90g Build with Pics!

cgray07

New member
Hey all! A little background on me first I guess. My name is Connor. My wife and I just moved to Orlando FL and are both originally from upstate NY. I got into the hobby about 6 years ago when I won a goldfish at the fair in my home town. I quickly fell in love with keeping fish and moved to SW within a month. I started with a 30g FOWLR and again, quickly upgraded, this time to a 55g mixed reef. Of course I did everything wrong with the 55. I used tap water for mixing salt and top off, reused my sand from the 30 without rinsing it off first, added new uncured rock to the system and started adding livestock right away. As I'm sure you can assume, I had a very difficult time keeping anything alive. I joined the Air Force and moved to Hawaii where the reef keeping was put on hold. I found out you cannot keep very many things legally due to their agricultural laws so I took a break and started building my 90g. I did a ton of research and built my stand slowly, all the while collecting equipment anytime I could find a good deal. Fast forward to now, I have finally (5 long years later) set up the tank and started the cycle as of last Saturday. I'm running a 90g DT with a Herbie into a 40b sump/fuge, about 75lbs mostly dry rock and a small piece of live, Cobalt neotherm 300W, Reef Octopus Diablo XS 160 (not on yet), a Jebao 9000, JBJ ATO, 2 AI Vegas and a Maxspect gyre 250. In the right cabinet is my outlet box with some switches and a GFI. I wanted to do this because I didn't want more than one plug coming out of the tank. I have the ammonia reader (can't tell if its at alert or toxic though) and have been dosing roughly 4mL every few days after the initial 2oz on the first day. I have also been dosing microbacter 7 along with that. I plan on keeping a high bioload (due to the size of my skimmer) of mostly softies, LPS and fish. If you guys wanted any pictures of anything specific just let me know, I could talk about this all day and my wife is sick of hearing about it lol. Any advice or critiques are more than welcome! Thanks guys!
 

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Thanks you guys! I can't take all the credit on the stand I found plans for it online. I did build it by myself though =D
 
Agree with the above. Clean and modern look. Keep us posted on what fish and coral you choose. If she is sick of it, we are here to listen!
 
So just over 1 week in and this is what it looks like...Everything looking as it should?
 

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I was dosing ammonia but I haven't in a few days I figured I've dosed enough at this point. I didn't want to add too much ammonia. Just wanted to make sure it's all going the way it should.
 
It looks like it is coming along but stop dosing the ammonia until it is under 1-2 ppm. You want to keep it present but low because when it is very high you can slow down parts of the cycle.


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Ok cool thanks for the advice you guys. Yeah they immediately got in there like it was theirs or something lol. I had to pick up a small fan to go under the stand. An oversight while building, I didn't cut any vent holes other than for plumbing. I eventually plan on cutting 2 holes and mounting 2 computer fans, one push and one pull. If this small fan does the trick I may not need anything else but time will tell.
 
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