Amoore's 90 Gallon AGA Build Thread

Amoore311

New member
Well I'm finally good to go and the move went over quite well. I want to document my progress here and hopefully get some input on future additions.



First off some background about myself. My name's Adam and I'm 24 years old. I've had a 29 Gallon FOWLR w/ a couple mushrooms for over 18 months. I've been around, more so engulfed, in the hobby for about 5 years however. I felt the itch to upgrade and did so with a 90 Gallon Reef Ready All Glass Aquarium.

Here's a shot of my 29 Gallon before the break down:

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This tank was run with a CS65, HOB Overflow Box, and 2 X 54 Watt PC's.

I was originally planning out just going all out with this tank with top of the line equipment, but when I figured out the costs I came in right on budget for a nicely equipped 90 Gallon.

Here's the tank and stand when I first bought it a couple months ago:
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My first purchase was a Typhoon III RODI Unit from AirWater&Ice.com. These guys are a fantastic company w/ great prices and customer service. Here's a picture of the unit (it's now mounted on the wall above the washer/dryer):
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Over the next couple of weeks I started to acquire necessities. This included:

-Mag Drive 7 Return Pump

-Various Plumbing Parts

-Flexible Tubing

-Substrate (I'm including a picture of the substrate I went with b/c it's not your typical Carib-Sea Brand sand. I got this from my LFS for a very good price ($20.00/25LB).
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I don't buy the whole "Arag-Alive" live sand in a bag crap. I'll seed my bed using the sand from a fellow reefers tank.


After I got all that material in I went to work on looking for a sump and lighting. Luckily I got both from local guys in my Reef Club for a very good price.

Here's the sump, it is around 39 gallons I think:
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The sump has a large refugium area on the left, return in the middle, and skimmer section in the right. Having the return in the middle will allow me to split the drain line, and thusly control the flow to each section.

Lighting wise I, I purchased a Tek-Light 6 Bulb T5 Fixture. My tank will be a LPS/Softy Reef. I enjoy corals that move with the current. Acros and other SPS corals really don't appeal to me.

Here's a picture with the light over the tank, and the tank filled:
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I still need to go about purchasing the mounting legs for the fixture. I will not be hanging this from my ceiling.
 
I finished all the plumbing and ran the tank to check for any leaks. I expected to find at least one, especially since I was using all flexible tubing. Fortunately I was wrong, not a single leak.:rollface:

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The Grey "T" fitting you see in the last picture is now straight, not angled. The angle was causing a ton of noise.

For my aquascape I planned on using my current 45 LBS of Figi Live Rock that's been in my display for over 1 year. I originally purchased this from Reefermadness.us when Kris Wray was the general manager. In combination w/ the 45 lbs of Figi, I wanted 45 lbs of Tonga Shelf Ecco Rox from BulkReefSupply. Pictures of the rock to follow- (I was very pleased)

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This rock was extremely well packaged. You can tell by the final picture, that was the total amount of rubble I received.... about 1 handful.

The rock cured.....well I guess "soaked" is a better term, for 2 1/2 weeks. The first week I set the temperature to around 90F and cooked the hell out of it, hoping to speed the die-off process. My garage stunk to the high heavens for the first week.

After week 1 of rock soaking I did a 100% WC, tossed my CSS65 on the rock tub, and set the temperature to 80F. Even the PoS CSS65 was pulling out a ton of gunk from this rock.

At the 2 week mark I did another 50% WC. At the 18-20 Day mark (4/4/08) the rock was good to go.

More info on the tank move and pictures of the new set up coming later.
 
Here's the tank shots w/ everything moved over:

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Tank Specs :
90 Gallon AGA RR w/ MegaFlow Kit

Lighting :
Tek-Light T5 6 Bulb Fixture

Filtration :
39 Gallon DIY Sump w/ Central Return

Refugium w/ a DSB and rock rubble. The Fuge will hold chaeto in about a month once there's some nutrients for the macro to absorb. Lighting will be on reverse photo period.

Skimmer will be either a Euroreef RS100 or an Octopus Recirculating 150. Both out of stock everywhere at the moment so this isn't in the sump at the moment.

I'm also running 2 TLF 150 Fluidized Media Reactor 1 w/ Carbon and 1 w/ GFO. The carbon reactor is run off of a Mini Jet Pump. The GFO is run off a Maxijet 600 that's throttled back quite a bit.

Flow:
Mag 7 Return Pump

I'm currently running 2 Maxi-Jet 900's each with the Sure Flow Prop Mod and Algae Free Magnet assembly. I might upgrade to Maxi-Jet 1200's in the future, jury is still out on that though.

W/ the Mod the 900's each put out 1600 GPH pretty sure. If I upgrade to the 1200's it will put me at 2000GPH each. Return pump gives me about 500 GPH w/ the Head Loss.

With the 900's it puts me @ 41 x Tank Volume in Flow. Upgrade to the Max 1200's will give me 50x Tank Volume in Flow.

I'm not looking to keep any SPS. Just LPS and Softies. If my flow about right or should I upgrade to the 1200's?
 
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