Welp, that's it! I'm done!

[Abaddon]

I had an amazing tank: 65g high with reef rock, anemones, corals (a few Aussie ones that were sweet), some exceptional fish (a few that would eat from my hand), I designed and built the refugium by hand, I upgraded from T5 to 250wx2 halides, and everything was going nicely. And then the front seam split yesterday. I trashed the tank and took the fish and rock to the store. I'm done. Washing my hands of the hobby for awhile.
I learned a lot of good stuff, like never buy anything from Deep Blue ever again. It wasn't the tank that was wrong. The stand had a design flaw that allowed too much weight to be over too big a span. I just wish I had caught it before the mess happened.
It's very sad. I'm just going to take some time to get my head together over this mess. It's not the money or the time. It's the suffering of the fish from the entire situation. I had insurance on the office in case something like this happened so I'm covered. It's just ridiculous I should even have to tell others about it.
I also wanted to take a second to say thanks to all those on here who have helped me out as I went along. It's been fun.

[kevinpo]

Hello,
Sorry to hear about your misfortune. It is quite rare for a mass produced tank to fail. I would advise to keep your equipment for a while just in case you want to start again and if it is around it may encourage you to do so. I've been keeping marine ornamentals for 26 years now and like life it has its ups and downs but overall it's worth doing at least for me .

All the best,
Kevin

[dougc]

I had the same experience when my 210 cracked across the front and dumped on the floor. I swore that I was done, but after about 3 weeks, I really started to miss the tank and began planning a replacement. Took about 3 months to repair the floor and get back up and running with a 180. It took a couple of years to restock. I'm not sure I would have restarted if AGA hadn't stood behind their product, even though it was 6 months out of warranty.

Give it time. After my change of heart, I actually had to dig through trashcans to recover things that I had thrown away in disgust.