Horizontal vs Vertical Water Tanks for Salt Mixing Station?

Giraffe0621 · Jun 22, 2017

Are horizontal water tanks less easy to use than vertical tanks for any reason? Obviously you'd need a different stand, but are they worse in any functional way?

Made my first trip to a tractor supply store & they had horizontal tanks instead of the vertical ones I was expecting...

You reef people have me visiting places I didn't even realize existed a few weeks ago [emoji48]

donnievaz · Jun 22, 2017

No difference that I know of, pick the one that works best in your space.

Giraffe0621 · Jun 22, 2017

donnievaz said:
No difference that I know of, pick the one that works best in your space.

thank you! Have seen many more vertical than horizontal on here & wasn't sure if there was a reason.

clownsrcool · Jun 22, 2017

I only have experience with a vertical tank but I've thought about getting horizontal ones when I was looking to possibly move my station indoors to save space. Here were my concerns when considering it.

With my vertical tanks I have a downward facing 90 inside the tank and can drain it to within 1/4" of water. Due to the shape of the horizontal ones you might not be able to easily drain it that low. Too many crevices for the water to collect in.

Second was that since you can't drain it down to the bottom you will lose some functional volume of the tank. Sure it may hold 50g but if you can only drain it down to the 5g mark it's really only a 45g container for you then.

Last is it seems harder to mix salt in it. Like I mentioned there are so many crevices for salt to collect and hide from any powerhead you use. So that's going to dissolve slower. Also I can use a small koralia and since my footprint is only 14x14 and flat it's really easy to mix hat water around and keep things from settling. When you footprint is rectangular shaped with all of the nooks im sure it's harder to get the water mixed with as small of a pump as I can use.