Metric vs Imperial Plumbing

[ZManGT]

I've been out of reef keeping for around 5 years. I've had a few nano tanks and a bigger FOWLR and I'm looking to get back into the hobby with a new reef tank. I've been looking for a plug and play type system (Red Sea and Waterbox namely).

I know that both systems use metric plumbing and I've seen a lot of users make changes to it and I have a few questions before I make the plunge so to speak.

1. Do you need to replace the plumbing to Imperial? I'm assuming it's mainly just for manifolds or hard plumbing the return. What is the advantage of replacing the drains as well?

2. Can you replace the plumbing after the tank is setup or would that just be too much of a pain?

All the past tanks I've ran into eventually became a real problem as I couldn't add an ATO or Skimmer etc for lack of space. I'm wanting to alleviate that problem now and set myself up for the future.

 

[harley32907]

Welcome to R2R! I would do any plumbing changes before setup

 

[vangvace]

For the red sea reefer series there is a mod you can do with additional parts to swap the valve for a gate valve and standard plumbing.

For the MaxS400-650 tanks coralvue sells a metric to standard union to direct connect to the threads on the lines.