Crack1sWak
New member
I have only been truly taking my hobby seriously since I have set up my 90 gallon aquarium.I am going to disregard my three previous attempts at saltwater aquariums before this. I would keep a freshwater aquarium then switch it to saltwater realize I didn't have enough money to care for it properly because I was in middle school at that time. I would switch it back to freshwater get bored with that after a couple of months and try saltwater again. I had been in this cycle since the 7th grade, through the years I had started with a 10 gallon, moved to a 29 gallon, moved to a 40 breeder, and then to a 75 gallon. When I failed at using the 75 gallon for saltwater I had put in money. That aquarium I had money to buy equipment and to care for it. I tried to use freshwater keeping principles however and that is what made me break down the tank and have no aquariums for a few months. I decided if I was going to get back to the hobby I needed to do things the proper way and listen to people who had experience. I decided that I wanted a reef ready tank, with my previous 75 gallon I had kept it with a canister filter and a HOB skimmer. This worked for around two months but then I started to run into issues. I could keep fish alive but I couldn't get algae to stop growing and I had cyano issues. I didn't do water changes as much as I should have and I didn't care for it properly. But had I not had such failure with that tank I wouldn't have been where I am today and making the choices that I did. I decided one day I was going to go buy a tank. I still have all of my previous tanks and stands except for my 10 gallon as I have given that away many years ago. I went to my LFS and decided I would look around and try to establish an idea for which tank I wanted. Since a 75 and a 90 have the same footprint I decided I would be able to save some money if I would buy a 90 gallon since I wouldn't have to worry about buying a stand. I decided I would get a 90 gallon reef ready tank from the LFS. Looking back I could have gotten a better deal on a tank from craigslist that is only the first of many mistakes to come. I ended up paying right around $384.99 USD if I believe correctly. To get a better idea on the time scale this was in August of 2016 and this was right around the time that I was starting my senior year of high school. The next day I went back and bought a sump, looking back I rushed into buying a sump and didn't choose one without having a skimmer that I liked and that had good reviews that would fit. I ended up getting a TideLine TIDE30 which is a trigger systems high end brand. I ended up paying a little less than $500.00 USD for this sump and I do wish I had chosen a different one buy you live and you learn. I have ended up buying things that didn't work out and that I have just had to loose money on because they weren't worth the hassle but this sump hasn't been back. I like the sump and I have now figured out ways to use it for success. After I had bought both of those I began to run low on money, since I was only in high school I worked but I didn't make huge amounts of money and didn't want to work much my senior year. I got my next paycheck and decided I would order from BRS and get some things. I could very easily look back but I feel like the main thing that I ordered that order was a Vectra M1 and coral glue. Since I had kept tanks before I had 100 pounds of BRS dry rock on hand and several other things that were needed such as their dual reactor. I also with this paycheck decided to go to the LFS and buy a skimmer. The skimmer I settled on was an S-120 Cone Skimmer. I figured I wouldn't be stocking my tank very heavy because I more enjoy keeping a great looking tank and know that for the size tank I had there weren't many fish I wanted to keep that I could. This skimmer had a few problems for me, I could never get it tuned right and it took over two weeks for it to break it and I was breaking it in while the tank was cycling. So I brought the stand back in from the garage and got everything set up how I thought it should be. I am going to try to attach pictures that will go along with this but as this is my first post I have some things to learn. I decided that I was going to use flexible tubing since I don't have much experience with hard plumbing and I didn't know if I would need to move things around down the road. I plumbed everything together and did a leak test on the whole tank. After I had filled it with water straight out of the hose and it didn't leak I was feeling much better about the tank. Now before I continue I realize it is important to name who I was following for the experience that I mentioned earlier in this post. I was following Mike Paletta and the videos that he did with American Reef. I was more trying to follow what he was doing with his 75 gallon build if anyone is familiar with that. Because I was following him that meant that I wanted to do a refugium with miracle mud with a skimmer. Now when I took the skimmer off of my tank I ran it with just the miracle mud and I can attest that you can run a tank with no skimmer if you just use miracle mud but to preface this when this happened I was only keep between four and seven chromis and they were very small. I filled the tank with RODI water from the four stage RODI that I already had from BRS and put in the salt and let it start mixing on September 9, 2016. I decided that I would let the tank begin to cycle by following what melevsreef had done with his 60 gallon frag tank system. I used a shrimp from the super market and let it decay for right around three days. I started testing everyday with an API Saltwater test kit I still had from the 75 gallon. I didn't know how long it would take but I did know I wanted to get fish but I wanted it to cycle first. I am getting all of the dates for this from my phone so I am bound to miss some