Hey everyone!
I decided last March that I was finally ready after 15 years or wanting and waiting to build a reef tank. I had sucessfully kept South American cichlids years ago, but never SW. I have been reading everything I can get my hands on the last 6 months, and am in the process of setting up a common sump, multiple tank system. The main tank is an AGA 120g w/ two 1" drains in the back wall. It took over 13 weeks to get the tank, as AGA lost my first order, then took 8 weeks to finally get it to my lfs. I wanted to do a mostly macro/mangrove/dsb for filtration, so the multiple tank set up began from this. There will be two 29g tanks on each side of the 120g, with mangroves growing out of the top. I purchased 100 mangrove propagules in July as stage 1 propagules (no root no leaves). I can write another thread about growing them, but at the moment I have 60 that have good root growth and are starting to grow leaves (the other 40 were given away to friends and family, sold to a lfs, or are dead due to attempting to get them to germinate in muddy soil as an experiment.) There will be a 55g reverse cycle macro fuge under the 120g, as well as a 40g sump. Under the right hand side 29, will be a 20g long. I have all of the tanks in my possesson due to the 1$ per gallon sale at Petco, and am currently working on the stand. The tanks will house a colony of yellow headed jawfish, mushrooms, lps, montipora, and a colony of barnacle blennies. All other additions are undecided. I made a structure of 1/2" pvc to hold all of my live rock off of the bottom of the tank, so the jawfish will have a full 2ftx4ft of 4-5"and to play in.