Choosing a Tank for the Reef Aquarium
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Aquariums come in two varieties, glass and acrylic, and in many different volumes and sizes. There are advantages and disadvantages to the two materials from which they are made:
Glass aquariums are cheap, readily available, and do not scratch easily. They are however quite heavy in larger sizes, requiring more than two people to move a tank much larger than a 55 gallon aquarium, and are quite expensive if custom glass is used as the main viewing glass.
Acrylic aquariums are exceedingly light, strong, and offer superior visual characteristics. They are much more expensive when compared to glass, and scratch very easily making it difficult to keep the inside viewing glass clean without taking precautions with the cleaning tools.
Beyond these two choices you can choose to have the tank predrilled, or to have internal overflows in the aquarium. An overflow allows water to flow out of the tank down into a second tank commonly known as the sump. The sump would then contain additional equipment such as heaters, skimmers, mechanical filtration devices, etc., kept out of site and not in the display tank.
Additionally, common footprints for the aquariums are 36, 48, 60, and 72" in length, and varying in dept between 12, 18, and 24 inches, and in height between 18 to 24 inches.
Due to space constraints, for Tank 1.0 an All Glass brand 45 gallon 36x12x24" aquarium that was not predrilled was chosen as the display tank. This is the basis for our reef aquarium.
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