things that I changed but the next picture that I have is from September 20, 2016 and it is of my cloudy tank with sand. I forgot to mention I built the aquascape with the dry rock and then filled it with water. I added sand on this day and it was the fiji pink sand that almost all of us know about. I also two days later found the clown fish that I will some day be putting in my tank they are Bali Aquarich Captive-Bred Black Picasso P1 Percula Clownfish (Bonded Pair) and I haven't seen them for months on Diver's Den and I check everyday right around six when they update the stock they have. From that same day I have a picture of the tank all cleared up with sand. On September 29, 2016 the miracle mud came in. I didn't do as Mike had suggested and let it soak I poured it straight in to the refugium and it went everywhere and my water was cloudy for what I can remember as many days. A couple weeks after this I decided that I would go to the nearest Petco and get four chromis. The tank had finished the cycle the day before and I figured that they would be a good first edition. This happened around the mid point of October and I don't have anymore pictures until November 17, 2016. In that I can see that the fish I have ordered from liveaquaria have come in and so has a clean up crew. I am going to skip the clean up crew I ordered because I really feel like you can have success with them as long as you listen to someone who knows what they are talking about when it comes to them. Now you are probably wondering why I haven't gotten anything from the LFS, I used to go in everyday to get ideas for my tank while it was cycling. Because it was cycling I didn't have the ability or the money to buy anything since I was saving for after I could buy fish. The manager told me I had to buy something or get out and that really turned me off from the establishment. I have gone back one time since and that was a few weeks back to get two corals and Julians Thing. I won't be going back however because they seemed to have the same bad attitude as before and I believe they didn't help my hobby but really hurt it since I don't have a local place to go to find out answers to questions that I have. I ordered I believe three more chromis and a pair of cleaner shrimp. The next picture is from November 30, 2016 and it is when I got my Kessil lights. I got two of them and the controller that comes with them. They are the 360 Tuna Blue's and I have the goosenecks with the 90 degree adapters. I decided that since I didn't know any good lighting schedule's I would follow Wayne Scott and some of you may know who he is. I have to say without the program that he shared that he uses for his Kessil's I probably wouldn't be keeping any coral today. Now I don't have many pictures after that but I can recall what happened from memory but no specific dates. After some time I realized that I was having getting the BRS dual reaction working. I know I was doing something wrong but since I wasn't having any real issues that needed carbon or GFO I decided I would just use them in bags in the sump right before my return pump. I also ordered more things off of live aquaria. I ended up getting chaetomorpha in their refugium starter kit and put that into my refugium. I also removed the skimmer because all it was doing was overflowing and I didn't have time to mess with it. In the late part of February I decided I was going to buy a new skimmer and order off of live aquaria again. This time I decided I would get a Red Sailfin Algae Blenny, a yellow tang and corals since I had kept my tank up and running with no issues for many months. The skimmer I went with was a Skimz Monzter SM163 DC and it is the largest skimmer I could fit in my skimmer area of the sump or so I thought. I figured that the space listed on the TideLine website would be correct for the skimmer area. It is correct if you don't have the bracing on the top of the sump that you can't remove so it really is smaller than they tell you. I received the skimmer and tried to place it in and realized that it wasn't going to fit. I decided I paid almost $400.00 USD for this and that I didn't want to mess with returning it. I got out a dremel tool and started taking off the ring on the side. I only had to remove two of the little pieces that stuck out so it would fit. It fit after I did this, broke in fast and is now working like a charm and I don't know if my tank would be doing as well as it is now without it. In that live aquaria order I also ordered my first two corals. I got a candy cane coral and a torch coral. I know they aren't the typical coral to start off with but I didn't want to have anything that grows too fast like GSP that I could never get rid of. I decided I would take the challenge and get them and see how I did. Sometime after that I ordered the Tunze Calcium Dispenser 5074 for my ATO. I didn't mention that I had a Tunze ATO but I bought that back when I got my Vectra M1 return pump. I also ended up ordering at some time the hydor wavemaker and two pumps for it. I don't remember what they are but they are nice. I also a few months ago ordered a Maxspect Gyre 150 and I like that very much. I have a problem with heat as my room gets very warm for the summer so I bought a stand up AC with dehumidifier so I wouldn't have any moisture issues within the room. I have three 150-Watt heaters because of this because my room is kept right around 60 degrees. I bought a green montipora and a LPS that I can't remember the name of a few weeks back at the LFS as I have mentioned previously in this post. This is going to be the end of my first post but as you can see I have made many mistakes and some of them have cost me a good deal of money to fix and in what I had to get rid of. Today I am happy with the tank as I still have my pair of cleaner shrimp, my yellow tang, four chromis, and my four corals that are all doing well.
