From CADLights Artisan II to Red Sea Reefer

After days of debating, I decided to sell the CADLights fish tank. I went through the process of test-fitting all the pipes and filling the tank with water to ensure there were no leaks. The water was repurposed and pumped into the washer to wash the laundry after the test. The tank itself was great. The glass was of high quality, the fitment was good, and the edges beveled nicely. Here are some pros and cons in my opinion.

Pros:

– Clean low iron glass tank
– Good size and tank dimensions
– Piano White High Gloss Paint
– Wood and not MDF

Cons:
– Sump holds the right size gallon but is too narrow and long leaving no room for a chiller. It would have been better to be a little shorter and wider since there was room in there.
– Stand had nails backing out of its hole
– No auto-fill tank
– No refugium area
– The sump level could only be 7 inches which were too low for a typical skimmer
– Tank drain cover fitment was not that great
– Tank drain holes too close to each other
– Tank PVC pipes were metric
– Tank secondary drain is too small and would probably not support the Jebao dc3000
– Tank secondary drain is too high and would need to be cut about an inch.
– Tank Placement

Nails coming out of the stand:

I had an area in my living office ( living room / computer office) where I wanted the tank. It was close to a window that received little light and would be a great area in the room. The wall was a little over 4 ft so I wanted a tank that was 4ft in length (5 ft would have been too long). The CADlight Artisan II 100 gallon was perfect in size but the stand was not up to par. After careful examination, I notice that the nails were coming out to the point where they were bumps in the finish. From a distance, it was unnoticeable but up close, it was very unpleasant to the eye. I wanted something very nice and clean and free from blemishes. I thought about sending the stand out to get it fixed but it was going to be in the hundreds after sanding, re-nailing, repainting the whole tank and all. I had also designed a better sump that I planned to use (shorter but wider so I could add in a chiller) but then that would all add up to the total cost of the setup being way more than I expected for something used. After a week of self debating, I decided to post it up for sale. Knowing that this tank had value, I posted it up for $1000 on Craisglist. After 3 weeks of emails and negotiations from over 10 people, it sold for $850 at 1am in the morning to a gentlemen from San Francisco. I came up on $150 from this deal but that was going to be put towards my new tank setup. Now onto the new setup.

Red Sea Reefer 350 Series

All I can say is OMG. This was the tank I had originally planned to get but at $1750 (not including tax or shipping), it was pretty steep for a 73-gallon display tank. The price pushed me back to look for a used tank, at which point, I purchased the used Artisan. Now that the Artisan is sold, I started digging deeper for deals on Reefer tanks. I wanted the largest tank I could get with a 4-foot length. The one that would fit my needs from the Red Sea lineup would be the Reefer 350 at 73 gallons. Smaller in terms of gallons when compared to the CADLights but it was okay for my living room space. I waited for a week and then found an Ad on Craigslist from one of the local pet stores. It was a deal. They were selling the Red Sea Reefer tank (white stand) for $1300 out the door. The caveat was that it had to be ordered. The good news was that it would only take 2 days to get there. I was sold. I put in a $200 deposit and proceeded to get two 20lb bags of aragonite live sand and a 5-gallon bucket of salt. Now I’m in the two-day waiting period. We will see if the tank arrives on Friday at which point I’ll do another post.