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Dream tank Part 2, Lets Take A Close Up Look At The Tank and Talk Some Numbers!!

By KG Tropicals on

John: Hey, folks, it's John with kgtropicals.com. I'm really excited to be bringing you part two of my dream tank series today. We're going to talk all about the tank, finally. It's finally the day to go over this thing, show it to you up close and personal.

I'm going to show you everything that you need to know about this tank, and we're going to do it very much up close, I'm going to go over it all. We're going to talk about everything front to back, top to bottom. We'll even talk about what was involved in setting it up when it came to me. Once we got it in the house, how much was involved in getting it from just a dry glass box to that.

We're going to do all of that today, really excited, but the first thing I want to do is tell you what this package came with. When it comes to this tank itself there's several packages involved in this tank. The cool thing about customaquariums.com is that you can order as much or as little as you want. You can order just the glass box, or you can order the glass box pre-drilled for all of your plumbing, you can order it with just the filtration, just the stand, just whatever. You can order whatever it is you want, as much or as little.

This one here was a complete turnkey package, and it'd be very easy for me to say, "You know what? It came with everything you see here except for lights, heaters, fish and the rocks," the universal rocks that I have sitting on the bottom. That would be easy, but now, I'd rather go into detail and talk about everything that's included with it. Again, you can order as much or as little as you want. This tank is a 240 gallon tank. It measures 72 inches wide, 30 inches tall, and 24 inches deep. It's massive, folks. The tank alone weighs about 450 pounds. You can see why those suction cups came in handy. Let's first of all talk about what they have available. Like I said, you can buy it just the tank, or you can order what is called the filtration package which would be the sump and all of the plumbing, and the pumps and all that kind of stuff that's involved.

You can order that with the tank, build your own stand, or you can order the cabinet and canopy, or stand and canopy package. This one is all three. It is the tank, it is the filtration package, and the stand and canopy. What did all that come with? That's what we're going to go through. Let's go through the list. Let's start off with the obvious. Yes, it came with the tank. I know that sounds shocking, but yes, it came with the tank. The tank was all pre-drilled and the plumbing fittings that you see, which you'll see close up in a minute, those all came pre-installed. They were already in there, watertight, everything good to go and already in place.

I had to adjust the little hoses, but hey, big deal, right? They were already there, already in place. The standing canopy, again, naturally, and lids. That's something that I wanted to make sure I pointed out now, because I didn't want to forget down the road. Yes, it came with the really nice thick-- I think they're quarter inch thick glass lids. Beautiful. It even had the little plastic piece that goes on the bottom to cover up that gap in the back. You can cut the plastic to fit whatever devices you need to put back there. Very, very nice. Came with all that.

Now, of course, it also came because I got the filtration package with the full sump system. That included a reservoir tub which I call an evaporation tub. They called me about halfway this process and said, "Hey, do you want the evaporation tub or would you rather have a refugium?" I said, "Just let me have the evaporation tub." I know the refugium would be nice, but I just have a thing with plants. I'm not Dustin Wonder. I can't keep plants, I don't know why. Yes, let's do the evaporation tub. That's really cool. Basically, what it is, it's a reserve tank-- I'll show you in a minute.

It's a reserve tank to where if the water evaporates it pulls from this tank, you never have the filters screaming at you, or filters burning up or anything because you got lazy and the water evaporated. The full sump system with the evaporation tub, all was included and all of the plumbing involved with it to hook up the pumps, to hook up the drains, all of that was all in it. They even did something really cool. Again, you're going to see it in a minute, glass lids for the sump compartments. Are you kidding me? It's awesome. What does that do? Well, it's going to help if there is any kind of splashing or anything down there.

I don't know where splashing would come from, but you know what I'm saying. You get those little waterfalls in sumps and stuff, water might trickle out. It covers that, but it also makes things very quiet. These's are thick glass lids, just like the ones on top of the tank. It's beautiful, the tank is molded. Customaquariums.com makes these sumps, folks. They have them in their facility. They have the molds and all of that. They make them there, and they even put little indentions to put your finger in there to pull the lid off. It's unbelievable. They have thought of everything. All that's included too.

