Red Sea’s Reefer range of rimless reef-ready aquariums are designed for advanced hobbyists who have their own preferences of aquarium equipment, and are also in the market for a higher end tank, stand and sump to start with. More than any other product that Red Sea has revealed in recent years, the Reefer line has garnered widespread global excitement since it will still allow beginning to advanced hobbyists to customize the aquarium with their equipment of choice.
Previous information about the Red Sea Reefer line has told us all about the basics of the Red Sea Reefer line from the sizes it will come in, the union of tanks, stand and sump and how much they will cost. This new video from Red Sea not only gives a nice, thorough overview of ll these known features of the Reefer series, but it also brings to light a few more details that may not have been fully announced, or not really highlighted in earlier press material.
There’s not too much to know about the tanks themselves other than they are rimless, high clarity glass with beveled edges, and the internal overflow/drain system will keep a steady 4cm/1.5 inches of clearance between the water surface and the edge of the aquarium. The real revelation happens underneath the tank in the sump and stand area where this video divulges some details we hadn’t noticed before.
The first detail that caught our attention is the inclusion of a vented chiller section in the stands of the three largest sizes of the Red Reefer Reefer line. These areas could just as easily be used for shelving but a sincere hat-tip goes out to Red Sea for creating an area of the stand which will isolate the chiller’s heat from the aquarium water, while simultaneously giving it some berth away from moisture and salt of the sump.
Furthermore, we got a look at Red Sea’s integrated auto-top off solution which sit right above the sump and as we suspected, it is bordering on being too small. Even Neil himself states that the top off is only good for an estimated three days of evaporation under “normal condition”. Tell that to us reefers keeping aquariums in the high and dry mountains of Denver – in winter we can blow through a few gallons of evaporation per day! This small integrated top off is better than having none at all but we sense that devices like Avast Marine’s Barrel Tender will be getting a lot of mileage being the “top off for the top off”.
The last detail that caught our attention in this video is the surprising height/depth of the protein skimmer area – 8 inches/20cm deep in the three smaller sizes and 9.4 inches/24cm in the two larger models. Almost anyone looking to use the Red Sea Reefer system will undoubtedly use some kind of a needle wheel protein skimmer – for these size of reef aquariums the maximum operating depth is going to be around 8 inches/20cm deep.
Sure it’s easy enough to elevate the protein skimmer but this would have been a great opportunity for Red Sea to introduce one more degree of control through the use of a water depth adjustment which is becoming pervasive on nearly all new high performance standalone sumps offered in recent years. This last criticism of the depth of the sump could just be us nitpicking at what is an otherwise flawless system design and it’s easy enough to work with, easier than not having a skimmer area that is deep enough that’s for sure.
It’s quite impressive how far Red Sea has come in the last ten years from re-inventing what it means for a reef tank to be an All in One, refining that concept with a large family of Red Sea MAX tanks, and then stripping it all back to reveal the bare essentials of reefing in the Reefer aquarium series. The Reefer line is practically guaranteed to be one of the hottest new reefing products of 2015 and we can’t wait to get our first look at one when they launch sometime in the first quarter. [Red Sea]
