First Time Reef Tank 90 Gal Acrylic Build
 

Hello to all,
I just received my first shipment of materials today for my new fish tank. I am super excited to see how everything will work out. I had a FOWLR tank for about 7 years and had to take it down about 5 years ago when I bought a new house. WOW how things have changed since then!!!

I want to get into corals as well as have some of the stunning fish that come in the saltwater trade. I decided to go with a 90 gallon acrylic tank made by one of my local fish stores. They are actually really great to work with and through in a custom sump with the left over material. Same setup online would cost about $500 more plus shipping. I am going to put the tank in my living room and this size was as big as I wanted to go for the space. I decided to go with the acrylic based on the appearance. I love the look of the molded corners vs silicone square corners. We will see how it fares against scratches.

The tank still needs some bulkheads put in and they are going to make the lids for the sump. So unfortunately it is not home yet. Since, this is my first attempt at a reef tank I would love some feedback. I will get more pics when the tank is here and I have something to show. I would love to hear comments on the setup though.

Here is the equipment list:
90 gal tank
35+ gal custom sump w/ refugium
Bubble Magus NAC7 Cone Skimmer
Mag-Drive Supreme 950 return
2-Koralia Evo 1050's
2-AI Sol Super Blue LED's
Neptune Apex Controller
Neptune Breakout Box
Neptune VDM
Max Jet 404 for ATO w/ float switches
3-BRS dosing pumps
300 Watt titanium htr

I was thinking about adding a BRS dual reactor right away, but I think I might wait to see how the system works. Please let me know your thoughts on this as it would nice to get it in there before everything is filled up.

Here is a potential stocking list:
40# sand
20# live sand
50# Pukani Dry Rock
20# Shelf Dry Rock
30 Dwarf Ceriths Snails
10 Nassarius Snails
20 Florida Ceriths
10 Nerite Snails
2 Cleaner Shrimp
1 Emerald Crab
1 Red Bubble Anemone
1 Diamond Watchman Golby
1 Lawnmower Blenny
1 Hoeven's Wrasse
2 Clownfish (Ocellaris, Black, Snoflake)
1 Yellow Pyramid Butterfly
1 Kole Tang
1 Flame Angle

Corals:
Red Colt Coral
Neon Green Toadstool
Lots of Zoa's
Ric's
Hammer Coral
Torch Coral
Acro's
Digi's
Stylo's
Monti's

Possibly some Chalice, Acans, and Favia. We will see what the tank likes.

Thanks for reading and any advice would be appreciated.

Also, how do you get pictures to show up?

all in all looks like a good plan so far. I would skip the live sand and just go with all dry and add a few pounds of LR to seed the other rock and sand. the LS in a bag IMO is worthless.

as for the BRS dual reactor I would actually go with 2 single ones so you can adjust the flow rates better as carbon and GFO take diffrent rates.

for the pictures, if your using photobucket just use the img. tag and post that.

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't think about water flow. I will have to make sure that they can fit under the hood. I also wonder if I'll have enough room for 2 pumps in the skimmer chamber. Would you go ahead and add them right away or wait and see how it goes?

IMO I would add them right away just to keep the water clean, also as soon as you start feeding the tank you will introduce phosphates so it will help keep algae down.

you don't need 2 pumps to run them, you can either run a manifold off your return pump to get flow or you can have 1 larger pump run both reactors by just splitting the lines to each reactor.

+1

This is one of the only regrets I have with my 90 gallon build so far. I'm only about 7 weeks in but would have been running GFO after the 3rd week when the green hair algae started to show up. Eventually I'll be adding a T off my return to run a manifold to power a couple reactors just havent gotten to it yet.

I also went with the dry sand/rock and about 20 lbs of live rock combination and have no complaints. Worked our very well thus far.

You have a very nice list of parts and a well thought out list of live stock. Good luck to you I'm subscribed :)

I would definitely wait on that. You mention having a refugium with your sump. If you decided to utilize that and grow some macro you might not ever need phosphate removal, but there are a lot of variables that depends on.