Ok I'm home, the tank is in the house, and a few pictures have been taken.
First impression was (still is...) Wowza! It's bigger than life and I'm loving it! I don't have water in it, not even a stand for it (yet, but by tomorrow night I will have one built for it) but I'm loving it! Especially considering the price ($75.00) I am over the moon.
So this tank came from a LFS about an hour or so north of us. They had more coral and live rock than one could shake a fist at. I will definitely shop there once I'm ready for more LPS and eventually SPS. Anyway as meticulous as their store was (even in back it's as immaculate as can be) I knew that when they said it would hold water it would hold water. Stores like that won't risk their reputation on selling a leaky tank unless they say it leaks upfront. Think of all the lost sales and bad press they'd get. Just to make sure however I made a cursory glance at the seams and when we got it in I looked closely at the seams with a flashlight. The seams are perfect.
The 75 had a piece of super adhesive tape down the leaky seam and we were dealing with the move at the time I got it. As a result when I saw the three visible seams were intact I figured so was the fourth. WRONG!!!! Lesson learned.
Back to the new tank I'm not sure why they have it plumbed the way they do but I may have to redo it to a degree. There are two issues. One is that there are two screws that attach to a piece of PVC that looks to keep the plumbing from vibrating at the top of the overflow. That's easy enough to deal with. The second is a little more complex. The bulkheads are mounted with the threaded end out on one and with the threaded end in on the other. It probably won't be an issue but there's plenty of silicone to scrape off if I ever had to undo them. They look to be in good shape and the silicone job doesn't look bad but I will keep a close eye.
Tomorrow I'll start working on the stand. Even though I could probably get away with 2x3s I'll stick to 2x4s. The new stand is going to be about 6 to maybe 8 inches taller. It's hard at the height of the current stand to do maintenance in the sump. Another 6 to 8 inches and I should be able to touch the bottom rear of the sump. Return pumps need maintenance too lol.
Sadly my last turbo snail is dying. It keeps falling off the rocks and glass. Once the cube is set up and gets green algae on the glass I'll get a couple more but first I need to build a healthy pod population once again. Bristle and spaghetti worms too. I think I've lost all my asterinas sadly but once the cube is up and running things will get better. If all goes well this tank will be the best and most successful setup I've ever had.
What will be truly neat is that fish will have an equal amount of room front to back and side to side. I wonder if they'll display behaviors that they don't don't in a rectangular tank. There will be deeper caves and many more hiding places.
I am adding the pictures of the cube I took earlier. I measured the dimensions of the glass panels excluding the frame. It holds 91 true gallons. Admittedly I didn't take the thickness of the glass into account but I am quite sure the tank holds a good 85 true gallons.
