Marineland 250 DD Disaster

brandonst878

brandonst878

Premium Member
I purchased a 250 Marineland DD tank from my local LFS and paid them to build a stand and install the tank. Less than 24 hrs after installation I returned from work to find my house flooded and all of my livestock dead. The tank cracked along the entire length of the bottom of the tank and every bit of water in the tank ended up on the floors and carpet of my newly redecorated home. The LFS guys have been very helpful and responsive but Marineland only warranty's their tank even though the failure has disastorous consequences. Has anyone ever had anything like this happen? I don't want the LFS to suffer but I am in no way responsible for any of this. Any suggestions or advice would be much appreciated. I can't seem to upload photos from my iPhone but will do so later when I am near my PC.

Thanks for any input.
 
How horrible, so sorry to hear that. I think that the way you are going to have to go is through your homeowners insurance. I have never dealt with Marineland so I have no idea how good their customer service is but I would bet they are only gong to cover the cost of their tank.
 
How horrible, so sorry to hear that. I think that the way you are going to have to go is through your homeowners insurance. I have never dealt with Marineland so I have no idea how good their customer service is but I would bet they are only gong to cover the cost of their tank.
 
I would say that if your LFS built the stand, then it might be there fault for improperly supporting the tank. Totally sucks for you at this point. LFS has insurance so tell them to pony up.
 
That is my feeling on the issue. I feel at this point like it is up to them to take it up with marineland if they decide to do that. I did not do a DiY setup because I was afraid of this type of scenario. I trusted that if I paid the premium for having the LFS do everything that I'd be absolved of any construction issue. This has been a horrible experience. I warn everyone to be careful before installing an untested tank in an area that could potentially be damaged.
 
Sorry to hear this and we feel your pain. In Sep of 2010 we had the bottom seal rupture on a less than 6 month old 300dd. The damage to our house was significant. Our home owner's insurance took care of the damage to our house (after the deductible), but they would not cover the tank. We were fortunate to be home when it happened and were able to save most of our livestock although we lost quite a number of high-end corals and a few fish while we waited for the replacement tank.

It took nearly 7 months for the LFS to get us our replacement while our livestock sat in a temporary tank in our garage. It was a true nightmare.
 
Trademark said:
I would say that if your LFS built the stand, then it might be there fault for improperly supporting the tank. Totally sucks for you at this point. LFS has insurance so tell them to pony up.
Click to expand...

Excellent point--who built the stand? A crack on the bottom of the tank would indicate inadequate support so this is quite likely where the issue originated.
 
Oh my gosh, so sorry to see this. I hope you are able to get everything repaired. My first reaction is to question the stand/level as well. Did the LFS bring it to your house or was it delivered? Maybe there was stress during transport? Good luck to you.
 
I feel for you. There's more than a few of these threads since the DD series hit the stores. For tanks of this size this is unacceptable. :sad2:
 
its a mass produced tank holding a ton of pressure. IDK seems like shotty workmanship. acrylic seals wont bust, there chemically bonded. sorry for your losses. I hope that the people who built the stand will stand by there work and pay for damages.
 
I'm in the process now of ordering a ML DD 300. Although I don't care for the shortness of the stand, ML tells you out front that even professionally built stands void the tank warranty.
 
All I can say is Wow. I can not believe that happened....how frustrating for you. what did you do to clean the mess up? I would not even know where to start.
 
If your homeowners insurance will cover, they will battle the LFS and Marineland to get their money back.. it makes you "not the bad guy", and they have armies of lawyers for these things that make it a lot easier for them to get things settled.
We had a water main break in front of the house... The city took responsibility, and was allowing us to make a "claim" for damages. The thing is, my insurance company would also cover. Since the city wasn't fighting, it would have been easier in a lot of ways just to work with them, but because my insurance company has that army of lawyers and therefore by proxy I pay for that team of lawyers, we went through them. Since the city was responsible, they also negotiated my deductible into the claim. I don't know that the city would have tried to back out, or not pay full claim, or any of that, but I do know that I pay to have the insurance guys on my side.... and it was much easier to trust that the entire thing would be taken care of correctly with them in the mix.
 
If they build their tanks like they build their stands then I can totally understand why they bust seals. I will always build my own stand. Their stands are short because if the were any higher they'd buckle in on themselves. The lumber they use should be used for holding knick knacks on a shelf, not supporting thousands of pounds. Either way, this is unacceptable. I think you're much more at risk putting your tank on their stand than giving it a shot yourself, and you can build it on a weekend for a fraction of the cost and 10x better materials and piece of mind.
 
Day One Install

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Holding Water

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Scene When I returned from work the next evening.

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Completely Empty (The clowns died together)

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Tank Crack

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Thank you everyone for your input. I am still in shock. The LFS did everything turn key. I did not make one part or purchase anything outside of that store. As I said, they are being responsive and accommodating at the moment and they were there within 15 minutes of my discovery to help clean up.
 
Now im sadder than before. Thats just terrible. I have seen some dd tanks and i have thought that they seemed sloppy for such a big investment.
 
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