Rimless vs a Canopy

[Casey Gore]

As I look at getting my first big tank I am becoming very torn between rimless and canopy.
I love how sleek rimless looks, but I font like how much light shines everywhere from the overhead fixtures. But when I look for stand and canopies for a 120 it seems impossible to find nice matching pairs. What is your insight on rim vs rimless and if you have a canopy where did you get your stand combo from? What pros and cons do you have about the tanks?

 

[PatW]

I have a canopy. It does look nice and it was a requirement.

I see advantages to not having a canopy. You can have a rimmed tank without a canopy by the way.

Advantage 1: access to the tank is easier. I have a big tank and moving off the canopy is a job for 2 large people.

Advantage 2: light placement and height above the water is far easier.

Advantage 3: cooling the tank is easier. Just get a honking big fan and use your controller to turn it on when the tank gets a bit warm.

 

[S-t-r-e-t-c-h]

I love the look of rimless tanks, but I'd never actually want one myself. They're more trouble to keep clean. You wind up needing a cover anyway to keep the fish in the tank (in most cases) which sort of ruins the 'wide open water' look. The light seep in the room is also extremely annoying. All of these are manageable, but good to know.

The one issue that still bothers me though is that the rim adds support for the top of the tank. I've not heard of a greater failure rate from rimless, so I don't think it's an actual concern, but something that's always sort of rattling around in the back of my mind.

The pre-made stands and canopies available are ok, but you can DIY something much nicer/stronger.

 

[Greybeard]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[JoshH]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

For some reason I thought you wrote beerholder when I first read that lol

@Casey Gore I avoided the rimless and opted for a one piece Euro Brace instead. I will be going greybeards route and not having a canopy on mine either. But I don't like the constant wiping of the glass on my current Nuvo 10 which is "rimless". I also didn't want a canopy due to a few of the issues mentioned above.

FWIW my tank is almost the exact same size as greybeards, minus the water, coral and fish

 

[Greybeard]

For some reason I thought you wrote beerholder when I first read that lol

Well, I'm a rum drinker, but yeah, I get the point

 

[Skep18]

I had the same internal debate. In the end, the light spill over coming from a rimless setup without a flush mounted canopy was not something I wanted. I bought a rimmed aquarium. Moreover, I got a rimmed aquarium made with aluminum rather than the typical plastic ones.

I forget the YouTube channel but someone pointed out how annoying it is, the amount of salt creep that gets on the front glass that has to be cleaned all the time.

 

[alton]

My wife hated my canopy on my 300 and it was a pain to clean the tank

 

[Twocorns]

I have a rimless reefer 170. Rimless blows. I would get tons of salt creep on my rimless, and if the wavemakers are cranked, some water would spill over. Eurobraced from here on out.

 

[Captain Quint]

I've had more without canopies than with and prefer without.

I break the tank itself into 24-inch sections and plan my lighting accordingly and never have 'spillover light'.

But I can only really speak about the coverage of Radions over other LED lighting as I've only used Radions because I'm so used to them...not that I believe them to be better than others. An XR30 will do well up to a 36-inch span as my current system is 36" wide.

You can do the section break of 2-foot spans with MH's and T5HO and VHO's too or combos mentioned.

 

[Apatahunga]

As I look at getting my first big tank I am becoming very torn between rimless and canopy.
I love how sleek rimless looks, but I font like how much light shines everywhere from the overhead fixtures. But when I look for stand and canopies for a 120 it seems impossible to find nice matching pairs. What is your insight on rim vs rimless and if you have a canopy where did you get your stand combo from? What pros and cons do you have about the tanks?

I have a rimless reefer 170. Rimless blows. I would get tons of salt creep on my rimless, and if the wavemakers are cranked, some water would spill over. Eurobraced from here on out.

No canopy on mine and have no issies, thinking of adding zebra eel, hope he is not going to jump

 

[ReefyB]

I’ve done both, and definitely prefer rimless, primarily for aesthetics.. it just looks WAY better. Canopies, to me, immediately make a tank look outdated, regardless of whatever is going on inside the actual tank.

With rimless I’ve never had an issue with light spill, so I wouldn’t worry about that (lower your lights if you need to). The biggest issue is that you’ll still probably need a cover of some sort to keep fish from jumping out and prevent any potential minor splashes/spills from your wavemaker. If you don’t want to ruin the clean rimless look, you’ll need to invest in a nice quality screen top to keep the aesthetic, which can sometimes cost close to the amount of a canopy lol (but still looks way better).