Not only does it come with the tub itself, which they manufacture at their factory themselves, it's their design, it's their whole deal. Not only comes with that, but it also comes with everything that you need inside of that with the exception of the heaters. I'll show you those in a minute. I got those from Aquion. Believe me, you're going to hear about those, but it comes with everything except for the heaters. The pumps too, 714 gallon per hour pumps. Two pumps, not just one, which I love because if one goes out-- If you have one pump that's serving both returns and it goes out, you're done.

Whereas here, your filtration will be cut in half, but you're not shut down completely. I like that. I really like that they include the pumps in there. You also get all of the material for your mechanical and biological filtration. You get the bio media which is the little tiny ceramic balls. I'll show you those, I've still got half of them left. You get the baskets for putting the filter media in. They even put Purigen in there, which is awesome. It's my first time ever using it. Everything that you need as far biological media and stuff like that, it all comes with this kit. Everything you need, even a nice big, fat filter sock, everything literally, all of it.

There's a couple more things too. One was, I was so impressed by this I didn't even realize it was in the package, and that is an 18 watt inline UV sterilizer. Awesome, right? I'm going to show it to you. Unbelievable that that's included in there, and even a really nice heavy duty power strip that all of your equipment can plug right into, and it even has room for your lights and your heaters. Unbelievable. It's literally like I said, with the exception of lights and heaters, it a turnkey operation. Everything you need is right there. We're going to go over this more in the closeups, but again, I just want to reiterate, this entire system was assembled at the factory, plumping, everything.

It was all put together, and then they took it apart, boxed it up and sent it to me. All of the plumping was cut to length. All of the fittings, everything is already attached to the plumping. Literally, you carry this thing into the house, you put it in its place, you hook up a few hoses, plug in a couple of pumps and boom, fill it up with water. It could not be simpler. You don't need to have a degree in engineering, you don't need to be this over-the-top experienced fishkeeper to be able to do this. It could not be more simple. You can do it without even reading the instructions.

If you're someone that needs instructions, which we should all be smart and read the instructions, it comes with a very detailed instruction manual on how to do everything. Folks, it's easy. It comes with everything you need, without lights and heaters, I'm going to keep saying that, and it's easy to do. You can't lose. I know, you're sick of looking at me. I'm sweating, it's hot. It's pouring down rain outside, it's just a miserable day. Let's have some fun. Let me grab the camera, and we'll take a close-up look at this thing.

The audio might not be the greatest, because my lavalier microphone is horrible, so I'm just going to use the microphone on the camera. Hopefully, it works out okay. You'll get the gist of it. Pardon the audio. Let's do it. Let's go take a look at this thing. Okay. Let's take a look at this thing. I've got everything all wide open so that I can show you the whole deal. I also took the canopy off. Since the canopy is off, I figured I would show you that by itself, just laying on the floor. This is what I do if I'm going to do any kind of big maintenance. I just take it off.

It is big. It's 6 feet long, 2 feet high, or 2 feet deep I guess, and maybe like 12 inches high, I don't know, I haven't measured it, but somewhere around there. It's pretty big. It's not terribly heavy though. I can pick it up with one hand without a problem. I'm holding the canopy while holding the phone, so not a big deal. This basement is a complete mess, so I'm tripping over stuff. It's not hard to handle. It's something that when I go to feed the fish, I just reach it over top and feed them. I don't worry about taking the canopy off. You can see it's already cut with all of the matches for your wiring and everything else to go through it.

Everything is constructed extremely thick. This is the front. The back is three quarter inch plywood. It's very thick. It's not some kind of particle board, slapped together a little thing. It's made really, really well. Let's see. Let's start with the stand itself, I guess that makes sense. What I really like about this thing, it's made out of solid oak as well as oak plywood. The sides are even panelized like this, with these panels rather than it just being a flat piece. It's got the panels, it's mitered on the side, very nice. I'm a cabinet maker, so. Of course, I'm going to critique that stuff, but it looks really nice with this little edge around it. It just makes it look very formal, so very well built stand. The doors are floating panel doors, these have locks on them. I was trying to figure out what the locks are for and the only guess that I can have is that this is something that is made to be in a store display, and they wouldn't want people getting in there and messing with the filter. They put locks on them, pretty cool. I haven't been locking them because there's really no need to. That is the stand, this thing is built like a small house. Very, very sturdy.

