[Andrew Rhyne]

I bought a 215 Ultimate shortly after they were put on sale, 45% off due to an over production. Long story short, I moved to RI to take a position at a University up here in the Northeast. Never used the tank in FL, got the job shortly after I bought it. Moved the tank, crated by professional movers, it sat outside for the winter. We we started to fill it up, it leaked like a sieve. I made two huge mistakes. I didn't fill it after the movers delivered the tank and I left it outside in RI for the winter.

We in the process of tearing it apart, stripping the glass, and rebuilding it.

Some interesting observations.

1. No spacers on the bottom seams.

2. We had 3 clips develop between the bottom seam and the side panels. 2 on the front panel and 1 back panel.

3. Silicone was very light around the areas that chipped. Some areas only had a few millimeters of silicone on the glass.

Has any one seen a tank like this chip around the bottom and side panels?


Two things we're going to do.

1. Replace the cheap plastic overflows that they have started using

2. Split the center glass support into two pieces and spread them out so I can put a light directly over the center of the tank.

Question: Do we need spacers between the bottom and side panels?


Hopefully I'm the only one with a tank that has this sort of issues.

Some pictures.

We started by removing the center brace followed by the side trim pieces.




Once the center brace was removed and the side trim we pulled the front panel.


You can see some of the light silicone areas, chips around those ares, and spacer placement in this following shots.









After the front panel was removed, we pulled the two sides, and removed the overflows, followed by the back panel. The overflows were a pain, they must have had 2 times the silicone than the rest of the tank. Once the sides were removed, we could start the clean up process.



After all the panels were removed and we stripped all of the old silicone off we then removed all of the residuals with mineral spirits. Leaving nothing but clean glass.

[Andrew Rhyne]

After talking to the tank manufacture we are going to put spacers on the bottom this time. Seems they stopped using them on the bottom about a 1-1/2 years ago.