TheWB
Valuable Member
Welcome to my tank upgrade. In Jan of 2019 I started my last build which was an Innovative Marine Lagoon 50 AIO. I’ve had that running for the last 5 years and it’s been a great tank, highly recommend IM tanks if you want a regular style AIO setup. But here’s the thing, I didn’t want that anymore. I wanted a bigger tank but I have some limitations. The tank is in my office on the second floor of my house. This created a concern about concentrating too much weight when there was no way to reinforce the floor. The other limitation is that the tank has to be an AIO. My wife and I agreed that we didn’t want to risk any plumbing leaks on the second floor of the house that could cause widespread damage.
So with those two things in mind I had choices to make. I could have gone with an IM SR80 and called it a day. It’s significantly larger than the Lagoon 50 without being too big, this is in a 4th bedroom/office area and length of tank was a concern. There are other things that need to fit in the room. Two problems there though, one is that the SR80 is pretty heavy because it’s thick glass. The other is that I was going to be restricted on gear because the AIO section just isn’t very wide. It’s an 80 gallon tank that can’t fit a full sized protein skimmer or fleece roller. I wanted those things so a conventional AIO was out.
Almost 2 years ago now myself and a couple of other R2R members started designing an AIO tank that addressed some of the things I wanted in a new tank. We were working with a tank manufacturer to eventually build our design and things were going well. This tank was 48” long x 30” deep x 16” high. The AIO chambers would run coast to coast and be 8” wide.
The first chamber would have a 7” filter sock opening that could also accommodate a Klir-7 drop in fleece roller. The second chamber would be about 8x12 inches so it could fit a full sized protein skimmer and also had an adjustable height baffle. The 3rd chamber could either be a refugium or an area for reactors or whatever else you could think of. The 4th chamber is for the return pump and is sized to fit a wide variety of pump choices. It was basically a full blown sump built into an AIO concept. The design was also flexible to be built larger or smaller as needed, from 36” long up to 72” long.
An early version of the tank was created and sent to one of the other guys for testing and critique. As we were starting to hash out the tweaks to the design some unforeseen circumstances arose and the project was put on indefinite hold. I was bummed but it was nobody’s fault and there was nothing to be done about it but to wait and see if we’d get back going again.
Several months went by and nothing was happening with our group. I was getting very restless as I’d been hoping to have a new tank in place by late summer of 2023. When it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen I decided to start looking for a different builder to create what I wanted. After a few inquiries I settled on working with Advanced Acrylics. He listened to my ideas, went over the drawings I sent and ultimately agreed to build me what I wanted for what I thought was a reasonable price. I ordered the tank on 7/18/23 with a 6 week turn around time for delivery. So far I was impressed and happy to have found someone who could make my ideas become reality.
Unfortunately, now I’m going to talk about the frustrating part of working with this builder. After the first week or two the communication was terrible. I didn’t get any updates that were promised. My questions frequently went unanswered, sometimes for as much as two weeks. The voicemail box was always full. I did a little more research and discovered there were more than a few people out there that were pretty unhappy with this vendor about lack of communication and issues with getting problems fixed. We had blown by the six week timeframe I was promised and I could not get this guy to answer a call or text. He had my deposit and appeared to be ghosting me. I was pretty worried about ever getting my tank built. I had to resort to repeatedly calling his phone over and over and over in quick succession, basically become a giant pest to get any reaction. I had to threaten to cancel my order and get the credit card company to reverse the charges if he didn’t start responding. Finally after all of that he finished my tank, and then he sat on it for like two more weeks before finally shipping it out. It arrived on 11/14/23, nearly 4 months after it was ordered. My patience had been strained to the limit but it was finally delivered. I was a little worried when I first saw the pallet because it was just the tank on a pallet sitting on some cardboard and kind of skinned in cardboard with no real padding to protect the acrylic from scratches. The packaging company that prepared the tank for shipping leaves much to be desired.
Luckily this story has a happy ending because the tank arrived in perfect condition, despite what it looked like on the pallet, and it was everything I wanted. John at Advanced Acrylics did a tremendous job of executing my vision and giving me exactly what I asked for. As angry and frustrated as I was with his complete lack of professionalism once he had my deposit and the inexcusable wait time for the tank to be completed and delivered I couldn’t have been happier with the final result. I absolutely love it. I’ll get deeper into the design of the system in subsequent posts but for now that’s the story of how this upgrade to a larger custom supersized AIO happened.
I should also mention my thanks and respect to Alufab from Ohio who made my Aluminum Profile Stand with Light Rack. Unlike Advanced Actylics their communication was top notch and when a problem came up after I had received the stand, including one thing that happened quite a long time after I received it they stepped up every time and made things right. I cannot say enough about their customer service. I would highly recommend Alufab for this type of stand. If you’ve ever seen videos from Tidal Gardens where it shows the inside of their facility they have many Alufab stands in there. The thing is a beast, it costs a lot more than an IM stand but it’s so much nicer. I got mine with heavy duty casters so it’s real easy to roll around right now while the tank is empty.
