although how much of an issue this is in real practice....I can't say.

 

[chimmike]

Whew.

I've thought about tank dimensions a lot. For several reasons, I do not like very tall tanks. I'll name them below for clarification. Anyways, if I wanted to do it absolutely right, I'd have a hard time NOT going with acrylic. I know everybody says it scratches easily. Then I just go to the local aquarium in Tampa and all their tanks are acrylic. If they're not scratched by all the kids, cameras, etc., I think I'll be okay.

Reasons I like tanks that aren't too tall:
-ease of reaching to the bottom. I'm not a gorilla, I don't have arms extending to my knees. I can't reach to the bottom of a 30" tall tank without getting half my shoulder in there. Not something I want to do regularly.
-Taller rockscapes tend to cause shaded areas which may not be good for the corals I wish to grow
-PAR transfer to the bottom of a tall tank requires intense lighting, which could make upper levels of the water unsuitable for some corals due to intense PAR needed to reach near the bottom for full-tank coral growth
probably some other reasons I'm missing here.

Back on that other site, probably 8 years ago now, someone made a lagoon "volcano" tank, and it was among the coolest ideas I've ever seen. Literally a shallow lagoon tank with liverock extending up out of the water. He'd show random crabs and snails that would crawl out onto the exposed rock, but had awesome coral in the tank and a great fish list.

My optimum 300g tank would probably be 6' long, 4' deep with a shallower height of 20" or so (I'm sure my gallon guesswork is way off) to allow reach, and accessible on 3 sides (For access/reach purposes).

But if I couldn't go acrylic you bet your bippy it'd be starfire!