Dose anyone have a Aquaforest oceanguard

Pipo5 · Jun 26, 2022

Im looking into a new tank and im interested in the aquaforest oceanguard 605. Looked on brs and there giving away free starters kit with salt and rocks wich is nice also. I was wondering if anyone had any reviews on it

blaxsun · Jun 27, 2022

I think it's still relatively new.

Chrisv. · Jun 29, 2022

Was looking at these recently too. I know it's common now (e.g. red sea tanks), but there is something about the front glass not being on the stand that sketches me out.

Pipo5 · Jun 29, 2022

My innovative Marine is the same way

mckinney0171 · Jun 29, 2022

Where are they manufactured? I’m assuming China like the others but maybe not?

HBtank · Jun 29, 2022

Chrisv. said:
Was looking at these recently too. I know it's common now (e.g. red sea tanks), but there is something about the front glass not being on the stand that sketches me out.

All sides are like that. It’s hard for me to just accept that it’s OK. I think Redsea doesn’t on the largest tanks? Not following that logic, makes me think it isn’t as strong (the important part) but you can get away with it on smaller tanks to get that clean look for the doors? Eh…

One reason why I started looking at Cade instead of AF for a new tank, but Cade also has an awesome built in solution for electrical that makes it the winner for me, as well as being more proven (i.e. this thread). The sumps on the AF are pretty sweet though. Both systems seemed a notch above the rest, but Cade just seems like they thought a little more of it through.. but they also cost a bit more.

HBtank · Jun 29, 2022

mckinney0171 said:
Where are they manufactured? I’m assuming China like the others but maybe not?

Poland I think.

mckinney0171 · Jun 29, 2022

HBtank said:
Poland I think.

IMO that would make them worth the premium price if so.

HBtank · Jun 29, 2022

mckinney0171 said:
IMO that would make them worth the premium price if so.

Yeah, they look like great tanks. And the method they use to ship is pretty impressive.

Chrisv. · Jun 29, 2022

HBtank said:
All sides are like that. It’s hard for me to just accept that it’s OK. I think Redsea doesn’t on the largest tanks? Not following that logic, makes me think it isn’t as strong (the important part) but you can get away with it on smaller tanks to get that clean look for the doors? Eh…

One reason why I started looking at Cade instead of AF for a new tank, but Cade also has an awesome built in solution for electrical that makes it the winner for me, as well as being more proven (i.e. this thread). The sumps on the AF are pretty sweet though. Both systems seemed a notch above the rest, but Cade just seems like they thought a little more of it through.. but they also cost a bit more.

Red sea does do it on the big ones!

This is certainly a design choice, not something that coincidental. I wish some engineers could chime in.

The AF marketing materials describe the stand as being extremely overbuilt...which just seems like an odd claim to make to me given the layout.

Perhaps the issue is that with the "floating bottom" tank design (vs stacked, where the glass panels rest on the bottom) there is a riak that the bottom will press down under weight of the water, and the sides would be pressed down too, but doing so would put shear pressure on the silicone joints. Could imagine this circumstance if the tank were on a foam pad that didn't equally compress. Wondering if it's actually better to have the walls over hanging if they are not sitting on the tank bottom.
@Aquaforest, do you have any engineers who can comment?

Daniel@R2R · Jun 30, 2022

@Aaron_at_Aquaforest has one! It's a really nice setup!

Chrisv. · Jun 30, 2022

Daniel@R2R said:
@Aaron_at_Aquaforest has one! It's a really nice setup!

Safe to assume from the username that he has more than one (as a member of the company that makes them)?

Would love to understand this design a little better.

HBtank · Jun 30, 2022

Chrisv. said:
Safe to assume from the username that he has more than one (as a member of the company that makes them)?

Would love to understand this design a little better.

I don’t think it is to prevent issues, as these tanks are the odd ones out (seems WB, AF, and RS have these designs, at least the front) and floating is common. AF tanks take it further and add the sides to it. If they were fully supported all the way to the edge, there should be no issues. Of course if the leveling mat or top of the stand is not uniform, that is an issue, but that is likely a problem for any tank.

It’s the opposite IMO, that they made a design choice to have these clean looking doors and do not think the downward sheer force on the unsupported outside panels is a problem. Well I guess unless it’s a certain size and you are RedSea.

rtparty · Jun 30, 2022

When I visited BRS in January, they had the AF tank that Ryan and Randy unboxed in the live. The stand is crazy overbuilt!

HBtank · Jun 30, 2022

So without doing the full calcs, it looks like the sheer force of the weight of glass are around two orders of magnitude less than the hydrostatic force pushing out on the front panel of the tank. Since a piece of glass has thickness, I also thought about if a stand supporting the bottom would help in the case of a failure at the top of the tank, but the equal force is about 1/3 up the from the bottom, so the bottom should fail first.

So I think the general rationale on these designs are that if you are going to trust silicone to hold 1000s of pounds of force outward (assuming a 4x2 front), another 50 lbs of sheer force isn’t all that much.

All this made me decide is that at a certain size I will have bracing on a tank. Trusting those single sets of silicone seals on large rimless tanks is kind of crazy when you think about it, the amount of silicone doesn’t really scale with the forces as you go larger.

gmoney243 · Jul 14, 2022

I just started a build thread for my AF 605

Build Thread - AF OceanGuard 605 Build

Hi All, I have been in and out of the hobby for around 10 years now, check my posts for some previous builds. I Just moved and have been itching to get back into the hobby so I bought a new setup. I went with the AF OceanGuard 605 as it had really good reviews and all build quality looks top...

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