The doors are hung with hinges on the outside, which once the door is closed it looks very nice. It's got cat hair all over it, but it's just a nice-looking piece of furniture. It's more than just an aquarium stand, it's a piece of furniture, so definitely love it. Let's move on, I'll tell you what we'll talk about next. We'll take a look at the back, and then we'll get into the nuts and bolts of this. I don't know how well it's going to show up, and the sound is probably going to be affected by the wall here, but you've got this pipe here, the green one that is one return, and then the one with the ridges on it is the drain that's in the center, and then there's another return on the other side.

All of these plumbing was already cut to fit, or cut to size, the fittings were all attached. It was literally, when I took this out, put the tank on top of it and just pulled the plumbing out of the back of the stand in the pre-made holes, plug them in to these three spots and it was done. Very simple, you don't need to be a plumber to be able to do that. Now, before we get into the sump system and all that, the fish want to say hi. There's a couple of things that I want to note about this that I haven't seen on other aquariums. First of all, well, let me get this in correctly, I don't know what's going on there, here we go. The frame on the top, this is a metal frame, it's cut to fit, it's really thick, really robust, it's not some kind of plastic frame. This is a solid metal constructed frame, very, very nice.

Then something that you're not going to be able to see really on camera, maybe you can, is this little bevel right here. That's something I have never seen on an aquarium, and it's something that you have to see to really gauge what it looks like, but it's really, really nice. Instead of it being a razor-sharp edge right here with the glass, it's got a nice bevel cut in it, which is nice because if you think about it, if it's got that 90 degree corner it's really susceptible to chipping. With the bevel, not only does it look better, but it also performs better because if you do brush against it with something it's not going to be as likely to chip. So, yes. Big, big fan of that.

Moving around to the top. These are the glass lids that came with it, even with the little handles on it, they were already pre-installed-- No, I had to put these on. It says Lifetime Aquariums on there, that's one of the names of the company, I don't know. It's Custom Cages, Custom Aquariums, Lifetime Aquariums, there's a couple of companies underneath the umbrella, but that's what those say on it, very nice. Three of them, all the way across. These are thick, quarter-inch glass lids. Very, very nice. You see, I got a ton of water movement going on in there, it's not all caused by the fish.

Then I have on here, this did not come with the system, but this is the four Coralife LEDs. I will be doing an individual video specifically about those lights. Put all four of them on here, why not. We definitely need that kind of power to get all the way down to the bottom here, but these are some super bright LEDs. I'm in love with them, they're working really well, and as you see they're getting the light all the way down to the bottom even though it's extremely dirty right now. Looking inside the tank, you can see they're patented or patent pending overflow system. That is the one single overflow for the entire system. It runs pretty quiet, I do hear a gurgle every once in a while, not a big deal.

There's not really any way for me to show it to you from the top now, but it's very, very nice. It's right in the middle like that. Again, of course, it was already installed and already there, I didn't even have to touch it when I put this whole thing together, so very nice. Then the returns, of course, have the little adjustments on them. These are non-siphoning returns. They're not going to pull water through the returns down into your sump if the power goes out, it's only really whatever is in the pipes is going to go down, and then, of course, the water level is going to go down to the bottom of the slots there, so it's not as big of a problem if the power goes out.

I always turn this off before I do a water change, and I don't have any problems with it over filling or anything like that as far as the sumps go. Then I do have this one circulation pump in here, this is the one from Aqueon. Look at this, he's a attention whore. It's giving me a lot of my airflow, I have that-- Air flow, really? Come on, John. It has my water circulation on the top, it's skimming the whole top, and then I'm using the returns pointing them down right now, they direct water. I don't know if that's how I'm going to keep them or not, but that's just what I have set up, I'm always moving around.

The back panel there was painted at the factory, I did not do that. Somebody asked me about the last video I did, where you could see us carrying the tank, we didn't have any suction cups on the one side. Well, that was because that's painted on the back, and I was afraid that those suction cups would pull the paint right off, and we didn't need them down there anyway, so worked out really well. Let's get down here now, to the star of the show, and that is this sump system. This is Custom Aquariums seamless sump. It is an absolutely brilliant system that they have here, this is something that they make themselves.

