Initially had a 5 star review and had to update it. After 6 months of ownership, I've had nothing but trouble with this system. The aquarium itself is OK... hard to mess up a block of glass and some plastic I guess. But the entire hood including bulbs, ballasts, and fans is just a poorly designed money pit. The fans do nothing but squeal for 10 minutes when they first come on. Originals did that and even the free replacements are now doing it. Already had to replace the $30 actinic bulb after only 6 months, and finally had to take out the bio balls as they were loading the tank with nitrates (common problem with bio balls). The hood traps all heat too, and I had to install a supplementary fan to remove heat from inside the aquarium. Finally, every time I take the hood off to do a cleaning and water change, if I don't set the hood down with a feather light touch, the daylight bulb has to be reseated before it'll work again as the connector isn't a good quality connector. This seemed like a simple and effective kit when I first bought it, hence the initial 5 star review. It's not until after the tank cycles and the electronics have been in use for a few months that you realize how much effort it takes to get this setup stable and working properly for a reef tank. After all my fiddling, improvements, and replacement parts, I've got it working but I dropped my rating considering all the quality issues I've had. If the hood electronics weren't such low quality, I'd probably rate it 4 stars.
I bought the biocube 29 about a year ago due to liking its appearance and the 'all-in-one' design. Having checked out a number of reviews, most of which were negative about the construction quality, thinking I knew best, I went ahead and purchased one. Should have listened to the reviews!
I have kept fish tanks, both fresh and salt water, for many years with essentially no problems. With this tank...where to start...first, the glass had a number of scratches and is also very easy to further scratch (probably had over a dozen tanks over the years and never had a single scratch). The midnight LEDS were not working within a week. To be fair the customer service at Oceanic were very fast and efficient and sent me a new transformer within a week which fixed the problem...until last week...when there was a bang and a smell of burning and no more nighttime LEDs. As many others appear to have experienced, the fans make an annoying loud squealing noise when initially switched on..this last for about 10 minutes. Other annoying problems such as the back tab to gain access to the filter system is almost impossible to open by hand. You also need to keep an extremely close eye on the water level indicator on the side of the tank, if it gets too low then lots of microbubbles will fill your tank, stressing fish and corals. This has been a big source of concern for me when travelling for longer than a week. Plus it means that you can't use automated fish feeders because as well as being very tricky to install, you get major water loss resulting in the bubble issue.
Finally, what actually got me to finally get around to expressing my unhappiness for this product with this review was the following. I head read reviews about fish 'jumping' into the filter system. I had looked at this carefully when I set the tank up and concluded that either this simply wasn't possible, that the design must have been changed or that people were overfilling their tanks. Well, I noticed that one of my firefishes had gone missing a couple of days ago which was strange as he appeared healthy and happy. Tonight I was changing the filter (whilst grappling to get in the compartment) and lo and behold there was my firefish lying on the bioballs cover. Thankfully, I keep the bioball levels a little lower than normal and he was still getting wet, although he does not look to be in good shape (he is currently hiding or maybe even back amongst the bioballs). Fingers crossed he will survive. So, it took a year to happen but, yes, fish can jump in the filter compartment. Unbelievable!
On the positive side, it does look nice, however for the very high cost there is an expectation of quality, and this falls very very short. Overall I have been extremely disappointed in the tank and it has been a constant source of annoyance.
p.s. Don't even consider the Oceanic protein skimmer, its is useless at drawing gunk and means you then have to move the filter to lie on the bioballs, totally idiotic.