So the tank arrived in November and was leak tested in the garage for way too long, and it only made it into the room last month and is finally only now (today is 5/11/24) ready to be filled. Ran into some delays that couldn’t be avoided plus I’m just kinda slow with finishing things like the controller board I made out of pvc foam board. Also had to wait for some of the new equipment I’m using to be delivered. All of that is over now though and it’s time to get this thing up and running.
Link to previous build thread. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/thewb’s-im-lagoon-50.543187/
So with those two things in mind I had choices to make. I could have gone with an IM SR80 and called it a day. It’s significantly larger than the Lagoon 50 without being too big, this is in a 4th bedroom/office area and length of tank was a concern. There are other things that need to fit in the room. Two problems there though, one is that the SR80 is pretty heavy because it’s thick glass. The other is that I was going to be restricted on gear because the AIO section just isn’t very wide. It’s an 80 gallon tank that can’t fit a full sized protein skimmer or fleece roller. I wanted those things so a conventional AIO was out.
Almost 2 years ago now myself and a couple of other R2R members started designing an AIO tank that addressed some of the things I wanted in a new tank. We were working with a tank manufacturer to eventually build our design and things were going well. This tank was 48” long x 30” deep x 16” high. The AIO chambers would run coast to coast and be 8” wide.
The first chamber would have a 7” filter sock opening that could also accommodate a Klir-7 drop in fleece roller. The second chamber would be about 8x12 inches so it could fit a full sized protein skimmer and also had an adjustable height baffle. The 3rd chamber could either be a refugium or an area for reactors or whatever else you could think of. The 4th chamber is for the return pump and is sized to fit a wide variety of pump choices. It was basically a full blown sump built into an AIO concept. The design was also flexible to be built larger or smaller as needed, from 36” long up to 72” long.
An early version of the tank was created and sent to one of the other guys for testing and critique. As we were starting to hash out the tweaks to the design some unforeseen circumstances arose and the project was put on indefinite hold. I was bummed but it was nobody’s fault and there was nothing to be done about it but to wait and see if we’d get back going again.
Several months went by and nothing was happening with our group. I was getting very restless as I’d been hoping to have a new tank in place by late summer of 2023. When it became obvious that wasn’t going to happen I decided to start looking for a different builder to create what I wanted. After a few inquiries I settled on working with Advanced Acrylics. He listened to my ideas, went over the drawings I sent and ultimately agreed to build me what I wanted for what I thought was a reasonable price. I ordered the tank on 7/18/23 with a 6 week turn around time for delivery. So far I was impressed and happy to have found someone who could make my ideas become reality.
Unfortunately, now I’m going to talk about the frustrating part of working with this builder. After the first week or two the communication was terrible. I didn’t get any updates that were promised. My questions frequently went unanswered, sometimes for as much as two weeks. The voicemail box was always full. I did a little more research and discovered there were more than a few people out there that were pretty unhappy with this vendor about lack of communication and issues with getting problems fixed. We had blown by the six week timeframe I was promised and I could not get this guy to answer a call or text. He had my deposit and appeared to be ghosting me. I was pretty worried about ever getting my tank built. I had to resort to repeatedly calling his phone over and over and over in quick succession, basically become a giant pest to get any reaction. I had to threaten to cancel my order and get the credit card company to reverse the charges if he didn’t start responding. Finally after all of that he finished my tank, and then he sat on it for like two more weeks before finally shipping it out. It arrived on 11/14/23, nearly 4 months after it was ordered. My patience had been strained to the limit but it was finally delivered. I was a little worried when I first saw the pallet because it was just the tank on a pallet sitting on some cardboard and kind of skinned in cardboard with no real padding to protect the acrylic from scratches. The packaging company that prepared the tank for shipping leaves much to be desired.
Luckily this story has a happy ending because the tank arrived in perfect condition, despite what it looked like on the pallet, and it was everything I wanted. John at Advanced Acrylics did a tremendous job of executing my vision and giving me exactly what I asked for. As angry and frustrated as I was with his complete lack of professionalism once he had my deposit and the inexcusable wait time for the tank to be completed and delivered I couldn’t have been happier with the final result. I absolutely love it. I’ll get deeper into the design of the system in subsequent posts but for now that’s the story of how this upgrade to a larger custom supersized AIO happened.
I should also mention my thanks and respect to Alufab from Ohio who made my Aluminum Profile Stand with Light Rack. Unlike Advanced Actylics their communication was top notch and when a problem came up after I had received the stand, including one thing that happened quite a long time after I received it they stepped up every time and made things right. I cannot say enough about their customer service. I would highly recommend Alufab for this type of stand. If you’ve ever seen videos from Tidal Gardens where it shows the inside of their facility they have many Alufab stands in there. The thing is a beast, it costs a lot more than an IM stand but it’s so much nicer. I got mine with heavy duty casters so it’s real easy to roll around right now while the tank is empty.
So the tank arrived in November and was leak tested in the garage for way too long, and it only made it into the room last month and is finally only now (today is 5/11/24) ready to be filled. Ran into some delays that couldn’t be avoided plus I’m just kinda slow with finishing things like the controller board I made out of pvc foam board. Also had to wait for some of the new equipment I’m using to be delivered. All of that is over now though and it’s time to get this thing up and running.
Link to previous build thread. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/thewb’s-im-lagoon-50.543187/
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