They have all of the molds they build on them themselves, you can see that this thing practically goes the length of the entire tank, and a lot of it is because of that right there, which is the evaporation tub. You can see the water line there is exactly the same as in the sump, and so basically, if water evaporates it's going to pull from that tank through that pipe down there. The water line will go down in that. It's going keep you from having to constantly refill when your water evaporates. You understand what I'm saying? If you wanted to you could just throw some more water in there if a little bit does evaporate, no big deal.

I suppose there's quite a few things you could use that for. Heck, you could even use it as a hospital tank if you had to. There's a lot of things that you could do with that, but I don't have anything in there agitating the water or anything, it's just kind of sitting in there, but that's what that's for. It's got a glass lid on top, quarter inch glass lid, which again, it's made to fit that. It has a little divot down here to put your finger in and pull it up, so very nice. All of the compartments have those lids on them. Over here is the UV sterilizer. Again, that's how it was when it came, I didn't put it up there, it was already installed, good to go, and all of the plumbing already hooked up and everything.

The plumbing was already running over to the sump, to the two pumps that are in there. We'll get to that in a second. All installed, I didn't have to do anything. I got to put that pipe back behind the tank, but I don't remember why I moved it. This right here, and I'm going just go ahead and do it right now while we're-- No, I can't do it because I got to move this tank. Anyway, all right, I'll edit that out. This is a bucket here, and this is the bucket of the media that they sent, which is really nice. I didn't use all of it because I didn't need to. This is the kind of thing that we'll cycle some through every few months, put some fresh ones in. There's one of the little instruction, little sheets that they sent, which I just haven't gotten rid of, because why should I?

Moving down here, I know I'm jumping around all over the place, but this is the sump. The vibration in here is going to get probably pretty loud when I put my phone in here, but there is the sump with the three Aqueon 300 watt heaters in there, those are definitely keeping the tank nice and toasty. Then we've got the two 750 gallon per hour pumps, one for each return. I like that, because if one fails you don't lose your entire filtration, you still have some filtration going on, and you can replace the other one or fix it, whatever you're going to do.

You don't go completely down like you would if you had only one pump on there, so very, very nice for that. Again, the glass lid on it. We move over here, hopefully the audio isn't too bad. This is our media trays, it's pretty dirty in there right now. We were putting a lot of old sponges and stuff in here to get plenty of funk in here to get the cycle going, but these baskets-- I will put some pictures up of the baskets as I was assembling all of this, with the media and with the Purigen and all that kind of stuff that came with this. It's very, very simple to do. It's five baskets. One, two, three. Yes, five baskets. It comes with very detailed instructions on what to put in what basket and where, and how to stack it and all that kind of stuff. Very nice, very easy to deal with. Those were already installed, but I did have to put up the media and all that in there. They didn't put that in there, take it out that bucket, put it in the each tray, there you go. Then this is the filter stock right there, which is looking a little bit dirty. Your plumbing comes in from the back, that is your drain, comes into there, and then it flows down that pipe through all of the baskets with the mechanical and biological media in there.

Then it will go down, overflow into here which is the sump, where we have the heaters and the pumps. It's an easy enough system to understand how it works. Works very efficiently, it's very quiet. I know while I had it in there it was probably really, really loud, but once you get this closed up it's not as loud. There we are. So, if your ears aren't ringing yet. [laughs] That's the close-up look at it. If you have any questions about it just let me know, but that's as much as I feel like I can really show. There's not a whole lot more to see.

It's a very efficient, yet very simple system and doesn't it look fantastic? Still don't know what I'm going to do as far as substrate yet, or if I'm going to do anything. The rocks are starting to get a little algae on them, and there's stuff on the bo-- I don't know. I kind of like the way it looks. I don't know. I might not put substrate on here at all, but we'll have to see. I'm always changing, my ideas are always changing, so we'll see. There you go. There's the close-up look. Let's go back, let's talk about price. So, there you go. There is the close-up look at this tank. I hope you enjoyed the little tour. I love this thing, folks.