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Please, please please do not buy this product! I bought this tank about six months ago, and am into it about four hundred dollars with the stand. During the first week of ownership, several fish managed to get into the back chambers. I contacted the manufacturer, and was sent a divider to put up as a barrier to the back. A couple of months ago one of the lights went out, again I contacted the manfucturer and was sent a new set of bulbs and ballast. This morning I woke up to find gallons of water had poured out of the tank. A large fish had managed to get into the chamber that contains the water pump. While thrashing around in the back, the fish unhooked the tube to the pump, which basically created a fountain. Water entered the hood lights, as well as ran down the sides of the tank. The lighting system has been destroyed and water leaked into my heat ducts and onto my newly refinished hardwood floor downstairs. Fortunately I was home when all of this took place. If not, I would have a tank of dead fish and ruined floors. This tank is going into the garbage. It is the worst product I have ever bought!
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This is the worst product you can buy. I bought a 29G biocube and after couple of months it started to leak. I tried to communicate to manufacturer and received no response for a while. You pay a lot of money for this piece of junk and they don't even test the sealing of the product. No real customer service and your warranty doesn't mean anything.
Never going to buy any Oceanic product.
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We have now owned our Biocube 29 gallon for over 4 years. The initial plus is the compact size and tidy design. I would not rate the "all in one" as a real plus as almost any decent aquarium shop can set you up with a regular tank, filter, lights and hood for less money and probably better quality. However it won't necessarily look as "neat" for the same amount of money. I would stress that this is not my first or last salt water tank.
Looks certainly rates five stars, neat in appearance, self contained.
Ease of use pretty easy to set up, but harder to clean than other tanks due to limited and difficult to open access doors. Removing the hood is not easy as the cables need to be disconnected or the whole assembly is awkward and heavy. While other tanks hoods are also not easy to remove you usually don't have to remove them to clean the tank, on the Biocube you are most likely going to have to. As for cleaning the glass a magnetic cleaner can't get around the curves so it is easier to do it with a (clean) scourer. The glass on our tank has not scratched at all in over 4 years. The stand has small opening for cables which makes wiring difficult.
Quality Poor, one star or less. Our tank leaked after four years. I just fixed it requiring cutting out the plastic filter box silicone and tank sealant on one rear edge and bottom of the other edge. Why did it leak? It was a manufacturing defect, the silicone was incorrectly applied on two seams missing the edge of the main glass entirely, it was amazing it took 4 years for the water to get past the plastic to glass seal on the outside that was not designed to be water tight. The sealant around the filter box was also beginning to leak but I doubt this would effect the efficiency of the system or pose any real problems. Fix time was about 3 hours, plus 48 hours for the sealant to cure. Hood fans also failed after running noisily for a short while, however they don't appear to be necessary, all they do is cause excessive water loss through evaporation. Like all systems with compact bulbs they do require replacement quite frequently, the ballast has also been replaced, and the parts are expensive.
Efficiency Everything seems to work well enough except the skimmer. It can't be used with the mechanical filter pad and is difficult to service, however we don't seem to need it even with live corals and quite a few fish. Tank lights get hot so you better have the tank in a fairly cool room.
Design Cube shape make the tank very good for a reef setup. This also helps with filtration as the live rock and sand (when cycled) act as a natural filter. However the water level is too high for the separation between the filter and main tank resulting in escaping fish. Most fish don't escape so if yours does you are better off taking it back and swapping it for another one that won't jump into your filter. (the fish that is)
Would I recommend it? Probably not, while it is not terrible there are certainly enough problems that other systems would be a better recommendation, especially for those new to salt water. The 29 gallon however is really small for a saltwater aquarium, especially a reef, and it does work. So if your requirement is a small saltwater reef and you no way want a bigger tank then this might be a good solution at least if you are lucky and get one that they manufactured properly.
Our tank right now We moved everything to a new 75 gallon reef tank (very easy to set up) when the tank leaked. Now it is fixed and filled again waiting to cycle and fill with who knows what fish, corals and invertebrates. We didn't scrap it so it really isn't a piece of junk despite what others might say, just not really that good either.
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I love the look it give my tank...very organic and zen like. Pretty easy to clean..tiny fish love to hide in it...so be careful when you do clean...would recomend a small bowl with water so the can come out of hiding before cleaning
