mixedreeflife
New member
Hi all, thanks for reading.
After 5 years out of the game, I purchased a Red Sea Reefer 250 gen1 V3 from my LFS at a discount. Apparently it had been sitting dormant at the store for many years following a failed layby situation.
The problem
Cut to the night before the big delivery day, while doing some research I stumble upon page after page of failed and leaking Red sea reefers (primarily gen1). At this point it's too late to back out and I start thinking of mitigation strategies. From my research, these reefers suffer seam failure arising from 2 possible reasons:
1. The front glass pane is 'floating' and is not supported by the stand. This creates additional stress on the silicone and results in failures; and
2. The stand structure itself, in bigger Reefer tanks (250 and up), they are missing a center brace and over time the MDF bows and that puts pressure on the silicone.
Another reason could be poor silicone quality or application, but there's nothing I can do about that.
Mitigation
I am not an engineer nor am I a 'handy man', so lets get that out of the way.
Here's what I did (pictures below):
1. I found a metal bracket, spray painted it black and installed it under the front glass pane to give it some support.
2. I bought some adjustable table legs, attached some super thick shims to spread the load and placed in the cabinet, one at the front and one at the rear. As the legs are height adjustable I just increased the height until it was tightly in place. Unfortunately due to the position of the sump I couldn't place them perfectly center, as you can see in the pics below they are off center to the right (hoping that doesn't cause any issues...)
Next steps
Pray, monitor the silicone seams and pray some more...
Would love some feedback from the community.
Cheers from Australia.
After 5 years out of the game, I purchased a Red Sea Reefer 250 gen1 V3 from my LFS at a discount. Apparently it had been sitting dormant at the store for many years following a failed layby situation.
The problem
Cut to the night before the big delivery day, while doing some research I stumble upon page after page of failed and leaking Red sea reefers (primarily gen1). At this point it's too late to back out and I start thinking of mitigation strategies. From my research, these reefers suffer seam failure arising from 2 possible reasons:
1. The front glass pane is 'floating' and is not supported by the stand. This creates additional stress on the silicone and results in failures; and
2. The stand structure itself, in bigger Reefer tanks (250 and up), they are missing a center brace and over time the MDF bows and that puts pressure on the silicone.
Another reason could be poor silicone quality or application, but there's nothing I can do about that.
Mitigation
I am not an engineer nor am I a 'handy man', so lets get that out of the way.
Here's what I did (pictures below):
1. I found a metal bracket, spray painted it black and installed it under the front glass pane to give it some support.
2. I bought some adjustable table legs, attached some super thick shims to spread the load and placed in the cabinet, one at the front and one at the rear. As the legs are height adjustable I just increased the height until it was tightly in place. Unfortunately due to the position of the sump I couldn't place them perfectly center, as you can see in the pics below they are off center to the right (hoping that doesn't cause any issues...)
Next steps
Pray, monitor the silicone seams and pray some more...
Would love some feedback from the community.
Cheers from Australia.