Not only is it the nicest looking tank I've ever had, but it is also the best performing. It has everything you could ever ask for. The dual pumps, the big, fat beefy plumbing, there's not a leak to be found, it's got the UV sterilizer, all of those baskets for the filter media and all that, it's got everything. It is a dream tank which is exactly why I call this a-- Let's talk a little bit about some of the numbers. I wanted to mention the overflow system that we talked about in the close-up that is Custom Aquarium design, all of it is Custom Aquarium design. I believe they have a patent pending on that thing. It's something that they're very proud of and they should. It works extremely well.

That is available if you have a tank already, and it's drilled and all of that, and you want one of those for your tank. $69, you can order it. Email me, I'll sell it to you. No big deal. I'll get it shipped direct to your house if you want one of those. You can put it in your existing tank, but if you order at customaquarium.com, you need to get one of those because it's going to come in there anyway, but that's a beautiful thing. I wanted to let you know that it is available if you just want that, $69. How much does this stuff cost? Well, the tank alone, if you wanted to just order the 240 gallon glass box, which would have that really nice metal frame that I showed you, the beveled edges, that's all standard stuff, folks.

I love the beveled edges. To me, that just takes things to another level. Yours will come that way. I would have to check my math again. Not my math, but I had to check my numbers, $969. Did you hear that? How many tanks have you seen out there 13, $1400. Yes, it's $969 if you're going to add the drains and the return, drills. You're going to do all that added to it. It's going to cost a few more dollars for those things too, but the tank by itself $969, for a 240 gallon tank, it's not that bad. What about the whole package? What about all of this? Everything that you see here? How much does that cost? Well, this is either going to shock you, or it's going to make you go, "What? I can't believe that it's that low. I was expecting it to be so much more."

$3618, that's for everything that you saw that I just showed you, except for the lights and the heaters. You probably have heaters lying around right now, you probably have lights that you could stick on there. $3618 for all that, folks. That's even with the blue background and everything. With the UV sterilizer, with the pumps, with the power strip, everything that you saw, 3618. For some of you that's going to be like, "Oh, my God, that's nuts," but if you've ever looked at a big tank, if you've even gone to your local pet store and looked at a 150 gallon tanks, or if you've been lucky enough to find 265, that's kind of a mainstream major manufactured size, it's a seven foot tank-- When you see how expensive those are just for the glass box.

If you've been shopping for tanks like this, you know that that's not outrageous. This package right here, like you see it, 3618. Come on, that is an absolute steal for what you get. When you look at this and you see all that you get for 3618, that's a deal. I don't care who you are. I hope that helps you to understand a lot more about this tank. It's the first up-close and personal look that I've taken with it, and we finally went over the numbers and all that kind of stuff. Folks, this is a dream come true to me. I'm having so much fun with this. I hope you're enjoying it too. I hope that you're in the market for a tank like this, and if you are send me an email to that address right there, [email protected].

We'll work together, we'll figure out what it is that you need, we'll get you set up. It'll be by one of the best manufacturers in the U.S., actually the most successful, the largest manufacturer of build-to-order aquariums in the United States. There's got to be a reason for that. The reason that they're the biggest is because of the best. Get on it now, email me, it doesn't matter how long it takes, we'll work together for a month if we have to, to figure out what you want and we'll get you set up with your own tank, just like this one. Having a lot of fun with this.

Can't wait for part three. What are we going to talk about in part three? Let me check my notes here, I'm unprepared. I'd forgotten to-- Let's see here. Let me get to my notes. Okay. Part three, we're going to talk about the sump system. We're going to go, again, up-close and personal. We're going to get in depth with how the the sump works in this tank. I showed it to you today. We're going to talk about how it works in the next video. Be looking forward to that. If you're not subscribed to the channel, you're going to want to do that, because you're not going to want to miss that. You'll get a notification that I've put out, "Dream tank part three," if you're subscribed. Don't miss out on that. Thank you so much for watching and I look forward to talking to you again next time.

About KG Tropicals

There are many aspects to keeping an aquarium. Many newcomers to the hobby can be quickly overwhelmed. The KGTropicals YouTube channel was created to be a place for no nonsense information about the hobby, a place where the information is delivered in a way that even the most inexperienced fish keeper could understand. Whether you want to breed aquarium fish, heal a sick or injured fish or you just want to know how to set up your first tank, KGTropicals has you covered.

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